How to Measure Student Responsibility in the Classroom
When children have responsibilities in the classroom, they are more likely to be engaged and feel like valued members of the school. If you are assigning students responsibility, have ways ready to measure it. If you simply ask for input, it can be hard to gauge that all of your students are participating. Instead, have a plan for keeping your students responsible.
Instructions
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Incorporate students' ideas in curriculum planning. Called curriculum integration, this model of education asks that you listen to your students' input before planning lessons. The National Middle School Association suggests that you ask students four questions when planning curriculum together: "What do we already know?" "What do we need and want to find out?" "How will we find this information out?" and "How will we show what we know when we're done with the unit?"
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Measure students' responsibility with a graphic organizer, such as a "KWL" chart. To create a KWL chart have your students divide a piece of paper in thirds. Label the first section, "What I Already Know." Label the second section, "What I Want to Know," and label the third section "What I Learned." Have students complete the first two sections before a unit, so you will know on what your unit should focus. Collect the KWL charts, read through them and determine if you've incorporated the students' suggestions for what they want to know if your unit. If you can, highlight specific suggestions that you plan on following before passing the KWL charts back.
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Allow students to choose some of their assessments. The book, "Differentiating Instruction in the Regular Classroom," states that students all learn differently, and allowing them freedom over their learning and assessment process can increase student achievement and keep them engaged. When you're designing a unit, ask students how they want to be assessed. Some students might like a traditional paper-and-pen test, but others might benefit from demonstrating what they have learned in the form of a presentation or creative project.
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Let students also take part in the grading process for presentations. While you will ultimately give the final grade, you can incorporate students' thoughts into your grading system. After an assessment or project in which you let students assess each other, you can assess how well they were able to give constructive criticism to their peers. For instance, a simple rubric that allows you to give a student a number score and helps the student measure his effectiveness at grading others.
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Involve students in day-to-day classroom tasks. When students know that they have a job in the classroom, they will be more likely to come to class and stay engaged. Jobs will vary based on the students' ages. For instance, older students can be in charge of keeping the computers clean or even keeping the computers' electronic desktops cleared. Younger students can each have a corner of the classroom that they clean. Keep students accountable and measure their success by checking on the areas daily. You can even include classroom responsibility as a small portion of the students' grades. To keep records, make basic worksheets that have students' names and their chores on the left-hand side of the page. At the top of the page, you can write the days of the week and place a check mark for every day they completed their jobs. If students have a hard time finishing their tasks, you can create a bar graph that has a new bar for every week. This bar graph can show the percentage of students who complete their classroom jobs.
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