Traditionally, the teacher was responsible for marking and assessing student work including homework. Now with alternative assessment learning and teaching methods, teachers are looking for more ways to give students more learning independence.
One way to introduce this is to give checklists and rubrics before a mini project, presentation or performance task. You can even generate your rubrics using this site. Give the students the criteria beforehand so that they can hopefully produce good work and you are covered by giving the criteria to students in advance.
Once the students know how they are going to get a grade, you can encourage self-checking and peer assessment. In this respect, the teacher becomes a facilitator, going around the class, explaining terminology and clarifying unclear points, but for the most part, the students are on their own.
I also include a third column for me to give them a grade which is always open to discussion once the students finalize their own grades. The checking goes so much quicker since I know the criteria. I do however, invest in writing something special about their work as an end comment.
It is hard for students to get used to such a system especially if other teachers do not use it. Initially, my students complained and fussed. Only when a student simply cannot give himself a grade and has convinced me of so, then I take the work and we end up finalizing a grade privately in a tutorial.
One way to check homework is through the use of answer sheets. For this, students receive a xeroxed page. In order to save paper, I get them to work in pairs, sometimes in threes and I keep the pages in a file for the next year’s class. After they check, students give themselves a grade. I ask them to relate to the following questions after they have finished.
What parts were hard about the homework? What parts were easy (easier) for you to do?
Through using a combination of these methods, I end up taking less work home. There are also plenty of teaching opportunities to use along the way. I stop, explain, model using a student’s work (of course I ask for permission) and inevitably, the students feel that they learned something.
Alternative assessment is one way to open the grading process and encourage students to take more responsibility for their own learning. Join the discussion. Tell us how you check students’ work.
