9. Let them Create their Assessment

We are living through an “Age of Assessment.”  High-stakes testing is a common term in education and fed up parents have even started an opt-out movement.  Moving from a high school teacher position to a middle school, I saw this over-testing culture firsthand.  I counted 19 mandatory local and state tests that 8th graders had to take throughout the school year.  This total didn’t include tests given in their classes!

Using sites like Quizlet, Kahoot!, Quizizz, and Google Forms, students can create their own assessments rather than always taking them.  As any teacher will tell you, making good questions requires careful thought and reflection on the topic.

Students can reinforce their knowledge of a topic by creating their own questions.

Also, students are typically more engaged in an activity when they know that their product will be seen by a larger audience rather than just the teacher. Let’s say students are doing a jigsaw activity in which they become an expert on one of a list of topics and then teach the class.  They can share a link to an assessment they created to check their peers understanding of their topic. It could be a simple 5-10 question quiz.  Most assessment tools also allow feedback for incorrect and correct answers so the students can explain the correct answers to their peers for incorrect responses.  If you continue this practice throughout the year, students can refine their skills in generating quality questions and you can then add them to summative assessments along with your own questions of course.

Students will feel very empowered and accountable for their knowledge and understanding of a topic when the questions that they generated are included on a test.  Also, you will gain insight into what the students think is important or noteworthy information based on the content of their questions.

Try this out in your classroom.  Start small by having students generate a short 3 question quiz using Google Forms.  Disseminate the quizzes to your students and see how they do.

Let me know how this goes by adding a comment below.

 

 

 

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