Playful Assessment of Students

In America, the Albemarle County School District is seen to have different ways of functioning when compared to other schools. This middle school, which is in operation for 10 years, included of innovation and the arts as a part of it but now it has reopened  with a new staff and a fresh design in order to realign with its mission of creating new learning experiences which are constructed around problems, projects and personal interests.

As a part of this new model, learning seems similar to playing. The students at Community Middle usually have a 30-minute advisory period with classmates in their grade before the studies session post which they start their work with students who share similar interests or are learning at their level. The Community Middle aims at being a model for the future of learning by providing learning experiences that are designed particularly so that students may learn skills like problem solving and critical thinking but the real challenge in this is to find a reliable method to measure those skills. However the teachers and administrators at the school want to have an effective system to assess student capacity and capability with this new model. The school has been charged with identifying and piloting teaching and learning methods that other schools in Albemarle should adopt and the Community Middle is now a test site for schools nationwide. It brings on a new school-wide project every two weeks, on which all 45 students must work atleast two hours per day. In this, students had a series of elaborate puzzles, riddles and other activities for players to solve so that either they complete it or just escape. If they choose to escape then the school formed three groups of these students where every student had a different role. With this the students definitely not only learn about themselves but also know how to implement their learnings to different experiences and environments both inside and outside the classroom. High-tech and low-tech tools have been involved to enhance projects that encourage designing, building and tinkering. Passman mentioned “Our goal with all of our projects is to have some authentic culmination, [not a] contrived due date. It's the very real world in terms of when something needs to be finished.”  Playful assessment is to capture growth in high-priority skills, like reasoning, creativity and collaboration, without the knowledge of the students and this approach is less disruptive to the learning process and less fearful for students also. Teachers are provided with a set of color-coded slips with icons that correspond to each of the maker elements and they can write a note down and hand it to the student that can be used later to reflect. However the assessment tools are not perfect so the Community Middle give its view to MIT about their effectiveness and also propose some changes for betterment but the tools have surely made an important baseline from which the school’s assessment practices can grow and evolve. They have helped teachers and school to pay attention to the importance of skills that are excluded from the ones tested by standardized assessments.

By: Anuja Arora

Content: https://www.edsurge.com/news/2018-12-11-how-playful-assessment-unseated-standardized-tests-at-one-school