How Does Self Assessment Impact Student Achievement in a Secondary Mathematics Classroom?

Seminar Title

How Does Self Assessment Impact Student Achievement in a Secondary Mathematics Classroom?

Self Assessment

9th Grade

High School

Mathematics

All Disciplines

Do you struggle with assessing how well your students know the material for the upcoming test? Do your students believe their understanding level is either way higher or way lower than it actually is? For the past few years of teaching, I have found it difficult to develop strategies for students to accurately self assess their work and make it meaningful. When I attempted self assessment journals, exit tickets, 0-5 rating of understanding, students would give thoughtless answers and effort was very low. It was unproductive, unhelpful, and eventually I stopped allowing students time for self assessment because it didn’t provide substantial and meaningful evidence. I chose to focus on self assessment in my research because I desired meaningful, purposeful, and data-filled self assessment strategies for the classroom and sought to understand it’s effect on student achievement. I wanted to provide students the opportunity to track their learning daily, instead of right before the test. This allowed students to continually assess and reflect on their understanding of the material so they would have an accurate mentality of their learning before each learning target test. Self assessment strategies and target tracking in the classroom is for all grade levels and subjects. Teaching students how to assess their level of understanding and develop strategies to work toward proficiency is an important skill to teach for all classrooms. I look forward to exploring these topics with you in our time together.

The question guiding my research is as follows: How Does Self Assessment Impact Student Achievement in a Secondary Mathematics Classroom? The literature I explored suggested that self awareness and self-assessment of one’s own education is crucial to academic success. The topics of literature related to self assessment I chose to focus on were 1) Goal Setting (how will we assess skills and work toward filling in gaps of understanding?) 2) Structure (how will self assessment become a routine in the classroom?) and 3) Application (how will we use what we’ve learning to impact future learning?). To record how self-assessment affected student achievement in the classroom, three methods were used; 1) student target tracker to continually assess understanding of notes, homework, and activities 2) student survey given three times to record perception of target tracking and assessment of learning and 3) weekly teacher reflections of student achievement and student perception of self assessment and target tracking. Through data collection I have learned how to structure self assessment through routine and make it student-centered and student-owned. Data collection showed that through continuous target tracking, students have deeper understandings of the learning target, specific strengths and weaknesses, and achieve at higher rates compared to classes where no self assessment strategies were employed. My teaching style has significantly changed to include more daily formative assessments and reflections before end of unit assessments. This has proved to be helpful to guide my teaching and the student’s learning and study processes. As a result of my research and interest in self assessment and target tracking, I will continue to include daily self assessment in my classroom to allow students to see their progress and pinpoint strengths and weaknesses before learning target assessments take place.