Letter To A Friend: Self-Assessment Strategies

Letter to a Friend Assessments are important when teachers want to deliver high quality lessons and ensure the students understand the concepts before moving on. The assessment chosen for this assignment is a Letter to a Friend. This self-assessment strategy helps the teacher understand how clearly the students grasped the concepts within a unit (Sunal & Haas, 2011). For teachers who teach all subjects, this activity covers a few ELA standards as well. The unit topic is comparing and contrasting adult and juvenile criminal justice systems as found under PO 6 in the Arizona standards for eighth grade Social Studies (The Social Studies Standard Articulated by Grade Level, n.d.). The students will write a letter to their teacher, rather than a friend, due to the

The students will answer each question to the best of their ability and as honestly as possible. Make the students aware that the teacher is the only person who will read their letter and honesty is expected. They will be repeating the activity at the end of the Unit as well so they can see their growth of knowledge on the topic. The questions revolve around the informal assessment strategy described by Ruiz-Primo and Furtak, (2006) and address the following format- What do I know, How do I know it, and Why do I know it? Going one-step further to meet the personal application needed for deep understanding of social studies the students will also indicate an understanding of how the knowledge affects them on a personal level. The questions in the Letter to the teacher are as follows-
1. What do I know about the Adult Criminal Justice System?
2. How do I know what I know?
3. Why do I know this information?
4. How does the Adult Criminal Justice System play into my life?
5. What do I know about the Juvenile Criminal Justice System?
6. How do I know what I know?
7. Why do I know this