Highly effective instructional practices require students to demonstrate an understanding of what constitutes high-quality work — and to actively participate in defining the criteria for evaluating it. But how do we create structures that position students not merely as recipients of evaluation standards, but as the architects of them?

I use the two classroom practices outlined below to center students in creating evaluation criteria that support deeper learning. Although I use these strategies in my humanities-based writing classes, they can be adapted for nearly any grade level or content area and are especially effective for building analytical skills.

Polls and brackets are a way to engage students in understanding what constitutes high-quality work.

Brackets and polls: This highly engaging practice can be organized in a variety of ways. In my own classroom, students first are paired to practice a skill and workshop a response together — often a thesis statement or sample textual analysis. Each pair submits their sample to me, and I compile a numbered (and anonymous) table of all the submissions.

In a subsequent lesson, students review a collection of all the student submissions, whose numbers correspond to a position in the bracket that I hand out. In small groups, the students discuss the strengths of each submission in comparison to the others. They then individually fill out their copy of the bracket to predict the final overall winner.

Next, as a class, we vote on each matchup in the bracket (No. 1 versus No. 2, then No. 2 versus No. 3, and so on) until we arrive at a single winner. I have used the programs Mentimeter, Polls Everywhere and my current favorite, Classroomscreen’s poll widget, to display the results of these votes on a whiteboard. Students lobby for their own picks as we go, which keeps them involved. By keeping the submissions anonymous, the students are voting on the work, not the author. They become highly invested in seeing if their individual predictions play out in the overall class vote, and there is often spirited debate as we continue voting to narrow the field.

Most importantly, as we go, we reflect on and consider the criteria and qualities that the stronger samples demonstrate. This student-generated criteria then become a guide for future work.

Student samples and paired ranking: Similar to the bracket method, ranking samples with paper strips is a highly engaging practice that encourages critical thinking and meaningful discussion.

In my 11th-grade AP Language class, we use this practice to brainstorm examples for the open-ended argument prompt. Students offer ideas for evidence in response to a given prompt, which I later compile and condense into a single document. I then cut the document into strips and distribute a set to each pair or small group.

In these paired conversations, students evaluate the merits, strengths or limitations of each example and work together to put them in ranked order (see photos). The ranking is less important than the discussion as the students consider which criteria matter most in identifying a strong sample.

Both these practices put students in charge of their own learning. Criteria is not dictated by a teacher, rubric or state standard; instead, they emerge organically from student discussion grounded in their own work. When students take notes during these discussions and use them to create a shared list of criteria for future assignments, we foster greater buy-in, more authentic engagement and deeper, more meaningful learning.

Amy Matthusen is a high school ELA teacher at East-West School of International Studies in Queens.