Child Assessment Tools and Working With Children’s Strengths
There are different kinds of assessment processes for evaluating the stage of development children have reached as they go through their education. Two of the most popular at the moment are self assessment and peer assessment. There are great virtues to these two focuses as self assessment helps children develop self analytical faculties and enable them to evaluate themselves accurately. Peer assessment allows for a different perspective on each child from their friends and classmates. These perspectives differ from that which an adult might have and give a more rounded picture of each child.
Inevitably these assessment processes are very subjective and although children can be taught the best ways to give feedback to themselves and others it is impossible to eliminate the personal responses within it. Other ways to assess children are by using set and standardised tests. These are tests which have been normed and an individual’s score can be assessed against the average, typical score for a child of that age and stage. Again there are great advantages to this form of assessment and it does mean that the subjective element is removed. However the downside is that these tests, on the whole, as designed in order to find out where a child’s weaknesses lie. Thus is a child scores significantly differently to the ‘average’ this is flagged up and the results are then classified according to whether it is significantly higher - in which case this child may be gifted or talented in this area; - or significantly less in which case the child may need remedial work.
This kind of classification can be a mixed blessing. Every child is so individual that one child may find it helpful to know they need to focus more on an area of weakness like literacy. Another child may feel defeated by this news and give up without trying. However, it can be very helpful if as adults we begin to train ourselves to look for the signs of strength in the test or self/peer assessment results. Instead of seeing the poor areas and thinking rather ruefully that much more work needs to be done to get the child up to speed, it is interesting and useful to spot all the areas where they are doing well. If this is then fed back to the children and work is then focused around strengthening these strengths they will certainly have amuch better time in the classroom and experience success far more frequently.
When this happens an interesting thing happens to the biochemicals in the brain. Instead of having a lot of stress hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol flowing in their bodies which severely hamper learning, they have some of the nice opoid biochemicals like dopamine and serotonin. Dopamine hormone helps children be more empathic with one another (always a nice thing in a classroom) and also be better at creative problem solving - also a great thing in the classroom! This in turn helps them be better learners, have more success with their lessons and feel better about themselves. Of course feeling better about oneself automatically leads to more dopamine being produced and so they start to work on a very positive learning-success cycle.
We have found that this strengths based focus works very positively if you hold the focus for at least two terms. By the third term children have often managed their own weaknesses through normal maturation processes and being less stressed. The ethos in the class is usually much more positive and levels of self esteem increase too which is very useful as a lead in to the transition period in the third term where they are beginning the process of changing class and teacher as they enter the next academic year at the end of the third term. Try having this focus for the next few weeks and see if you find any difference in the responses of the children. A short experiment before half term in February would be interesting!
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