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Ways of Teaching Thinking
Thinking through Assessment
Ways of Thinking Contents

Action Guide for Thinking through Assessment

  • Be up front with students. Explain the types of thinking performances you expect from your students.

  • Establish criteria and standards of good thinking as a group with your students. Establishing criteria with students helps communicate what "counts" as a good thinking.

  • Set standards that drive and encourage the thinking performances you want. The assessments you use should cue students to reflect on specific aspects of their thinking processes.

  • Provide students with a range of examples and models of thinking-centered assessments and explain how they gauge thinking (e.g. rubrics, checklists, portfolios, etc.) As a group, determine which types of assessments best align with the type project or lessons at hand.

  • Teach students how to use the assessments as thinking and learning tools. Involve students in the design and construction of the assessments they will use to evaluate their performances.

  • Use thinking-centered assessment as an on-going form of evaluation throughout the course of the project. Too often, evaluation comes at the end of a project or unit. Provide students with frequent and informative feedback on their thinking performances.

  • Vary the source of feedback and forms of interaction students experience when using thinking-centered assessments. Students can learn a lot from other students, from other teachers and experts, and from themselves.

  • Teach and model positive protocol for giving and receiving feedback. Assessing another students’ work is serious business. Students will need models for how to respectfully and substantively respond and react to another students work.

 

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© Al Andrade, Harvard Project Zero, 1999
The Thinking Classroom is based on the collective research
and ideas of the Cognitive Skills Group, Harvard Project Zero, 1999

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