This episode is all about hacking assessments. If you have been thinking about changing assessment but don’t know how to do it, I hope in this episode, you can get some practical actions to take. If you have never thought about changing it, this episode will give you a different insight. Today we are excited to have Starr Sackstein to share with her amazing hacks for transforming this paradigm.
Starr Sackstein has been an educator since 2001 and left her role as the director of humanities in the West Hempstead Union Free School District to become a full-time consultant with the Core Collaborative. Starr was named an ASCD “Emerging Leader” class of 2016 and gave a TEDx Talk called “A Recovering Perfectionist’s Journey to Give Up Grades.”
She has authored many books for teachers. For example , Teaching Students to Self-Assess, Hacking Assessment: 10 Ways to Go Gradeless in a Traditional Grades School, Peer Feedback in the Classroom and the list goes on. Starr has traveled the world sharing ideas about assessment reform in Dubai and South Korea and is hoping to continue changing the system for kids everywhere.
Show Notes with Selected Links
- [01:58] What triggered Starr to take actions instead of just letting it be.
- [5:44] How did Starr convey the change with her students, parents and school administrators ?
- [12:11] Strategies for constructing a written feedback that is helpful for students.
- [16:20] Tips to give feedback in an effective fashion.
- [20:21] An overview of the lessen plan for teaching reflection.
- [25:45] Why does Starr think we should empower students to evaluate themselves?
- [28:12] What Starr observed the changes in her students before and after gradeless assessment. The moment she realized the hacks were working.
- [30:46] Any books come to your mind that influenced your thinking a lot in the past few years.
- Fair Isn’t Always Equal: Assessing & Grading in the Differentiated Classroom by Rick Wormeli
- Grading for Equity: What It Is, Why It Matters, and How It Can Transform Schools and Classrooms by Joe Feldman
- Assessment 3.0: Throw Out Your Grade Book and Inspire Learning by Mark D. Barnes
- Leading Impact Teams: Building a Culture of Efficacy by Paul J. Bloomberg and Barb Pitchford
- [32:28] Starr’s core value in education.
- [33:52] Parting thoughts
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- Have you been frustrated with the struggles to give meaningful feedback?
- How confident are you with your understanding of every student’s learning progress?
What can you do tomorrow
- Guide your students with reflections after an assessment which can help you understand if the assessment is helpful. Few steps to take:
- Ask students what they think the assessment is asking them to do?
- Ask students what steps they took to complete it? How they overcame the struggles?
- Students find the evidence to support the standards they achieved.
- Students grade themselves by evidence
- Reflect what they would do differently next time.