Assessment Menus – Supporting Individualized Learning
Assessment Menu Resources
These resources include:
- 8 different assessment menu options with assessment descriptions.
- 5 tailor-made assessment rubrics.
What is an Assessment Menu?
An Assessment Menu provides students with a list of assessment tasks to choose from. The assessments give students an opportunity to demonstrate their learning while targeting specific critical reading, critical thinking, and presentation skills. This approach helps teachers support individualized learning because the process and the assessment task (chosen in consultation with the teacher) are designed to support student’s specific growth goals in the course.
Assessment Menus are best integrated into a practice of maintaining an Assessment Portfolio.
When would you offer an assessment menu?
- At the end of a unit.
- After studying 2 or more units.
- At the end of a quarter, semester, or year.
Why use an assessment menu?
1. Assessment menus help teachers and students prioritize learning and growth in one or more skills areas.
Because of external demands (standardized tests, IB or AP assessments), teachers often prioritize assessment tasks set by the external program. These assessment tasks are often complex, asking students to synthesize ideas into an interpretation they can support and analyze with direct and indirect evidence from the text either through speaking or writing. Some students are ready for this challenge, but some are not. Assessment menus are a way for teachers to engage with the reality that students enter the course with different competencies and need tasks that are appropriate for their current competencies to target areas of growth.
2. Assessment menus help students understand the importance of setting clear goals before selecting and starting a task.
Before students can select an appropriate assessment task, they have to reflect on their past assessments to identify their current skill level and set a clear goal. This is done using quantitative and qualitative data from prior assessments (and may also involve conferencing with the teacher). Once students have identified their skill level in relation to each of the criterion, standards, or domains, they can begin the process of setting a goal and selecting an appropriate assessment task.
3. Assessment menus help students understand the skills targeted in each assessment task as well as how each assessment can be used for learning and growth.
Before selecting a task, students have to develop an understanding of each task: the skills required to complete the task and how each skill is evaluated in the assessment criteria. While many of the same core skills are evaluated in the assessment tasks, the scope, level of depth, and cognitive complexity may vary depending on the assessment task. Also, some assessment tasks prioritize different forms and modes of communication.
For example, a 500 word response post requires students to develop an argument or idea in response to a work with one or two points of development (that includes evidence); whereas, a 1500 word essay asks students to develop a complex argument or idea with several points of development (that includes evidence). While the cognitive tasks are similar in terms of skill, the two tasks differ in complexity and depth.
However, this does not mean a 500 word response post is “easier” than a 1500 word essay. Ultimately, the difficulty of the task depends on what the student chooses to write about. A student who tackles a text’s ambiguous meaning or choices in a 500 word post, using indirect and subtle details to develop their argument, might face a larger challenge than a student who writes a 1500-word essay on a text’s obvious meaning or choices, relying on direct evidence and overt details. This means a teacher needs to be strategic when recommending assessment tasks. A student who is struggling to improve their essays from “good” to “very good” may benefit from tackling more sophisticated ideas (or ambiguous meaning) through response posts that require fewer points of development before developing these “perceptive” arguments in full length essays.
4. Assessment menus help students understand the role reflection and metacognition play in their learning.
Aligning goals with appropriate assessment tasks helps students understand that cognitive growth is achieved iteratively by setting intentional goals, choosing appropriate challenges, receiving feedback, and engaging in reflection. This sets a clear path for both teachers and students while teaching students valuable, life-long skills about goals and their relationship to growth.
5. Choice assessments give students more opportunities to be creative.
For externally assessed courses, like the IB and AP, it can be easy for teachers to make every summative assessment a mock assessment. However, we know that learning happens in different ways, and kids can learn just as much, if not more, from writing a pastiche as they can from writing a passage analysis.
Some kids (and parents, and even admin,) want all student efforts to be in direct preparation for the external assessments. In private school settings, parents might even feel this is explicitly what they are paying for. But there are many kids who enjoy engaging with texts in creative ways. Assessment Menus are a good compromise – students who want to be creative (write, perform, present, etc.) can explore learning through this lens, and students who want to develop their analytical writing through practice have that option as well.
