Teaching Pupils Self Assessment

Working on ways to teach my pupils how to take responsibility for their learning is an aspect of my role as a teacher that l intend to devout more time to. During the course of this training, I have worked on learning how to listen to the voices of my pupils in order to help them progress. In my case, this has been for them to progress in acquiring mathematical knowledge. I have worked with them on how to set goals which they can and do achieve, in the form of self assessment during plenary sessions. I have used a myriad of feedback pages in order to get them to learn how to think critically and reflect on their progress and on their experiences as learners. Having assessed my pupils last week, I plan to take my techniques of feedback one step further. In the next few weeks and in my first appointment as a Mathematics teacher, I will ask my pupils to write reflection journals. This reflection journal will be plain notebooks where each pupil writes down his or her thoughts. The pupils will be given a short period of time to sit quietly in class once a week and reflect on their learning during the previous week. When I say, reflect, I mean to think about what s/he did in class and how s/he feels about this. The students might relate to their behaviour and how it affected their learning or they might reflect on a grade/level they got and why it was high or low. Their reflection must be a look inward at themselves and how they functioned in any aspect of the learning process. I will give the students certain prompts to get them going. Example of what they might be asked to write about could be; one positive thing, one negative thing, one interesting thing and one thing s/he had learned. By encouraging the pupils to relate to four specific issues I feel I will be enabling them to focus better. Other issues I plan to focus on are how their behaviour affected their learning and how the study skills they used to prepare for an exam helped them. For example, "How did you study for the exam and was this useful? Did studying this way help you know the material?? " For the first few lessons, I hope to structure the once a week reflection entries by using such guided questions as: "Think back over the week and write down what you most strongly remember doing in class. How did this make you feel? Did you like it, or not? Why? "Another guided question might be: "What did you learn this week and how can you apply what you learned in class to other areas of your life, either in school or at home?" Each week at the end of the week, the students will be asked to write in their reflection journals. I hope that by reflecting each week on different aspects of the lessons, their behaviour, their successes or failures they will grow from within as critical thinkers and begin to understand the role they should play in the classroom. The experience of writing about how they feel how they have progressed or not, will permit them to learn to assess themselves and make changes where they feel they are needed. The idea behind learning to self assess oneself is to be able to understand where changes need to be made (in themselves) in order to continue learning and progressing. It is important to note here that I will not grade their writing. I will not check spelling, grammar or word order. I will simply comment with a few words such as "nice thoughts", "that`s interesting." etc... I will however; tell my pupils that writing something in the reflection journal is a class requirement. Hopefully, the few rebels in the beginning will at some point begin to write and enjoy the activity!! These questions are meant to stimulate the pupils` minds and have they become more aware of the part they play in the learning process. I want my pupils to become pro-active learners who engage in the learning the subject at hand and don`t expect to be spoon - fed. I am quite aware that in the short span I have with my pupils I am not able to practise this with them at length. I can only hope to instil in them the understanding of the part they play and to provide them with the tools they need in order to keep on learning. Reflection journals are a tool which can be used by both pupils and teachers. Reflecting on what we have learned, how we have learned it and how we can use it to progress and learn in the future is crucial to healthy development in all learners. I believe that teachers should use this process too. I use reflection/evaluation to figure out how l feel about a certain lesson which went well and analyze why or to analyze the way l handled a specific problem in class. Learning is change. Change is not easy for anyone. Teaching our pupils to become critical thinkers, to learn from their own experiences will be one step toward their emancipation. I hope that when my pupils leave school I will have given them a few tools to take with them and use for life in addition to the little bit of Mathematics I have taught them. I also hope that I too will have become a better teacher and grown with them.