![]() Sometimes I reflect by sketching out ideas on a sketchnote. I’m reflecting all the time during the process. I started thinking about my own projects. Also, they couldn’t really do anything with their reflections. First, it was too long and skewed heavily into open-ended writing. Most students hated it for a few reasons. Students would do a long, multi-paragraph reflection as a way to process what they learned. When I first began implementing project-based learning with students, I made the mistake of incorporating student reflection at the end of the project but never really integrating it into the daily lessons. They’re able to determine what they know, what they don’t know, and what steps they need to take next. When students engage in meaningful self-assessment, they improve in their metacognition. The authors of How Learning Worksdescribe metacognition as a cycle. It will help them navigate the complexities of a changing world and it will help them as they engage in creative work. Metacognition is vital for helping students become self-directed learners (both self-managers and self-starters). If we want students to develop into critical thinking, lifelong learners, we need them to develop metacognitive skills. Metacognition is a vital soft skill for students. This can help students develop metacognition. However, it’s also important that students own this process individually through self-assessment. With quality peer feedback, students can get an extra pair of eyes to figure out what they need to do next. Even with student conferencing, teachers can only offer so much immediate feedback. Another part is simply the time limits that teachers have. Peers are often able to share their thoughts in a more relatable way than teachers. Part of this is the nature of peer interactions. I believe that peer feedback is critical for students. Self-Assessment Is Critical for Metacognition It’s where students ask, “What did I learn?” and “What do I still need to learn?” Whether it’s a skill, a set of background knowledge, or a challenging concept, reflection is a vital part of this learning process. The reflection is often where the real learning occurs. It’s no surprise that PBL works includes critique and revision as well as self-reflection in their Gold Standard PBL model. This student-centered approach to assessment leads includes ongoing self-reflection. Projects provide an authentic context for students to own the assessment process. ![]() Here, they are judging the quality of their product while also reflecting on the process and determining their mastery of the standards. The assessment should be happening all over the place. I shifted toward a view of assessment as a verb and not a noun.Īssessment is an opportunity for students to see their own progress, set goals for the future, and determine next steps. So, I scrapped the weekly quiz and instead used shorter, ongoing, self-reflections. This was a wake-up call for me to rethink the role of assessment in PBL. Sure, I let students know their grades but I never really saw the ongoing cycle of learning and assessment in a meaningful way. But I also viewed assessment as something I needed in order to plan better lessons. I didn’t trust that students could engage in self-assessment and peer assessment. Instead, they can engage in self-assessment, peer assessment, and teacher-directed assessment. Students don’t need to take a weekly quiz. However, in a PBL unit, you don’t need to stop the project to take an assessment. The truth is I had assumed that assessments were things you “give” and “take” not an action that you do. My students weren’t engaged in any kind of self-reflection. But these quizzes were for me and not for the students. I had been using a short 15-minute multiple choice test every Friday as a way to gather data to ensure that students were still learning the content during their projects. I think I told him something vague about the need to assess the learning and make sure that the project he was working on led to mastery of the standards. I was in my second year of doing project-based learning when a student sighed and asked, “Why do we need to stop?”
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