Quick Thought – More Than A, B, C, or D

I never really thought about this until I had a brief conversation with two parents this afternoon. They were touring the school, thinking about sending their child here next year, and they stopped by my room. My students were working on their summative assessment for our Road to the Revolution unit. It is an argumentative one pager answering the question, “Why did loyal colonists begin fighting against their own government?”

I mentioned that the one pager was their test for the unit, and one of the parents looked a little surprised. So I followed up with, “I am not a traditional teacher. To me, there is more to learning than circling A, B, or C. Learning should feel different. It should be ongoing. We always talk about wanting lifelong learners, and assessments like this actually allow for that. The best part is the conversations I get to have with kids while they work. They ask how to word things, how one idea connects to another, and why certain events mattered. Those moments are meaningful. That is real learning.”

She paused, thought about it, and said she agreed. It honestly felt like I opened her mind to something she had not considered before.

The funny part is that I had not really thought about it that way until the words came out of my mouth.

These one pagers, and any nontraditional assessment we have done this year whether the Netflix summaries, hexagonal webs, or annotated maps, naturally create conversations and questions. Kids stop, think, ask, revise, and explain. I love that. When I gave a traditional test at the start of the year, none of that happened.

I think we often view a summative assessment as the finish line. Here is what you should know, show it, and then we move on. But what if the assessment pushed back on that idea? What if it became part of the learning instead of the end of it?