The school year is ending, and we're completing our final self-evaluations for a report card grade. Throughout the marking period, I conference with students about their activities and projects and leave plenty of narrative feedback. There are no number or letter grades. At the end of the grading period, I ask students to complete a self-evaluation, reviewing their work and assigning an appropriate report card grade.
Although most students come remarkably close to the grade I would have provided, some are so conditioned to the value of grades that they overvalue their work and give themselves inaccurate grades.
Surprisingly, my most reluctant learners almost never do this.
They are the most honest, when it comes to self-evaluation, while honors-level students are the ones who may tend to "stretch" the grade. There is something strange about this. Most people who know I allow my students to grad themselves believe that students who have suffered through years of D's and F's are the first to give themselves A's and B's. This is not the case at all, according to my own experience.
So, why are reluctant learners better at self-evaluation.
As I've written on several occasions, a successful Results Only Learning Environment requires patience and perseverance. When students struggle early on with project-based learning and self-evaluation, I sometimes find myself wanting to return to worksheets and grades.
Of course, I don't give in to these urges. As I tell my students, we have to stay the course. It always pays dividends in the end.
I'm seeing these dividends now in a class that not more than a month ago, I was concerned might never adapt to results-only learning. Many students just didn't seem to be improving.
This week, though, it suddenly struck me that things were clicking. One girl, who has been a reluctant participant in our year-long reading project, was quietly devouring a book, unwilling to look up from her rapidly-turning pages. Another young lady, who had expressed dissatisfaction with the class earlier in the year, was eagerly bookmarking and annotating a web article she'd located, making a special effort to come to me and ask how the annotation looked. Two more students were sitting together quietly reading to one another from a novel I'd just distributed and asked them to read by the end of spring break.
I was amazed by the quality of production in the room. Patience with the results-only system had helped reluctant students develop into independent learners. It seemed like a long wait, but it was definitely worth it.
There are many formal and informal ways to provide narrative feedback to students, as well as to get feedback in return. Student feedback drives instruction and project creation, as it helps teachers distinguish gaps in learning.
All feedback, no matter what form, helps with evaluation of learning. This brief series provides examples of amazing tools for your "feedback toolkit."