FAQ
I’ve tried to address some of the questions and concerns about the assessment menu approach in the FAQ below. If you have a question, please ask it in the comment section.
1. How do you manage the class when students are working on 20+ different assessment tasks?
I give students time to work on the assessments in class while I meet with them in small groups or individually about their choice assessment. I will also stage the assessment process with due dates for their brainstorm list, idea, outline, draft, etc. When I meet with students one-on-one, I time the meetings to make sure we don’t go over. If a student’s not prepared for our meeting (e.g., I have an idea, but I didn’t write it down…), I send them back to class, call the next student, and circle back to them by the end of the class. I pre-set the number of conference days and do not extend them. For students who are late or miss their meeting, we continue the conversation through a series of recorded videos.
Also, I find that most students choose the same 2-3 assessment tasks, and then a few students choose a range of the other options (usually, these are the students who really take advantage of the opportunities to do something different). This makes the process very manageable because I can hold mini-workshops on the assessment tasks or supply resources, graphic organizers, tips, etc. for the popular choice assessments, and then work with the other students individually on their choice assessment through coaching sessions. For teachers who are lucky enough to have a co-teacher, this is a great opportunity to incorporate them into the teaching!
2. If the assessment tasks are all different, aren’t students working on different standards or skills?
On the surface, it may seem this way, but in reality the assessment rubric, not the task, determines which skills are taught. If you look at the assessment rubrics for each of the assessment tasks, they are all evaluating the same holistic skills:
- The student’s ability to communicate knowledge and understanding of the work.
- The student’s ability to formulate interpretations or draw conclusions from the work.
- The student’s appreciation and evaluation of choices made within the work.
- The student’s presentation of their ideas.
- The student’s communication of their ideas through language (and image).
When students compare works, they are applying these skills to two works and comparing them, but the core skills are the same; the task is just a bit more complex. When a student writes or performs a pastiche, I am just as interested in the rationale as I am the creative piece. And when students opt to research, prepare, and deliver a lecture, they are still required to still discuss authorial choices. It’s the rubric that dictates the skills and standards, not the assessment task.
When I first started teaching IB, I experienced grading and planning whiplash going from a 6+1 traits rubric to an IB rubric. In the US, so much attention is places on HOW essays, etc. are written, whereas the IB places more value on WHAT students are communicating through their writing. The assessment task was the same – an essay – but the way I taught essay writing completely changed once I started teaching IB (in my estimation, for the better). The essays became much more substantive, which is all to say that it the assessment criteria drives the learning, not the task.
3. How do students perform on the assessment task when choosing from a menu vs. when the assessment task is teacher driven?
Honestly, students usually perform the same to slightly better. There has to be quite a bit of growth for students to make it to the next descriptor (let alone the next 1-7 markband) on a rubric; authentic change happens over time. Students will often rate the learning experience highly: because they intentionally choose a task, are targeting specific skills in that task, and have to understand the differences between the different types of assessments, their confidence grows alongside their understanding of what the assessments communicate about their reading and writing.
Some students will play to their strengths (e.g., choose to present as opposed to write, or vice-versa). I have always viewed this as a good thing. When thinking about the classroom grade vs. the predicted external exam grade, I want the classroom grade to reflect a student’s potential.
4. How do students, parents, and admin respond to this approach?
I’ve always had positive feedback on the practice of using an assessment menu, but I have also worked in school contexts where administration value learning above everything else. Parents have also been supportive, especially parents who feel their kids aren’t enjoying learning in their later high school years because the learning is so assessment driven. Parents will often thank me for giving their kids a place to “play” and engage with real-world, communicative tasks.
Lastly, students like being treated as agents in their own learning. This is where I build trust and respect with students, and they know and are clear about my ultimate goals – I want my students to learn and grow, and I care about their perspective and contributions to that process. Additionally, knowing students’ individual goals helps me target their feedback on this assessment and others, which makes the feedback more valuable.