In keeping with our mission to provide tools which elevate student agency, Hero has recently developed the functionality for learners to add self assessments directly into Hero. These assessments are visible to teachers, and through permissions controlled by the school, can be shared with caregivers to strengthen 3-way learning partnerships between home and school.
This has been a highly requested addition to the Hero toolbox. To support schools in unleashing the full power of this feature, Hero Consultants Felicity Goodfellow and Greta Parkes-Dolan have created a couple of practical ways to set the self assessment wheels in motion.
Getting Set Up:
Hero’s self assessment feature is set up in a similar manner to other assessments in your Hero site. This area of Hero is accessible and controlled by staff with Hero administration rights in your school, to support school’s to gather consistent and meaningful data.
Help Article: Adding a New Assessment
For the purpose of this feature, the site administrator creating the assessment will need to ensure students are able to view and enter grades on the assessment.
Help Article: Enabling Students to See Assessment Results or Enter Grades
Now that you know how to set up an assessment to implement this feature, let’s dive in!
Example 1: Values Self Assessment
School values play an integral role in shaping the way children understand expectations, and help to promote positive behaviours. Hero’s Student Self Assessment feature allows teachers to create an assessment that encourages tamariki to reflect on their particular school values and identify how well they implement each of these.
After the initial setup has been completed, teachers can ask their students to log in and assess how well they believe they embody the school values. As an example, students can log in and choose one of the following options that their teacher has set:
This may be something that teachers ask students to complete once a term to show their growth over the school year. This feature also allows tamariki to add evidence to their self assessment, to either support how they are showing the values or what they may be doing to improve.
From a teacher’s perspective, this provides a quick window into what values individual tamariki may require some extra support in developing. Teachers may also choose to use these to support their key competency comments when writing formal report comments.
Example 2a: Daily/Weekly Wellbeing Check In
Prioritising wellbeing is a vital part of the holistic learning journey. As teachers, keeping your finger on the pulse of every student in your class is essential in supporting their wellbeing, so they can continue to thrive at school. Through regular check-ins, teachers can identify any at-risk students and provide appropriate support to wrap around and uplift our smallest heroes.
Student self assessments can be created to enable students to reflect on how they are feeling on a daily, weekly or regular basis.
Using the ‘About This Page’ feature to add instructions and written content allows teachers to supplement their communication with students around the use and purpose of this assessment. A short video clip may be linked within this area to further support this process.
Help Article: Adding About This Page Information
Teachers may wish to have students log in at the beginning of each day to reflect on how they are feeling. The assessment may also be set up to enable students to post evidence to support their self reflection. This is a super chance for students to keep the teacher informed, and can act as an avenue for both students and teachers to privately reach out if needed.
Once all students have entered how they are feeling for the day, the teacher can cast an eye over all of the entries via the Insights tools to identify any students that may need a check in that day.
Help Article: Assessment Snapshots and Progress Snapshots
If you work in a collaborative space, spread the load of this task by splitting up this analysis. One teacher may stay across and view the data for the whole team.
Insights is a powerful function that provides all staff working with our tamariki to get a picture of the well being of both individuals and groups.
Example 2b: Hauora Self Assessment
Many schools support student wellbeing by explicitly teaching around the Whare Tapa Wha model, breaking Hauora down into the 4 dimensions - Taha Wairua, Taha Hinengaro, Taha Whanau and Taha Tinana - highlighting how each aspect influences and impacts on one another.
As part of a theme of work across a few weeks/term, or at regular intervals throughout the year, teachers encourage students to reflect on each dimension of their Hauora by selecting a grade for each aspect.
You may break these down into specific actions under each heading, for example:
Taha Tinana - I am drinking 8 glasses of water each day.
Taha Whanau - I am engaging in conversation with my family at the dinner table.
Taha Wairua - I am doing activities that align with my values.
Taha Hinengaro - I acknowledge and share my feelings with a friend, family member or teacher.
Your grade schedule could be:
‘Weak’, ‘Ok’, ‘Good’, ‘Great’
‘I am not very good at this’, ‘I do this sometimes’, ‘I am very good at this’
‘I need to work on this’, ‘I am proud of my progress so far’, ‘I am amazing at this all of the time’
Number scale (1 - 5)
Icons (smiley and sad faces)
Evidence can be uploaded to support these actions, to show teachers that the students understand each aspect and are participating in healthy actions to support wellbeing. Self assessment can also link nicely to using the goal setting feature of Hero. If there are wellbeing goals that students are working towards, this will provide evidence to the teacher to mark that goal as achieved.
An assessment history can show each student all of their individual entries over time so that they can begin to track progress within various aspects of their Hauora.
This assessment can be a 2-way interaction between the teacher and the student, or you may like to make these visible to whanau as part of the reporting process - fostering vital 3-way learning partnerships.
We hope that these practical examples provide inspiration and insight into how you may implement this feature in the classroom. The magic happens when schools take the tool and use it to best support their students. This feature is a powerful next step to amplify and support the holistic journey surrounding student growth, agency and achievement.