The Benefits of Peer and Self-Assessment

The promotion of students' literacy in assessment of themselves and their peers is crucial in their development.  An important aspect of assessment is feedback.  It is highly important to effectively teach students the importance of feedback and how to give it responsibly.  Feedback is constructive in the manner that is enhances the weaknesses of students and emphasizes the students' strengths.  Students can pose questions or comments when assessing his or her peer's work, including "I was wondering....", "I enjoyed it when..." and "Did you consider...".  When students can effectively assess their peers, they are building on their own assessment literacy (including their ability to self assess).

          retrieved from: http://www.forbes.com/forbes/welcome/

Self-interconnected parts are the deconstructed factors of Self-Assessment. These include evaluation (the act of assessing one's work), reflection (connecting knowledge learned to objectives and criteria), metacognition (thinking about how the self learns best; therefore, understanding your own work methods) and goal setting (determining the means for success).  Students that develop the ability to self-assess are not determining their own grade, but are however, more specifically looking at their quality of work and how he or she may improve.  Improving a student's ability to assess may lead to their overall achievement of better grades within the classroom; however, they are not direct determinants of their grades.  It can be looked at as assessment for learning.

retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pScUO_x0UU

Within a classroom in elementary school, I can recall having the responsibility of marking my partner's test, but nothing short of a multiple choice question.  It almost seemed that the teacher did not trust me to appropriately correct another student's work.  As a future teacher, I would assign a task to students, but however not ask anyone to put their names on the assignment.  I would ask the students to assess their peers after the task has been completed and I have randomly handed them out again.  This would promote the idea of assessment and would encourage the students to understand the criteria for success and correlate it with their own work. 

retrieved from: https://doodsrataceds113.wordpress.com/notes/self-assessment-definition-pros-and-cons/

Overall, self-assessment and peer evaluation are optimal to introduce within a classroom, no matter the age group of the students.  

References

Introduction to Evaluation. (n.d.). Retrieved November 3, 2015, from    http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/interval.php 

Drake, S., Reid, J. & Kolohon, W. (2014). Toward a new story of curriculum, instruction and assessment.  In Interweaving curriculum and classroom assessment: Engaging the 21st century learner (pp. 35-37).  Don Mills, Ontario: Oxford University Press.

Seven keys to effective feedback (n.d.). Retrieved November 3, 2015, from http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/sept12/vol70/num01/Seven-Keys-to-Effective-Feedback.aspx