Tools for Assessing, Measuring, Reflecting & Taking Stock
In This Class…
This tool is used at the end of class to get students’ perceptions of the kinds of thinking and activity they were doing that class period as well as a short reflection on what they and what teachers could do to help their learning. It is recommended teachers fill out the form themselves before looking at student responses.
Student Survey
We have used this instrument to see if students perceive a difference between at cultures of thinking classroom and a more traditional one. In fact they do. Students tend to perceive CoT classrooms as more focused on learning more community minded, and more challenging.
Thinking Map Assessment
To measure students’ meta-strategic knowledge, that is, their awareness of the strategies for thinking they have at their disposal, we have used the thinking map assessment. You can find information on the full study under: Publication > Articles. We have also used the instrument with teachers to help uncover their own awareness of thinking.
Assessment Ladders
These are examples of a teacher created “assessment ladder” that seeks to identify what progress and markers might look like as a student develops in a particular disposition. The two examples here are the disposition to wonder and question and the disposition to reason with evidence. Note, these ladders are about dispositional development, that is the tendency of students to engage in these behaviors, rather than simply the skill.
Assessing a Culture of Thinking
When we use the word assessment, we use it to mean “to understand” and not “to evaluate.” When we assess a culture of thinking at our school we are trying to capture our growth and progress and understand where we are at in our journey. This document asks a series of reflective questions (to be backed up with evidence) related to each of the 8 cultural forces.
MYST: Me-You-Space-Time
We developed this reflective tool early on in the Visible Thinking project. The idea is that in assessing the presence of visible thinking we should attend to 4 areas: 1) How am I, as a teacher, making my own thinking visible through my modeling? 2) How am I support you, the student, to make your thinking visible? 3) How is thinking being made visible in the physical environment? and 4) How am I using our time to focus on thinking?
Assessment Continua
We’ve taken each of the 8 thinking moves from the understanding map and designed a continua in which we identify anchor points at each end of the continua so that we know what weak and strong thinking look like in this area. As you look at student work from a thinking routine, these continua can help you to get better at assessing and thus supporting thinking. We think this is best used for formative assessment and to help students to understand what good thinking looks like than for scoring.
Guidelines for Assessing Thinking
Assessing thinking is a challenge because we do not think in the abstract, we always think with content. Therefore, it can be a challenge to know if are witnessing strengths or weaknesses in relation to the thinking or in relation to the content knowledge. Furthermore, thinking skills are uneven across disciplines. These general guidelines may be helpful in assessing thinking in context.
Thinking Profiles
The Thinking Profile is a student self-assessment tool in which they examine their dispositional behavior with respect to the 8 thinking moves from the understanding map. The goal is to have student reflect on their development as thinkers and learners. Teachers can also use the tool to assess their students. Note, like most self-assessment tools they are not good for comparing people and are best used for personal reflection and goal setting.
