In this article Ms Krebs asks the question, "Do we learn most of all by our mistakes?"
She uses the examples of her learning to cook, and very vividly describes some of the mistakes she made while learning. Ultimately, Ms Krebs concedes that now, after many mistakes, she is a "pretty good cook". Her assignment is not one of herself, but that of others who enjoy her cooking.
I am a firm believer that students actually do learn from their mistakes. The reason I say this is because I don't believe that the learning process is actually taking place unless they are allowed to exercise creativity and curiousity. So often we discourage our children by punishing them for failure to follow instructions to the letter. My question to Ms Krebs is, are the students assessed on how they arrived to the finished product(as if required to learn a mathematical equation) or only the finish product itself?
Oh, Cynthia,
ReplyDeleteYou have asked the million dollar question! You could ask a dozen teachers and hear a dozen different answers to that question. I know because I experience it almost daily at the lunch table. This is a HOT topic now!
I believe in assessment for learning. Students should be assessed only on whether they learn the material--not on how quickly or with how much enthusiasm or homework they do or on how organized they are in getting their assignments turned in. It really doesn't matter what mistakes they make along the way or even if they don't make mistakes. I think we should grade "yes" or "not yet."
Standards based assessment is a growing controversy in high school education now, but for younger students (like mine), we can more easily do it with meaning and relevance.
Here is a great blog to check out for how Shawn Cornally is implementing SBAR (Standards Based Assessment and Reporting) in advanced high school science and math courses.
http://shawncornally.com/wordpress/
Table of Contents of some of this posts: http://shawncornally.com/wordpress/?page_id=114
Thanks for asking! Good question to grapple with!
Denise
P.S. I also answered this question on my blog post, but I repeated it above! :)