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Strategy 1
I Learned
The reasonable thing is to learn from those who can teach.
— Sophocles
Purpose
The I Learned* statement for assessing learning is a quick and efficient way to get a sense of your students’ grasp of a lesson or activity. It is beautifully simple, and it achieves two assessment goals at once: (1) each student gives you feedback on what he or she thought was of significance, and (2) the aggregate of the responses informs you to what extent you achieved your teaching goal. Remember that the purpose of school is not teaching—it is learning. Teaching is something one does in order to create opportunities for learning.
Procedure
Here is how the process works. At the conclusion of a class period, with five minutes or so left, ask each student to write down on a sheet of paper, “I learned such and such...” in today’s activity or lesson. For example, if you have just taught students about the relationship between cause and effect in a historical conflict, an I Learned statement by one student might read, “I learned that tension between Germany and France led to World War II.” Although such a reflective comment does not answer the “why” or address the concept of cause and effect, it does at least get at the “what.” The student has shown that he or she knows an example of cause and effect in relation to historical events. If few or no reflective statements indicate why (the concept) cause and effect is important, this helps you assess the lesson, which is an added purpose of reflective assessment. It could be because you did not explain why. Tomorrow you can do just that. Skip ahead in the text to Strategy 13: Clear and Unclear Windows for some early insight into a way you can get at students’ deeper understandings.
If you have been studying the water cycle with students, an I Learned statement might read, “I learned that water goes through four cycles: evaporation, condensation, precipitation, and collection.” In a unit where students are engaged in cooperative leaning, an I Learned statement could read, “I learned that working together means we have to find out what others think.” Such simple statements are a reasonable place to begin. As students practice writing statements, particularly in the case of older students, their reflections will begin to take on greater depth, but all this comes with time.
These examples come from students who show some basic understanding of significant skills and/or ideas. Of course, not everyone will grasp the main idea, but the point is that even if this is so you are better off knowing that. It doesn’t pay to assume that everyone learned something just because you or I taught it. And when some students do show a grasp of what was taught and others do not, this becomes a perfect moment for peer teaching.
The first time you try I Learned statements with your class, don’t be surprised if half the papers turned in are blank. This is nothing to be alarmed about. In most cases, students are not asked what they just learned, so they don’t tend to think in those terms. In other words, students are not typically asked to reflect. Also, don’t be surprised if many of the papers contain “irrelevant” or “inaccurate” I Learned statements. Moreover, be sure to share insightful I Learned statements by students with the entire class. Some students need examples in order for them to grasp the general idea.
We remember having our students write I Learned statements following a presentation by a uniformed naval officer who had spoken to the class. One student’s response stays in our thoughts to this day. She wrote, “I learned that they have gold buttons on their coat.” It could be argued that this was hardly the main idea of the presentation, which was on the topic of careers, but that is what she said she learned.
One of the joys of I Learned assessment comes from statements by students who not only grasp the intent of the lesson but who see in it really good things that you yourself hadn’t even considered. This is value-added teaching and learning! In other words, they made connections to some prior knowledge or experience. When students write statements that are insightful and even profound, be sure to read those statements aloud to the class. This will help others to understand the process better.
Sometimes what people need most are good examples to get them started. One of the things you will notice if you use this technique over time is that students get better and better at reflection. Of course, keep in mind that learning is a complex process and that students may learn things that you feel were not intended or even to the point. Who knows what prior knowledge a given individual might bring to an activity and how it might affect their learning? It serves as a good reminder that even though we might think we are teaching exactly the same thing to all thirty students, that is not the case. Each individual must construct his or her own knowledge. Invariably people will come up with somewhat different constructions. You need be concerned only if you are convinced that students are not getting the point at all.
