Trails to Literacy: TOOLKIT

Evaluation Tools

Self-assessment

Trails to Literacy groups are natural places in which to learn self-assessment. Participants learn to take responsibility for monitoring, adjusting, and questioning themselves and each other. In Trails, students learn to evaluate their own learning from their experiences with group evaluation. Also, because decisions about activities and group performance are shared, students feel freer to express doubts, feelings of success, questions, and concerns, than when they are evaluated only by a practitioner. They monitor their progress toward goals, and, based on monitoring, make changes in what they are doing in order to reach their goals.

In a participatory Trails group, assessment means evaluating...

• Whether you learned what you wanted to learn;
• The effectiveness of the learning activities;
• The quality of learning in real-life application;
• The validity of decisions about which results show the best work;
• The usefulness of the activities used for learning; and
• Whether future learning is needed and how that learning might be realized.

Participants can assess themselves and their peers using checklists, tally sheets, rating scales, rubrics, discussion (whole-class or small-group), or open-ended reflection sheets.

Meaningful reflection takes practice. Regular, uninterrupted time for participants to think about their progress is necessary. At first, you may need to guide their reflection with questions such as these:

• What did I learn today?
• What did I do well?
• What am I confused about?
• What do I need help with?
• What do I want to know more about?
• What am I going to work on next?