How do we know the extent to which students understand or meet the objectives we set for them?

In our study today we watched students acting out a mime to describe their own learning. Their aim was to convey their understanding of content relating to print art and the work of specific artists. We could clearly see that students often struggle to take ownership of difficult concepts, such as the concepts presented in the lesson. Even after two interactive presentations given to students, letting them do some writing, discussing the content in small groups and as the whole group, having them ask questions and answer questions, watching tutorials, asking them to role play, giving them homework sheets to check for understanding and finally asking them to convey their understanding through miming and ultimately explaining their thinking, we were uncertain that everyone grasped the concepts. We were also surprised that in the mimes, some groups have repeated mistakes that were corrected in prior presentations.

The question remains: how can we be sure that our students are learning?

There were concerns in this case about why a student whose work was brilliant was hesitant of it being shown to the class as an example of the expected standard of work. It seems this student was being teased  by classmates for producing excellent work. This led to questions about the culture of producing excellent work. These social issues are very real issues in many schools and it becomes important for us to make decisions about how to establish a culture of being proud of excellent work and to nip academic bullying in the bud.

The group has a sense that we might need to have to adjust our focus within our lesson plan study.