It does matter greatly what is taught when it comes to assessing I Learned statements by students. For example, if you are teaching certain skills that you think are crucial, then you do want to be sure that students are grasping those skills. This is known as convergent knowledge; this is especially important in elementary mathematical procedures and in any subject where skills are emphasized. However, if you are teaching complex ideas, it is quite understandable that students might have varied perspectives on those ideas. You have entered the realm of divergent knowledge. If you are teaching two-place addition, of course, you will hope to receive I Learned statements that are related to the skill. Even in such a case, however, the insights that students generate in learning this can vary considerably. And if you are teaching something as complex as social skills to your class, expect a wide range of insights and personal applications from students.
Outcomes
One use of the I Learned statement is diagnostic. If you receive a large number of statements that you believe are inaccurate or misleading, you will probably want to try teaching the same material again, perhaps in a different way. If you receive a mix of statements, you may want to form peer-teaching groups in which those who clearly grasp the content or skill are asked to share their knowledge with students who are having trouble with the material.
The aggregate of the I Learned responses from a class of students is one of the best indicators of your success in achieving your objective in a lesson. Taken together, a classroom set of statements forms a kind of mosaic reflecting the quality of the experience. You can control what you teach, but you cannot control what is learned. Sometimes they are basically the same thing, and on other days, well, they are worlds apart.
How often should a teacher use I Learned statements? The answer is often, but probably not every day. The thing to keep in mind is that you are attempting to raise the level of consciousness of your students. You are asking them to become conscious of what they are learning. In other words, you are asking them to be reflective, to practice metacognition, to think about their learning. Like any technique, the I Learned statement can be overused. It is best to use it intermittently, perhaps three or four times a week; this way students will have it in the back of their minds that you just might use it on any particular occasion, helping them to be alert to this possibility and to think about what they are learning just in case they are asked. In time it becomes automatic for them to think that way, in which case you will have achieved a very important educational goal.
Differentiating I Learned Statements
Give students only three minutes to write individual
I Learned statements. Then have them buddy up with one or two peers to craft a group
I Learned statement with the remaining two to three minutes. This statement could be directed to focus on a particular question that all students shared or a particular “aha” that the group felt was important. Have the group staple all of their individual and group statements together in a packet to help you see the direction of their thought process.
At the beginning of the next class day, share out example
I Learned statements with the group by utilizing your document camera. The examples should be anonymous in the event that the reflections share personal insights. Showing student work this way lets students see how their peers were thinking about content, as well as giving them a model to aim toward in their next effort at crafting
I Learned statements. By showing statements that reference the literature being read or the historical content that was discussed, you push student work toward featuring those elements in future efforts.
This is a particularly effective strategy for special needs students who suffer from poor organization or recall of learned information. Have students keep and collect their statements in a classroom folder. These statements could then be used by students as part of an in-class review prior to a unit test, quiz, or other culminating activity.
Students who have difficulty writing could be encouraged to draw out their I Learned statement or to have a peer scribe their thoughts. Conversely, the cooperative technique outlined above could also be used to assist struggling learners with sharing their thinking and having it be recorded for later review.
The time given to students can be limited to less than five minutes in order to keep things streamlined and/or simpler. Also, teachers can give specific instructions to target the writing of students towards a particular element of content from the lesson. Remember that for younger students, more guidance on what to write and more concrete directions will help student reflections be more useful to both you and the student.
I Learned statements can be a great way to push the thinking of your higher-achieving students. By requiring students to tie in primary source quotes to substantiate their comments, students connect more deeply with literature or historical documents. By having them use quotes to frame their questions, students are pushed to connect their thinking to the content to which they have been exposed and they gain more confidence in working with primary sources.
I Learned statements can be combined with a number of other strategies presented in this book. For example, it could be combined with
Think Aloud (
Strategy 2) very easily. At the start of the next period, students could engage in dialogue about their
I Learned statements and then craft a new and improved statement that encapsulates their best thinking. These statements can also be done in the style of
Search for Meaning (
Strategy 9) with a focus on personal reactions to literature, or could be a “Day in Review” format similar to that of
The Week in Review (
Strategy 3).
Evans (2009) found that students who wrote and discussed
I Learned statements daily for the course of a unit of study significantly outperformed their nonreflecting peers on both the unit test (posttest) and on a readministration of that same test five weeks later (reten...
