What is the Value of Group Assessment?
Assessment is the primary tool for a teacher to gauge effective planning and instruction, all teachers know this. Teachers use assessments to assign grades, but they also establish areas of instructional concern and weakness. An effective assessment menu would therefore assess students in areas of strength. Some students process data well, therefore a multiple choice, definition, or identification assessment would effectively measure achievement and instruction.
In a previous article, Alternative Assessments: Effective Instructional Tools, various methods of individual assessment were discussed. The tools described in that article were centered on assessing and providing improved methodologies in note taking and homework completion for the student. Another area of assessment is in helping students model successful assessment tools from other students. A group assessment can be developed which helps students utilize their social skills to develop effective responses to focused prompts.
Developing Who/ What/ When/ Where/Why Assessments
In this assessment, a complex data set is listed by the teacher, who divides the class into five groups. The example here is the Congress of Vienna, which established an international system following the defeat of Napoleon. The first group would get a “Who” list, including Napoleon and all of the other people involved in the Congress. This would include Prince Metternich of Austria, von Humbolt from Prussia and Tallyrand from France.
The second group would develop the “What”, the goals each country was trying to establish. There were goals agreed on by all nations, such as the restoration of the absolute monarchy in continental Europe (only Britain abstained on this issue). There were also regional issues, Austria faced a long border with the Ottoman Empire and sought protection. On the other hand, Russia wanted a border agree ment with Austria.
The third group would develop “When”, a timetable. Waterloo actually happened during (not before or after) the Congress. The “Where” group would establish why the Congress was held in Vienna, and the “Why” group would categorize important reasons for the Congress to be called, and the important results.
The Closure Activity
The groups would then separate and reassemble, each with one member of the first teams. In other words, instead of having 5 “What” members, each new team would have one “Who’, one “What” and so on. They would then pool information and come to a comprehensive view of the reasons for and the results of the Congress of Vienna. Some information would be correct/ incorrect, such as “Prince Metternich was from Austria”. Other conclusions would be the result of discussion and would probably be different for each team.
Grading would be done on correct data, defense and support of conclusions, and final delivery of the group’s conclusions. The model presented here can be used to develop lesson plans in History or English. And it should use several levels of assessment, from facts such as dates and names (in English titles, authors, forms of literature, parts of speech) through levels of processing and synthesis.
A variety of assessment tools can address a broad range of student strengths, and use strengths to effectively analyze student achievement.
Donald Marchand - Currently, I am a teacher. I teach Social Studues at a small school in southern Maryland. But I think I've been a lot more in my life. ...
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