Gathering Evidence of Student Learning
How will you collect evidence of relevant student thinking and learning (i.e., data) that will answer your specific question(s)? First, consider how you know what your students are learning. Does doing well on a test mean they’ve really learned the material? How do you measure and make sense of what they’re really learning? How can you gather evidence of their thinking at earlier stages of their learning process, not just in the final, summative assessments like essays and exams?
Use these questions to guide your selection of your project’s assessment techniques—or how you’ll make student learning visible. See some possibilities in the table to the right. 1 No matter what form you choose, the most important aspect to consider is how well that evidence you gather responds to your research question.
See Making Thinking Visible MTV Gathering Evidence for tips.
Evidence
Rationale
When the students fill out this worksheet in their groups I can see that they were able to read a short story and organize what they thought the main idea was and if they were able to cohesively find 3 details that related back to the main idea.
After they have done this with the support of their groups/ teachers around them, I will give them for homework to read any book at home and provide me with the main idea and 3 details in their notebooks
Because in the classroom one could argue that a teacher is guiding them the answer or that the student is just getting the answers from his or her group members by giving this open ended homework assignment and collecting it I can tell if the student has learned this skill enough to be able to identify the main idea fully on their own. If they were able to do that with minimal guidance from peers, paras, or teachers, it shows me that they can read almost anything within their reading level and understand what it is about and why they know that.
Before the start of the lesson I have the students write down what they think the definition of a main idea is as well as supporting details
By gathering prior knowledge I can asses who really has no idea of this concept vs. who somewhat knows what it is vs. who really understands it. By knowing this I can know who to send the assistant to to provide extra support as well as who to walk up to during the group work