Exploring Thinking Routines & Teaching/Assessing for Understanding

Above are four candidate images for a culminating assessment of student understanding for a unit entitled Lucy's Locking Knees:  Our Human Origins.

I find myself, yet again, rethinking the assessment of student learning, presently in the context of a unit on human ancestry.  

For years now, I've experimented with essay-style reviews of material by asking students to connect content to rich central images -- rich in the sense that they are generative.  Responses are then assessed for depth of probity, synthesis, and demonstration of understanding of the material (with an emphasis on citing multiple examples and/or lines of evidence).

I'm referring here to a culminating activity, following a number of contextually rich activities, designed around essential questions, or understanding goals, each assessed en route, on-going.

Thinking around a question (what do you see? what are your questions? what are your ideas?), while citing multiple examples, is an overarching understanding goal for the year, the underlying thinking routine for which must be introduced in the first minutes of the first day of school, and modeled/practiced often and with intent thereafter.

So, it's the end of January, and we're coming to the close of a six-week integrated science/history unit on human ancestry.  

I'm inclined to collaborate with students in identifying an agreed set of central images:  ones which are both core to the unit, and generative, with lots of potential points of entry.  The collaborative selection of central images is a new step for me, but certainly in keeping with my desire to minimize the unnecessary drama and uncertainty associated with a final assessment.  

I expect the final writing activity to extend over several periods/days, focusing on a single pre-determined image per day, with the students being expected to prepare in advance by reviewing their notes, and pre-planning their approach.

I'm also inclined to provide students a timeline of the activities, topics, and vocabulary we've covered, to remind them of the breath of the unit.  In this way, this culminating activity offers a comprehensive review, and a synthesis of material, around a small set of collaboratively agreed upon central images, ultimately serving the aim of student understanding.

I suppose the best check of this approach would be a Private Universe/Mind's of Our Own-style interview process, sussing out what the kids really understand through in-depth interview.

It's interesting to me that after nineteen years of teaching, I'm less certain of my practice now than in my first several years.  Certainly I'm much more aware of the complexities of teaching, learning, understanding, and mis-understanding.