Redo? Start New? Assessing Clothing Plans

This weekend and last weekend, I was up to my ears in marking. Despite the fact that evaluating student work is a key component of a teacher's job, and assessment informs pedagogical "next steps", marking is not something I look forward to doing. It can be enjoyable - I admitted it here and here in past blog posts - but at this time, with 8 classes and approximately 170 projects to examine and evaluate, it didn't feel like a joyful task. There are several other things I'd rather do, as I confessed on Twitter.

What I should be doing today=marking & framing research Qs. What I have been doing today=playing Webkinz. ☺️

— Diana Maliszewski (@MzMollyTL) April 8, 2017

My family must think it's the worst thing in the world from the way I gripe and complain about it. I listed some of the reasons for my ambivalent feelings about assessment in this blog post from 2013 - I'd add to those points the pressure placing a grade on a project produces in parents and students, and how this sometimes diminishes the pleasure of creation. However, marks can be motivational.

Communicating progress (and that includes sharing marks) is an important part of being transparent in our practices. It shouldn't be a mystery how to do well in class. Last week, I had every Grade 1-5 student that I saw complete a little paper form to place in their agendas. It was a Progress Update note about our projects. It provided the mark earned at that time for the sketches and plan sheets that were due March 31, listed a new due date for any interested students (regardless of the mark they received) to resubmit work, and a checklist to indicate whether they planned to construct the clothing mostly at school, at home, or an equal combination of both. This note caused a flurry in many households. Several parents came to see me to ask about how this mark was calculated (using points gleaned from the success criteria the students co-constructed with me), why they hadn't seen their children sketching at home (because I provided instructional time during class for it to be completed - I'm not a huge fan of homework), and how their children could improve (by following the feedback provided to the students with their work that was handed back to them). I admired how several parents assisted their children at home and/or stayed after school on Friday with their sons/daughters to help them make some final additions to their work.

I tried hard to leave it up to the students to decide if they wanted to re-submit their work. Most showed reasonable judgement but there were a few that I had to "strongly encourage" to take a second look at what they had turned in and try a little harder to include the required elements or provide a bit more detail.

Then there are students on the other end of the continuum, who created fantastic plans but still wanted to return them for re-assessment. Some students were concerned, as they are now on the building stage, that they'd have to resubmit their plans because they had made changes to their clothes. I explained that sometimes plans had to alter because of a lack of materials, or a better method, and that as long as they weren't completely scrapping everything they had considered before, "going back to the drawing board" wasn't necessary.

I should have taken my own advice about assessment from summer school - making the sketches from all the classes due the same day was easier for me to remember (and technically, it was the students that chose all their due dates for this project, which we listed in a letter explaining the project home to parents) BUT if I only had one or two classes to mark at a time, I would not have felt so overwhelmed by the mountain of marking. In fact, even as I bemoaned the big pile, I took a couple of photos of some of the sketches. These three below, for example, were created by Grade 1 students.

I don't regret undertaking this project, despite the mess, the extra expenses (I keep running to Michael's to purchase gems and fabric spray paint), and the marking. Our superintendent came to visit last week and she was pleased by the many facets this investigation involves: ecological literacy (e.g. reusing clothes, purchasing from Value Village), equity (e.g. how clothing can express our identity and how our identity is multi-faceted), social justice (e.g.children working in sweat shops), math (e.g. measurement, area), visual arts (e.g. colour and design), media (e.g. text production, intended audience), etc. I think marking the final products will be a pleasure (partly because it's done at school - maybe I dislike homework even more than the students!) and our fashion show will be an exciting endeavor. Stay tuned!

Photo of our Term 1 "Identity Inquiry"display on what makes us who we are

Photo of our Term 2 display on Value Village & making our outfits