“How much do students really love to learn, to persist,

to passionately attack a problem or a task?

.....to watch some of their prized ideas explode and to start anew?

.....to go beyond being merely dutiful or long-winded?

Let us assess such things.”

Grant Wiggins

ASSESSING GROWTH OF THE HABITS OF MIND: TASKING NOT TESTING

It is not the assessment data in and of itself that is significant. Rather, it is the ability for students to use the feedback to learn about themselves and to make a commitment to further growth.The following are some assessment strategiesintended tofoster student’s metacognitive abilities as they reflect upon themselves and their learning. The range of assessment strategies described below are all focused on measuring growth. We are all at different stages of growth as students develop the ongoing and continuous assessment of progress as they develop their capacities as well as their commitment to getting better at their HoM.

Assessment Strategies / Description / Situation / Examples/Questions
Selected Response / Designing choices that tap into a student’s awareness and feelings about the meaning and value of using particular habits given a problem situation / Following a problem- solving assignment: / On a scale from 1 to 10 rate your ability to stay with the problem when it presented some difficulty for you? Explain your reasoning.
Open-ended questionnaires / Students express their awareness of the meaning and value of one or more of the habits. / Following a very complex problem- solving task. / “As you were working on this particular task, which Habits of Mind did you call upon?” What helped you to persist when you struggled with the task?”
Observing performances during a task. / Documenting observations of students in the process of working on projects and problems to find evidence of how they are or are not using the habits. / Performances should be accompanied by questions that require the student to reflect on their development of one or more HoM. / “In what ways did the use of technology challenge your ability to think flexibly?” “When you were working with the others in your group, what were some of the strategies that you used to stay on task?”
Interviews / Periodically interviewing students about their perspectives on their feelings, understanding, and internalization of the HoM. / Students give voice to their personal meaning and applicability of the habits. They are encouraged to see the habits in places both in and out of school. / For elementary grades: As you recall the HoM we have discussed this year, which ones do you think you used most? Why do you think it’s important to use these HoM?
For secondary grades: Given what you know about yourself as a learner, which HoM might you describe as your strengths and stretches? What are some reasons?”
“What goals are you setting for yourself regarding the HoM as you move on toward college or a career?”
Digital Portfolios / Throughout a student’s school experience, a
portfolio is a tool have a cumulative exhibition of their work over time. / A portfolio can be organized to show growth with the habits. For example work could be selected that are examples of when the student used a particular habit well. / Choose work that shows:
--your capacity to persist when you were struggling toward accomplishing your goal?
-- you thought creatively or that you generated a novel approach to solving a problem or you generated a new and different twist on an idea.
Games / Games give students immediate feedback: When they fail they know why—the game lets them know their mistakes up front. Students can then reflect on how they may need to make modifications in their game play for greater success next time. / Players must apply and monitor the use of such HoMs as, problem solving, creativity, thinking interdependently thinking & communicating with clarity and, as multi-players, thinking interdependently / Students can be alerted to or they can discover which HoM they must employ and monitor. Teachers may want to observe students playing the games and use checklists as observational tools and give feedback when the game play is debriefed.
Checklists / The teacher assigns or students choose a task or problem on which to work interdependently. The teacher gives directions that each student should monitor their own listening and/or interdependent thinking with the group to solve the problem. The students and the teacher agree to observe themselves for these behaviors.
They often will develop a set of “I can” statements such as:
I can
  • work with others to solve a problem
  • Give and receive feedback to help improve our work
/ “Invite two or three students per group to observe and record each group member’s listening behaviors during the task. Afterward, invite each group to reflect on their listening behaviors. The observer then share the data they collected. No doubt there will be dissentions and disagreements among the observers and the group members, which will provide opportunities for group members to listen with understanding and empathy and to communicate clearly. / Checklists are developed through conversations in the classroom. Students are asked, “What would it look like and sound like if you were a good listener? Students generate a list of positively constructed observable behaviors. For example, “establishes eye contact” or “nods head when agreeing.” such as, “builds on the other person’s ideas” or “clarifies when does not understand.”
Journals, logs & Diaries / Students collect specific log entries from time to time, read through them, and share written comments with the teacher and peers if they are so inclined. Provides a way to assess how well they are doing and how their conscious use of the HoM is developing. Initial journal entries can be compared with more recent or final ones to assess their growth over time. They can then respond to the prompt: “I used to think ___ but now I think ____.” / Before, or directly following a task, invite students to make entries in their logs or journals. Short, frequent bursts of writing may be more productive than infrequent, longer assignments. Teachers, too, can join in the writing process by reflecting on their teaching, and/or analyzing students’ learning, / One thing that surprised me today was . . . ?? I felt particularly flexible when I . . . ?? I used my senses to... ?? As I think about how I went about solving the problem, I . . .
?? A question I want to pursue is...
?? When I checked my work I found... ?? Because I listened carefully I learned. .
Rubrics / Rubrics are scoring guides used to evaluate the quality of students' performance of the HoM. They usually contain evaluative criteria for increasing levels of achievement, and for the purpose of using a scoring strategy. / Students and teachers can use rubrics when planning a task to communicate expectations of quality. Involving students in describing the criteria encourages self-evaluation, reflection. Inviting students to describe what they will be doing and saying if they are using the HoM effectively, promotes self-managing, self-monitoring, and self-evaluating as it provides a mental rehearsal prior to performance. / Some student reflections on the use of a rubric:
“I am fascinated with my ability to think about or monitor my thinking as I am learning.”
“ I find I do better on those occasions when I think about my learning strategy as I am learning.”