Self-Evaluation Google Form for Students

Today my students self-scored their memoirs and reflected on their writing. They used a Google Form to do this and that has provided me with some invaluable data, while providing them with a chance to answer specific questions about their progress (or lack of progress) and learning. For those of you who like research, check out what John Hattie has to say about the impact of students grading their own work. In 2009 he found the impact factor of that to be 1.44. He revised it in 2015 to 1.33, but that's still a huge impact from a simple activity that all students can engage with.

The form I made for my students self-evaluation branched, that is to say there was a question on the first page that asked if their memoir was complete, almost complete, or would be complete by Friday. Based on their answers to this first question students answered different sets of questions on their next page. If a student said his/her memoir was complete the form had questions like, "What do you like best about your memoir?" and "What would you do to improve your memoir if you could still work on it?"

Students who indicated they were not finished yet answered questions like, "What do you need to do to finish? Describe your specific plan (times, locations, tasks) for completing your memoir." and, "What supports or assistance would help you finish this week?"

Then all students scored their memoir in it's current state with the help of a rubric and a grid question in their Google Form. Less than 8% of students gave themselves perfect scores on the rubric. The vast majority of students scored their memoirs honestly and accurately.

The form had an image of the rubric, which was a screenshot from the spreadsheet, and a grid question with numbers.

Students finished up with a multiple choice question about their favorite writing lesson from this unit and this, "What did you learn about narrative writing and/or about yourself while working on this writing piece?"

Like all forms the data from this one ended up in a spreadsheet and from there I was able to check on several things.

First I skimmed to see what additional help students were requesting. Most stated they just needed the extra time and didn't need other help. That left me free to focus on those specifically requesting help.

I added a column next to where they self scored themselves and use a sum function to add up the score each student gave him or herself. I expected to see lots of perfect scores, but less than 8% of my students gave themselves all 25 points on the rubric. Most were honest and accurate about their work. I did a quick sort of the total scores column and students who gave themselves the lowest scores rose to the top. Those are the ones my co-teacher and I will target for immediate intervention.

Tomorrow our PLC team will talk about the piechart regarding favorite writing lessons. We will leave ourselves some notes about improving the dialog lesson for next year and discuss ways we approached the sensory details lesson differently.

Get a copy of the self-evaluation form my students completed today.