Pro-D Day: Assessment Workshop

 

I attended a workshop on assessing students’ thinking and processes rather than just their academic abilities. The session was very hands on and looked deep at strategies like using rubrics, think-alouds, and concept mapping to evaluate how students approach problems and make decisions. We explored frameworks including Bloom’s Taxonomy and practiced creating open-ended questions that encourage students to explain their reasoning. I benefited greatly from a hands-on activity where we assessed sample student works. This helped put the ideas into practice and improve my process  immediately, because I was able to stop and ask questions as needed from the presenters.

What stood out most to me was how small changes, like asking “How did you come to this conclusion?” instead of “What is the answer?” can have significant impacts on how the students react and in encouraging critical thinking. I was surprised by how much I hadn’t considered the value of observing and supporting students as they think through challenges. Moving forward, I want to work on creating my own rubrics to evaluate thinking skills and experiment with giving more meaningful feedback that helps students grow as thinkers. This workshop left helped transform how I viewed "good academic outcomes" for students, and it inspired to make my assessments more purposeful and student-centred.

One particular point that I related to strongly was a side point discussed in the workshop about how students retain information. The presenter's shared a chart showing how students retain different modes of content. It was integrated into the workshop to show that if we use different instructional modes, it will make the assessments more suitable and tailored for each student. I always knew that discussions and engagement was crucial to learning, but this was the first time I saw it structured and could see the importance of each.

 

https://remixculture.les.middcreate.net/blog/blooms-taxonomy-remixed/