Disposition

Type
CLIMATE

Description
Students are asked to show their attitude about work and their feelings about their performance.

Purpose
To gauge student temperament. To foster student metacognition and demonstrate my interest in their feelings about school and classwork.

Range
K+

Fruitility
Students generally respond very well when asked to indicate their feelings about academic work in this way. The activity provides a nice opportunity for students to check in with themselves and to communicate their findings. Students enjoy being asked to think about themselves as opposed to being asked to think about academic topics.

Features
I will occasionally add this kind of assessment to a homework or to an in-class formative assessment piece. The feedback about student affect is both useful to me (to recive) and useful to the student (to give). I like to offer different ways to respond. For example, a question asks students how they feel about an aspect of content or about their ability with a certain skill. Responses can be made as either a multiple choice selection (completes a simile or picks a feeling) or as a drawing in area made for that purpose. Many students respond with both words and pictures.