Steemhomework idea for Steemiteducation

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It has been awesome doing the Steemhomework organized by Steemiteducation. One aspect I think can be made in Steemhomework is coming up with cool assessment plans.

Sure, it is easy to just score them and give them a mark. However, assigning a number to the child does little to describe the child's complete set of capability. I find that people are so attached to numbers on a child's assessment, they tend to forget that the score is subjective and it is not representative of anything. As such, would it not be an idea where steemiteducation could implement a steemhomework on how we as teachers assess our students?

Since this is a suggestion from me, here are three ways that I have used to assess my students' speaking and teaching ability. This is mainly a class of college students in a second language classroom.

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Save the Blue Marlin

By far one of my favorite activities to do. I am based in the beautiful city of Kota Kinabalu and by the sea we have a large Blue Marlin statue.

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While I could easily assess my students' speaking ability via a classroom assessment, I decided to have a little fun. Well, I had fun watching. So the task was that they had to go to as many people on the street and explain to them that this Blue Marlin statue has been wrongfully imprisoned at a roundabout. It is as such, our duty as kind humans to release it back into the ocean.

Anyone who was approached by the student and agreed with them had to sign a petition. The pair with the most signature was awarded extra points. Interestingly, most of the students had not idea doing it. I suppose when your marks are on the line, you would do anything. In my defense, it was only 10 marks out of the full 100 percent, but they enjoyed the experience. What was more remarkable was that they managed to accumulate about 300 signatures combined. I guess many thought that it was a real fish being imprisoned.

The Blue Marlin still remains at the roundabout till this very day.

Crowd control

As part of the students training, they were once required to manage 120 students in a hall. While managing 120 students can be alright, the problem was that this was a group of 120 seven year old students and the hall was filled with shouts, running and just utter chaos.

As each students took turns managing the group, trying to calm them down, the assessment was to see how well they were able to control the group quickly. Unfortunately, this did not go very well for one student, as he went to the front of the group to try and control the students, one girl stood up, walked towards him and kicked him in the shin.

The reason she gave was that she did not like him. It was a good thing that he managed to keep his cool and reprimanded the student. Extra marks for him for handling the situation well under pressure.

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Impromptu speakers' corner

This was an activity that I used to train my teacher trainees on public speaking. Every Wednesday, they were required to go to the front of the cafeteria and speak about a particular topic. While this may not be much of a challenge, the event is normally held during lunch where all the faculty members and their peers are there listening.

The assessment was implemented but not in a way that affected the students' grades. It was a learning experience for them and feedback was recorded to better prepare them for their actual assessment.

Conclusion

This is a suggestion for steemiteducation and I think with the many teachers on Steemit, we will hear some rather interesting stories. Although, after reading through my article a second time, I think we can also write stories on the wackiest thing that has happened to you in your teaching career.

That being said, I hope this was fun, do let me know in the comments below if you have any crazy ideas for assessing your students.

Steem on!

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