This past month a wonderful thing happened. Test re-dos finally became an accepted, for all the students in my classes. At first, test re-dos were only done by a few students and try as I might most of the students did not take advantage of this great learning opportunity( More on that later). The problem as I ended up seeing it was that having the students do the re-do on their own time made it inconvenient for them to the point that they would rather not do this and just get the bad grade and that was it. The change that I made was to incorporate the re-dos for all students during class time. That served us well because I could encourage everybody to revise their test. I could also provide feedback and answer questions, a task that becomes more difficult when students are doing re-dos on their own time.
I asked students how they liked doing the re-dos as part of class. Every single student said that they thought it was great. Many students were visibly relieved that they had this opportunity to revise and thus raise their grade. Many answered, unsolicited, that they felt like they had really learned the material this way as opposed to the normal way in which the teacher gives the test back, goes over it, then moves on.
So this brings me to the central question of:
"When we grade, what are we specifically looking for? Is it a skill or technique, or is it compliance?"In traditional assessment structures, students are being graded by how well their efforts fit into a predetermined framework and artificially crammed into someone else's time frame. This does not afford a student much in terms of creativity, interests or time management if they are busy. I see this as a major roadblock to the goal of creating life long learners who enjoy school and learn for the learning sake.
In teaching a young child to eat, you are forced with a decision: Do you force the child to sit and only eat when seated or do you endure some chicken nuggets ground into the carpet and let your child eat while walking around? In the first choice you are creating a compliance behavior where you are putting following the rules over the healthy choice of keeping your child well fed. In the second choice you are compromising, but putting the more important factor (healthy eating) over just following the rules. The parallel is that by putting so much emphasis on a test taken during one class period or homework done during one night, is that you are assigning grades based more on following rules than on knowledge.
What does enduring understanding look like?
When students know that grades are the result of what they have learned not merely what they know at a given time, there is the necessary buy in to the re-do or revision model of assessment. There is then the intrinsic motivation to succeed and the willingness to demonstrate understanding. The case in point is the idea that even after a quarter or semester is over in school, students can still revise assessments to show increased understandings.
How do you make this work?
The obvious question is how does this work in today's classroom? My first recommendation is to create opportunities within the normal classroom routines for students to revise or retake their assessments/ assignments. This makes it less onerous on them and encourages their participation. It is unrealistic to expect all students to have the maturity to undertake these assignments on their own with no oversight. Secondly, enlist some help from technology. Online assessment tools can save lots of time and headaches in creating and grading multiple versions of assessments. Finally, remember that your students are human beings who desire good grades and acceptance from their teachers and peers. Grades are a large part of the school experience so why not offer as many opportunities for students to find success on assessments in your class?
Challenging traditions
The transition to re-do's on assessments is staggering. I admit I was against it for a long time. But now that I have seen the gratitude in students faces and hear them excited about tests (yes I said that) I know that this is here to stay in my classroom. Do you feel like students should be allowed to re-do their assignments or test? If you don't please share why not, if you do allow re-do's how do you integrate them into your classroom routine?