Amy Shah
L.S.G. Group (Learning Strategies Group - Vancouver, Canada)
Amy allowed students to choose from three very different forms of assessment, intended to allow for different skills and interests. Then she gave students most of the responsibility for the assessment process.
For the final assignment on Animal Farm, the students (Grade 10) had to choose a project. They could do either a poster showing Animal Farm as a satire of human vices, or Animal Farm as a satire on Communism, or Animal Farm as a satire on dictatorship. They could also choose to make a 3D model, but they had to come up with a suggestion, and they had to use one of the themes of the book. The third option was to write an essay. After the students had finished the projects they had to come up with what the criteria should be for marking. They came up with five elements to assess the models: Originality and creativity, meaningfulness, meeting the requirements, effort and thought involved, overall impression. The students assessed each others' projects on those criteria on a scale from one to five and there were written comments attached to each assessment.
Copyright © PEEL Publications, 2002