This is the fourth and final article in the series Assessing Without Sacrificing Activity Time. In last week’s article, we explored how students can use clear criteria to assess a peer and provide feedback their partner can use.
This week, we turn to self-assessment and explore how students can recognize their own progress, make decisions about their learning, and begin to see new possibilities for themselves, all while being active.
Access the previous articles: Focus on a Few Students at a Time, Using Stations, and Making Peer-Assessment Work.
Students don't enter our PE classes with just a range of abilities and experiences. They also arrive with varying beliefs about themselves as learners and movers.
We've all heard students say things like, "I'm not athletic," "I've never been good at this," or "I’m not good at PE."
For some students, these are passing comments made during a challenging activity. For others, they reflect beliefs shaped by years of experiences in PE, sports, and physical activity. And those beliefs can influence what they are willing to try, how they respond to challenges and setbacks, and whether they even recognize their own growth.
As PE teachers, we might see a student improving and offer encouragement or feedback to help them recognize it. But what happens when students begin noticing that progress for themselves?
That's where self-assessment offers something particularly valuable in PE.
Helping Students See Their Own Learning
Throughout this series, we've explored ways to gather evidence of student learning without unnecessarily reducing activity time. We've looked at focusing on a few students, organizing lessons through stations, and involving students in peer assessment.
Self-assessment takes student involvement one step further, and it has the potential to be one of the most impactful learning experiences students can have.
Rather than relying entirely on teachers or peers to tell them how they're doing, students learn to recognize and make sense of their own learning.
And when students become capable of assessing their own learning, we have more assessors in the class, rather than the teacher carrying that responsibility alone. This can make assessment more manageable while giving students a greater role in understanding their learning.
This involves more than asking students to rate themselves or reflect on whether they did well. Meaningful self-assessment helps students understand what they're learning, consider where they currently are with it, and use that information to decide what to do next.
And there is a potentially powerful human element to this.
We aren't trying to convince students to believe something positive about themselves. We're creating opportunities for them to discover evidence that might change what they already believe about themselves.
For a student who has spent years believing they're not good at physical activity, recognizing their own progress can begin to change that narrative.
But for this to happen, students need something meaningful to guide what they're looking for.
Knowing What to Look For
Think about the success criteria we share with students. We might post them on the wall, display them on a screen, or explain them at the beginning of a lesson.
But just because we've shared the criteria doesn't mean students understand them or know how to use them.
For students to assess their own learning, they need to understand what the criteria mean, recognize what they look like in practice through examples and non-examples, and learn to use them to examine their own performance.
A helpful way to think about the self-assessment process is through three questions:
- What am I learning? Understanding the intended learning and what success looks like.
- How am I doing? Using success criteria and feedback to recognize current learning.
- What can I do next? Identifying a next step based on what the evidence shows.
Importantly, the process doesn't end with that third question.
Students need opportunities to put their next steps into action, see what happens, and reassess their learning. Otherwise, self-assessment can become little more than identifying something to improve without ever having the chance to improve it.
Making Self-Assessment Part of PE
Self-assessment doesn't always need to be a formal process involving written reflections, checklists, or improvement plans.
Sometimes it happens in small moments during activity. Other times, a brief conversation with a teacher can prompt a student to reflect on what they're noticing and what they might try next.
Imagine students working on landing with balance and control during a movement sequence. They've explored what a controlled landing looks and feels like, including bending their knees to absorb force and maintaining balance after landing.
As students practise, they pay attention to these criteria. One student notices that they're struggling to hold their balance after landing. They decide to focus on bending their knees and controlling their body position during their next few attempts. They might also decide to use their arms to help maintain their balance.
They try again, notice what changes, and make further adjustments.
No reflection sheet is required. The student is using success criteria to make sense of their performance, identify a next step, and act on it while continuing to be physically active.
Other opportunities might be more structured.
For example, during a territorial games unit, students might use a set of success criteria to assess their defensive play:
When playing defense, I…
- Find and face my check.
- Stay approximately one arm's distance from them.
- Stand between my check and the scoring area when they have the object.
Students could use these criteria to reflect on their performance, identify something they want to improve, and make a plan for their next few lessons. As they continue playing, they have opportunities to put their plan into action, revisit the criteria, and recognize how their defensive play is developing.
Whether self-assessment happens informally during activity or through a more structured process, its value lies in helping students use what they notice to guide their learning.
More Than Recognizing Progress
When students begin assessing their own learning, something important can shift.
They aren't simply waiting for someone else to tell them whether they're improving. They're developing the ability to recognize progress, identify challenges, and make decisions that influence their own learning.
That doesn't mean students no longer need feedback or guidance from teachers. They absolutely do. Developing the ability to assess one's own learning takes time, modelling, practice, and support.
But consider what this process might mean for a student who has long believed they're simply not capable of certain physical activities.
Instead of seeing a challenging performance as confirmation of that belief, they may begin to recognize something different. They can identify what needs work, try a different approach, and notice improvements that weren't there before.
They're not just seeing that they've improved. They're beginning to understand how they contributed to that improvement.
And that can open the door to a different narrative about themselves.
The Takeaway
Across this series, we've explored ways to make assessment part of what students are already doing in PE, rather than something that consistently takes them away from being active.
Self-assessment gives students a greater role in understanding and directing their own learning. When students understand what they're working toward, can recognize evidence of their progress, and have opportunities to act on what they discover, assessment becomes something they can use for themselves.
And perhaps that's where its greatest potential lies.
Sometimes, the most important thing students begin to see through self-assessment isn't simply that their performance is improving. It's that the story they've been telling themselves about what they can and cannot do is still being written, and they have the power to shape what comes next.
Closing Thoughts
Over these four weeks, we've explored a few practical ways to gather and use evidence of student learning while keeping students active. These are certainly not the only approaches, but I hope they've offered some useful ideas for making assessment a more natural part of what we already do in PE.
Thanks for following along and engaging with the series. As always, feel free to reach out with any questions or ideas.
And if there's a topic you'd like to see explored in a future article, I'd love to hear it. I always enjoy connecting with other PE teachers, and that's actually how this series came to be.
