Sheamus, My kids co-construct their own criteria. They think about and share what needs to go into their assessment and evaluation at every stage. Time to reflect on their evaluation tool allows them to think critically about their goal. This also gives them time to narrow their focus. Often, they tell me they want something to be evaluated and something to be used as assessment. Other times, they specify both.

For us, our year is focused on storytelling, mostly through performance poetry. We have shared with artists our own age, younger, older, in our classroom and outside the class. We have listened to the best of the best. It is important to note that story telling is different for everyone. It is the journey we honour.

How do we evaluate that? Through teaching others, the students look at how far they’ve come, how far they hoped to go and how much change happened along the way-even change in others. These experiences have pervaded the exemplars for students to be able to create and to understand the criteria for meeting expectations and exceeding expectations. Assessing and evaluating story tell craft is simple. The kids and I do this every day. It’s part of our  language: ok great hook, but what was the message?

Since our student are the same age, and both our classes our passion-base, how about once we get going, we Skype and have the kids co-construct criteria. The answers come from them?

—Cori Sass