Classroom Tools for Writing Lessons

The following are some tools that can be used during our writing lessons to enable our students to assess their own and peers' compositions before handing them in to the teacher. These rubrics have been designed in a way to make our students check for simple errors before submitting their work. 

Self - Assessment Rubric 

The self - assessment rubrics are designed to help students to check their own essays before submitting them. The rubrics here have listed a set of 'to-do' things that guides students to check their work. The lists are simple and understandable. Students can easily figure out what they have done and what they need to improvise before submitting the final work. As for the teacher, it would be easier for them as they would only need to work on the technical parts. The three editing checklist that I have shared here are different in their own ways. We can always alter and make minor changes to them so that the rubrics are well - aligned to the task given to the students. 

Self - Assessment Rubric 1 

Self - Assessment Rubric 2 

Self - Assessment Rubric 3 

Peer Assessment Rubric

The following are different types of peer assessment rubrics. These are different types of tools for different types of writing tasks and involves one or two peers as assessors depending on the task given. I have constructed these rubrics as simple as possible so that my students would understand what is stated in the rubrics. However, if you find them to be too difficult for your students you can always simplify these rubrics to suit your students learning needs.  

Peer Assessment Rubric for Descriptive Writing 

Peer Assessment Rubric for Paragraph Writing

Peer Editing Checklist

Peer Assessment Rubric 

Peer Grading Rubric

Teacher Assessment Rubric 

The teacher assessment rubric is designed for teachers to assess their students' work and give them scores for six different criteria and each criterion has three scores to show students what they have achieved and what they have to work on. This is in a way replicating the medal and mission model. 

Teacher Assessment Rubric - First Page 

Teacher Assessment Rubric - Second Page

You may download the rubric here. 

Happy Teaching! 

Classroom Tools for Reading Lessons

As a teacher, I have always believed in making my lessons interesting by creating meaningful classroom activities for my students. The worksheets and tools that I design are to help me to achieve the objectives of my lessons. The following are some classroom tools that can be used for reading lessons. These tools are designed to help students to understand their responsibilities as learners while doing a reading activity. I find these tools help to create a sense of purpose among students. 

The self - assessment rubric for reading is designed to help learners understand what they need to do while reading as to develop their skills. By referring to this rubric they will be able to understand what they need to do in order to display understanding while reading a text. At times,  students may not understand the rubric, so we teachers can actually demonstrate how to use the rubric. We also need to help students to explore the reading skills so that they know what to do. We as teachers have to remember that reading task is not about reading a text and answering questions. There are more to it, and this is one of the rubrics that may help students to understand what they need to know.  

The Reading Grid is a set of tasks that can help our learners to be actively engaged in reading. There are 16 tasks altogether and students can be given a choice on picking 5 tasks they would like to do. This reading activity can also be done in groups of four where students can pick activities of their choice and work individually, then they can share the outcome with the rest of the group members. As teachers, we have to ensure that the text they are working on will allow them to do all the tasks. If any of the tasks is not do-able, it is important to inform the students not to select the task.

The self - assessment reading chart shown above has listed 10 can do statements that are related to reading activities. Learners can be asked to complete the assessment for reading after a reading lesson so that they would know what they have achieved and what they need to work on. This chart can also help learners to understand what is expected of them during a reading lesson and develop a sense of purpose for reading. Probably after the first assessment, we will get more 'yes' for the second time as students will be more aware of things that the should do.

This is just another version of self - assessment tool, to help learners to understand what they have achieved and what they need to work on while reading to understand a text better. 

The assessment tool shown above is slightly different as the can do statements have been put into four categories. This assessment tool is more suitable to be used when we are dealing with higher intermediate or advanced groups.

The is used for wrap - up activities after a reading lesson. This is quite a commonly used tool for post-reading activities. I have used this quite a number of times and it worked really well in my classes.

As a teacher, I think the tools alone will not help us to develop our students' reading fluency. These are just tools that may help to make our teaching better. We, teachers, have to think of ways and activities on how to develop our students reading fluency with the aid of the tools. So do not solely rely on the tools that I have shared, make sure the reading activities are interesting. I will share interesting reading activities soon enough.

 Please click here to download the PDF version of the tools for reading lessons.   

Self and Peer Assessment Tools for Speaking Lessons

Self and peer assessments are broad ideas where students give feedback or evaluate their own work and the work of their peers. It can be formative where most of the times students' give feedback to their peers or work on their own progress so that they can improve in whichever that is lacking. self and peers assessments are commonly used as a strategy for students to assess their own contributions and of their group mates to group work and assignments. 

After doing some research, I have learnt that self and peer assessments can benefit students in improving their learning and help them to be responsible for their own learning. However, despite being in use for a long time we are not familiar with the use of self and peer assessment tools in our classrooms and I think it is high time for us to start off with some sort of peer and self - assessments that are relevant to our lessons. 

After going through several online resources, I have developed some tools for self and peer assessments that I am planning to use in my lessons next year. I have gone through the new form four textbook and based on the speaking activities, I have designed some assessment tools for the speaking lessons.

These tools were designed after taking into considerations what may work in my classroom. I am sharing them here so that we can try them out in our classrooms and further improvise them. 

These tools are designed for speaking lessons for form 4 and form 5 levels. 

I will share more assessment tools for other skills once I have done the compilation. 

To download the self and peer assessment tools, please click here. 

Below are examples of self and peer assessment tools that I built for my lessons : 

A simple assessment tool for students to work in their small group
 to assess their progress as a group

Peer evaluation form for students to assess their friends'
performance while doing a group speaking task.
This form is ideal for small groups of four. 

This is a self - assessment tool for learners to assess their own progress.
This tool can be used for both speaking and listening tasks. 

This is another self- assessment tool where students place themselves
from 1 to 9. 1 being very poor and 9 being excellent based on the
12 statements. The statements are on the things they can do in
 a speaking activity.

This is a very simple self - assessment tool. Learners only need
to circle the things they have done after completing a speaking task. 

Peer assessment tool for pair work. A simple tick will do.

A simple version of the self - assessment tool.

This one can be used if a group consists of five members.
Each member can be given an evaluation form, they will
assess their group members as the discussion progresses.

That's all and hopefully what works for me will work for you too.