A method to use in the classroom to
determine a student’s prior knowledge would be to form a KWL chart either as
whole group or individually so you can really asses each student differently
because they will all have different starting points. A KWL chart is what I
Know, what I Want to know, and what have I learned. The KWL chart is not only
good for measuring prior knowledge but it’s also a good way to see what your students
learned in the end.
The importance of establishing
anchors coincides with the importance of knowing the prior knowledge of your
students, the distance traveled during a project will not be the same for each
learner. Having anchors you gain a sense of where the students are starting and
how far they are going as they work to meet learning goals.
The idea of establishing anchors
and knowing that each student is not on the same page it makes it extra
difficult to assess the students. Some ways to assess your students during a
project would be to interview your students at the end of the project. Seeing how
they started off, individually, can help the teacher to see the progress and be
able to measure how much they really learned. Having students create something new
or a summative project can also help the teacher measure his/her students. The
old fashion pen and paper test would not be adequate for a PBL environment.
I also discussed in my posting the important use of KWL's. It's an easy kid friendly way of assessing students knowledge and it's a great tool of comparison from the beginning of the year to the end of the year. I agree with your point about how anchors and activating prior knowledge go hand in hand. We must first know what our students know in order to place anchors with a sturdy base of knowledge before starting a lesson. I agree that assessing the student individually is key is project assessing. By conversing with the student about what they feel they learned, etc. this will allow them to use critical thinking skills and be aware throughout the project about what they are learning.
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