Assessment Doesn't Always Go As Planned

As I began reading through my students’ first set of essays yesterday, my sense of excitement about these papers turned into disappointment. For the most part, the papers did not meet the standard (ELA 9-10 RL 2, in case you’re wondering!). 

Knowing that to grade them would be to place failing numbers on them, I opted to forego grading. Instead, I assessed. Is there a difference? All grading should be assessment of learning, but sometimes, and more importantly, we need assessment for learning.

Instead of taking the mighty pen to the papers to destroy students’ efforts, and chance inhibiting their motivation to read and write for the remainder of the year, I reminded myself that I believe in Engelmann’s mantra: “If the student hasn’t learned, the teacher hasn’t taught.”

Oh, I’ve presented. Plenty. I’ve talked about what to include in the essay and how to take notes on the book they’re writing about. I’ve provided a graphic organizer, a color-coded sample essay, and a rubric checklist. For real, I thought I had taught this standard and had been very clear in my expectations for the essay that would measure how well they could perform the standard. But, again, “If the student hasn’t learned, the teacher hasn’t taught.”

Clearly, this was not an issue of unmotivated students turning in poor work. These students thought they had done what was expected. Their papers were multiple pages, hundreds of words. Of summary. They had read their chosen novel. That was evident. They knew the plot and shared details in their papers.

But that was only the evidence for the points they should have made in their essays.

And so, I was faced with a choice: grade the papers, assigning failing grades to those that didn’t meet the mark, and move on the next lesson, or reteach, leaving an empty hole in my gradebook.

Grading, with the push to record one or two or more grades in the gradebook each week, can overshadow the value of assessment if we let it. Don’t.

Use assessments to assess your teaching. Know when to take responsibility for poor student performance. And when you find that students need more instruction to perform at the expected level, provide that instruction before grading the work.

In a Nutshell

It’s the teacher’s responsibility to teach until the students get it. Reteach & reassess. Not all assessments should be grades, even when it might have been the teacher’s intention to grade.