CASW

22nd Aug 2009.
I took a piece of a student’s work for the CASW discussion meeting. Ms Raji, Ms Sumi, Archana, Aparajita, Bhagya, Deepthi and myself were present.
The material I took was a short printed question paper, and a loose sheet of paper with the student’s answers (calculations and rough work) on it. This was from class 9-C.
The background: Students were taught various concepts since the beginning of this year. Practice of solving problems was done in class as well as at home. The piece of work was a kind of review. It was to be done independently by them, in class during a single block. This was to be assessed as class work. The criteria were neat writing of steps/calculations leading to the correct answers, and a reasonable amount of work for the 40 minutes or so.
The key question was – was this strategy successful for assessing understanding of concepts taught over a period of time? And did it help students work in an uninterrupted fashion for about 40-45 minutes. The output from this particular student as well as from most of the class was positive. As this was not a ‘test’, the students worked without the fear factor. The sample work showed steps written out clearly with the correct answers. This particular student till now did not bother to write steps. Some calculations were shown in a haphazard way in his notebook; the answers had to be found out by the teacher.
After all the discussions were over, it was felt that one would need a considerable chunk of time to prepare such material. I too would have found it difficult if my day was too full of teaching classes. The practice of assessing class work this way was felt useful.