Setting up peer and self assessment
Sudha Mahajan
Assessment is an essential part of the teaching-learning process. According to NEP2020 assessment should be formative and competency based, so as to ensure the overall development of the students. There are basically three assessments that we usually talk of:
| Assessment for learning (Formative assessment) | is teacher-driven but for the use of student, teacher, and parent; It is conducted throughout the teaching and learning process, using a variety of tools; and teachers are able to provide differentiated instructions, feedback to students to enhance their learning, and information to parents so that they can support the learning of their child. |
| Assessment as learning (Formative assessment) | helps students in critically analyzing learning according to the curricular outcomes; is student-driven i.e., peer and self-assessment(with teacher guidance); and occurs throughout the learning process. |
| Assessment of learning (Summative assessment) | occurs at the end of a learning cycle and helps us to give grades or promotions. |
Last year when the pandemic struck and the schools had to close down, we were not sure if online classes were helping students of the primary grades learn as perfectly as they did in the classroom. After a lot of brainstorming, we decided to start using peer and self-assessment. We decided to keep it simple, therefore the teachers were asked to pick up the learning outcomes from their lesson plans, an example of which I am sharing here:
Lesson plan for Class II English
Learning outcome: Students will be able to write a paragraph on any given topic.
The following rubric was provided for self-assessment.
| I used capital letter to begin a new sentence and for proper nouns | Yes | No |
| I used punctuation marks at the end of each sentence. | ||
| I used the appropriate topic sentence at the beginning of the paragraph. | ||
| I have checked all my spellings. | ||
| I have re-read the paragraph to check for errors. | ||
| I am satisfied with my writing. |
The teacher first took a piece of writing and modelled to the students how to self-assess it. It did take some time for the students to use the rubric perfectly. The teachers had to remind before submission of every assignment that the students need to do self-assessment, attach the rubric and hand over the assignment. The work of the students started improving and they enjoyed using the rubrics.
After students had used self-assessment for two months, we introduced peer-assessment to the students. We also ensured that in an online PTM, we explain to the parents the importance of peer-assessment and answer their queries. We first started with assessing as a whole class. We thus held a poetry recitation competition. Each child was provided with a rubric for assessment, so that before participating they could keep the rubric in mind. To make the process simpler we asked two students to assess each participant. Roll no. 1 was assessed by roll no. 2 & 3, roll no. 2 by roll no. 3 & 4 and so on.
If the teacher found any major discrepancy in the assessment done by the students, the teacher had a discussion with them. Peer assessment was done only twice in each subject throughout the year.
Therefore in this article we are going to discuss assessment as learning that is peer and self-assessment.
• Peer assessment involves students reflecting on the work of their peers, against the learning outcomes or goals, and providing constructive feedback.
• Self-assessment involves students, reflecting on their efforts, identifying improvements required in their work based on the learning outcomes/goals set by the students under the guidance of the teacher.
Characteristics of peer and self-assessment
Through clear instructions and modelling, teachers can develop their students’ skills in peer and self-assessment which will help the students become independent learners.
Teacher’s role:
• Sharing/developing learning goals and success criteria with students.
• Rubrics for assessment must be provided.
• Modelling assessment and feedback processes.
Student’s role:
• Interacting to improve each other’s work.
• Using learning journals and reflection logs.
• Setting improvement goals.
Peer assessment
Peer assessment involves students assessing each other’s work according to a set of criteria and offering feedback suggestions.
How to introduce and help the learners:
• Involve students in defining/clarifying the learning outcomes.
• Students will have to be taught how to evaluate their work by co-creating with them rubrics they can understand.
• Teacher can provide guidance by using anonymous work maybe from another section.
• Students can be helped to provide peer feedback by giving them sentence starters.
• Combine peer assessment with teacher feedback.
• Develop some ground rules for giving effective feedback.
• Ensure that parents understand why you use peer assessment and that it is only one of a variety of assessment strategies that you use.
• Allow 5-10 minutes for students to make improvements based on peer feedback before they give their work to you.
Student self-assessment
When teachers explicitly teach students to become effective self-assessors, they become empowered to take charge of their own learning – a necessary skill for lifelong learning. As with peer assessment, self-assessment takes time and practice and teachers need to explicitly teach and model how to self-assess before students are expected to use self-assessment effectively.
Prerequisites for self-assessment
In order for students to be successful self-assessors they need to be accustomed to:
• Using rubrics.
• Receiving and applying the feedback from their peers.
How to introduce and help the learner
• Provide guided opportunities to self-assess.
• Provide students with feedback on the ‘quality’ of their self-assessments.
• Teach students how to use feedback from self-assessments to set learning goals and plan the next steps.
• Demonstrate how students can monitor their learning and progress towards their goals.
• Provide opportunities for students to self-assess at all stages of the learning process, online tools like iMovies or Educreations can be used for this.
• Make self-assessment a regular part of what students do during and after learning.
• It is imperative that students understand that self-assessment is about learning and improvement, not about being right or wrong.
• Ensure students understand the terminology of self-assessment that is evaluation, reflection, goal-setting and the target.
Strategies for self-assessment
• Journals
• Portfolios
• Two gems and one helping hand
- Journals
A journal is a perfect way for students to reflect on their learning. If you desire you could also encourage your students to illustrate their learning or questions. All that the teacher needs to do is provide them with questions which will develop their meta-cognition abilities too. The students can be asked to look at their learning outcomes and then reflect on their learning with the help of the following questions:
• What is the one thing that you learnt in this lesson which you can use in your real life?
• Do you have any doubts?
• Reflect on the difficulties you faced in understanding the concepts done in the past week. Have you been able to solve them? If yes, how? - Portfolios
An online portfolio is a student-managed collection of work which demonstrates the student’s learning and developing competence. Portfolios is an excellent tool of self-assessment. It helps students understand their strengths and weaknesses along with their journey of learning. - Two gems and one helping hand
The peer has to mention two things that were done well by the writer (gems) and one thing that the writer needs to improve (helping hand).
A few pointers for educators to ensure that the students use their portfolio regularly:
• The teacher can remind the students to check if the work done by them needs to be included in the portfolio.
• The students can have the soft copy of their goal setting exercise and then they can decide if their work is moving towards achieving their goals.
• Students should be given a list of evidences they need to add to their portfolio: one piece of writing, one mathematics test or activity, one project, one artwork and so on.
• Providing a range of examples – other than written work students can add, photographs, recording of participation in events.
• The students should be encouraged to add work in progression not just their best work.
As it is a digital portfolio, it would be easy to include all the above.
Online resources
There are different apps like Kahoot, Flipgrid, Google forms, iMovies and EduCreations that can be used.
At the end I would like to say that as educators you know the best way to make your students become life-long learners, so trust your instinct and work keeping your and your learners’ creativity alive.
References
• https://www.plymouth.k12.in.us/formative/peer-self-assessments
• https://theeducationhub.org.nz/8-tools-for-peer-and-self-assessment/
• https://isit.arts.ubc.ca/ideas-and-strategies-for-peer-assessments/
The author has been a teacher, a coordinator and principal, freelance education consultant conducting teacher and student development programmes, during her journey as an educator for the last 25 years. She is now freelancing and a Resource Person with CBSE for Teacher Professional Development. She can be reached at sanhaworkshops@gmail.com.
