On the High Tech High website they have a great series of short clips critique & assessment.  Check it out…

HTH Structures: Critique

Critique is a key structure used at HTH to help students create beautiful work. Inspired by Ron Berger’s book, An Ethic of Excellence: Building a Culture of Craftsmanship with Students, many teachers at HTH encourage students to give each other specific, helpful, and kind feedback as they refine their work. Students conduct critiques on drafts of writing, early iterations of science projects, preliminary sketches, project proposals, and more. Some HTH teachers also use critique as a way of helping students articulate standards of quality for their work. Together, the class uses critique to generate a common rubric for their final products.

Author: Lillian Hsu

HTH Structures: Assessment

Teachers at HTH frequently use informal assessment techniques to check for understanding in the middle of a class. More formal assessment often comes in the form of rubrics that students help to create. Especially during exhibitions, teachers sometimes incorporate an audience assessment piece to make the assessment process more authentic. Many teachers also create regular opportunities for self-assessment as they attempt to cultivate a habit of reflection among their students.

Author: Lillian Hsu

Exit Cards are a great way to check learning progress of students moving towards a milestone for concepts. Check lists also help: Listing students names in row one and than add headers related to the core concepts, skills, and competencies needed for students to fulfill components of the curriculum, and readiness for the final assessment.

Hello from the UK,

  We are one of the learning futures schools in the UK and were recently visited by HTH.  It was a fantastic experience and really helped inform our planning.  We have incorporated peer critiques into our EBL/PBL work, however we do need to provide a model for formal assessment that can be viewed by pupils, parents and teachers.  I think that I will neeed to create an assessment rubric but wondered if other schools had examples of how they ahve achieved this?

Thanks,

Eddie

Rubrics are indeed needed in PBL, for both formative and summative assessment. In our books (of which I am the co-author; let me know if you have more questions) we suggest having separate, shared rubrics for 21st-century skills such as critical thinking, collaboration, and presentation and writing product-specific rubrics that describe the use of content knowledge in a particular product or performance in a project. We also talk about the use of formative assessment strategies during a project to ensure high-quality work. Finally, we recommend using traditional tools such as quizzes, tests, written assignments, and teacher observation to assess individual student learning in a project, not just team-created products.