Glow and Grow Strategy

A few weeks ago I read about a GREAT strategy for assessment over at Beth's Thinking of Teaching blog.  You can read her original post HERE.  As soon as I saw it, I knew it was something I wanted to try.

Similar to stars and wishes, the "glow and grow" strategy is a perfect tool for my students to use when reflecting and assessing their own, or a peer's work, or for me to use during formal or summative assessments.  Basically, students (or teachers) use a "glowing" highlighter (we use bright yellow) to show what was done really well, and a "growing" green highlighter to show areas that could use some improvement.  I made a quick anchor chart to introduce this strategy to my students today.  (Please excuse the quality of pictures in this post.  I forgot my camera at home today, and had to use my iPad).

Yellow highlighters were easy to find, but green highlighters were nowhere to be found.  So for now, I did the next best thing - green crayons.  I used an elastic to keep the two colours together (and make it quick and easy for the students to get their supplies), and organized them in a bucket in a central location in the class.  (I actually have a set for all students in the class, this was what was left in the bucket while the students were working).

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OK - armed with our new strategy, my students began to use it to assess some exemplars from our provincial testing (they had actually just completed the same writing prompt earlier today).  They worked in pairs to highlight glowing and growing areas in the exemplars, then gave the pieces an overall mark and reasons why.  LOVED the accountable talk that was going on with my students as I was walking around the classroom!  (Fingers crossed that this accountable talk wasn't just beginner's luck, and they don't tire of this strategy).

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 I then had them go back to their own original writing (the same topic as the exemplars they just assessed).  I was able to whip up a quick little two-column reflection / assessment sheet while they were working in pairs, so I handed it out while they were using their highlighters to mark "glowing and growing" areas in their own work.  They completed the reflection sheet I gave them, and guess what I'm marking providing descriptive feedback on tonight???  We have a principal walk-through tomorrow (3 other principals visiting our school for classroom tours) and they want to see our student portfolios and examples of descriptive feedback posted.

I don't know if you can tell from this picture, but I turned the "o" in glow into a sun, and the "o" in grow into a flower (the same images on our anchor chart to help them visualize and remember).

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This reflection was from one of my students on an I.E.P. who really struggles with writing.  His reflection was AMAZING - bang on!

So excited about this new (and quick and easy) strategy.  Thanks for a great idea, Beth!!!

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Happy Monday!  (And YAY for 4 day weeks!!!)