Back 2 School Linky - Week 2 Assessment

I'm so excited to link up again this week with Miss. V's Busy Bees and Mrs. D's Corner for the Back 2 School Linky - Week 2. This week's topic is ASSESSMENT!

I don't know about you but I have a serious love-hate relationship with assessments. It could have a little something to do with the fact that I teach Kindergarten and assessments take forever. Like at least the first month of school. Seriously. However, I do believe the benefits of assessment out way the downfalls.

There are so many ways that we as teachers assess our students. From district assessments to informal observations the list can go on and on. But what about self assessment?

If you think about your experience in college I'm sure you were always given a rubric of how you would be graded on an assignment. It is very important that we provide these rubrics for all students no matter the age.

I've always provided my students with a rubric of what I expected from them in a verbal conversation. I'd say about 50 percent of my students actually complied and produce the expected level of work. Until my ridiculously talented friend Amy over at Learning Lesson's with Mrs. Labrasciano showed me an even better way to provide these rubrics for each lesson!

Each and every lesson. What?!? Yes it's true. Okay here's the scoop!

Basically our report card for students is broken into Above Level-On Level-Below Level with separate ratings of Excellent-Satisfactory-Needs Improvement-Unsatisfactory. Amy had a poster in her room with 4 sections labeled E,S,N and U. Then before students began on any assignment she would fill in the rubric poster with expectations for earning each grade. That's not even the best part...she didn't come up with the grading by herself! She coached her students to be able to give their own grading system!!

Amazing. Simply Amazing.

So I modified her idea for kindergarten and came up with a color coded system that also has non-verbal cues! Here's what the poster looks like:

You can click the picture to grab your freebie :)

Let's say you just gave your class a mini lesson on using transition words in their writing piece. Before they begin writing you could fill out this chart with the following:

This not only gives your students exactly what your looking for but those lazy "non-overachiever" students the push they need to show off their amazing capabilities. I also allow my students to write their self assessment color on their work!

If you like this idea you can find your free copy here! Once you download it all you need to do is print and laminate. I use an expo marker to fill it in and then a Magic Eraser to start over. 

See you next week for my favorite....Classroom DECORATION! Yay!!