How to Design an Effective Self-Assessment

I’ve had my fair share of struggles with student self-assessments. I was really excited about starting them, and then it flopped. A big, huge waste of time…until I came up with a better design.

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Designing your Self-Assessment

Prompts

I recommend using open-ended questions instead of matching or multiple choice. The self-assessment should be harder than your actual assessment. Students should be having to use higher level thinking to complete this assessment, especially if your test requires them to use higher level thinking. Avoid using open-ended questions like, “define ______ ” unless that will help with the actual test. Remember your goal is to prepare your students for the test. I recommend lots of application prompts or prompts that require students to draw conclusions.

Each section (or Learning Target) should have its own prompt. Avoid grouping learning targets together, if you can.

Each Learning Target, concept, standard, or skill that is covered in your real assessment should be covered in your self-assessment. The prompts on the self-assessment should be the same rigor or higher rigor than the real assessment.

Rating Scale

I like using emojis as a rating scale because it’s simple and easy to fit. However, you could use numbers (1 is the “I don’t know it all” and 4 is “I can teach it to someone”). Either way, you’ll want to be sure your students understand the scale. Be sure to go over each one explicitly with examples.

Extras

Somewhere on your self-assessment, I recommend that you include where your students can find help answering the prompts. I used interactive notebooks, so I always included the notebook page number. After the students complete their self-assessment and determine what they need help with, they’re going to need to know where to find the help. If they are studying at home, they won’t have you, so you should leave a page number or a link to a video - whatever you use.

Read my thoughts on implementing self-assessments on this blog post!