This week I have learned a tremendous amount about assessment! In my first five years of teaching, I'm afraid I did very little assessing besides class tests and state testing. My view has broadened now and I can't wait to try out some of these new skills. There is an article from "Reading Today" that explains assessment and the different levels of questioning. Also, how teachers have a difficult time transitioning from questions having to do with remembering and comprehension to analysis and application. Using a higher level of thinking is certainly a great way to assess our students.
Running records will also be another excellent way to assess where my students are reading. After watching the posted U-tube video of the teacher explaining running records I had a surprising response. I have always felt like assessment (although being about what the students know) was mainly discovered by the mistakes that they make. The teacher on U-tube was so positive about grading the tests. If students made mistakes and self corrected, that was a wonderful thing. If a students repeated the same section of the sentence over again it was also encouraging because it meant that they were gaining skills to figure out how to decode. It is not about a red pen and check marks to tally, but instead really understanding the mistakes and using them to discover how to help them in the future. We have important jobs and need to treat it that way.
I do love the way that this type of assessment focuses on the positive. So often, kids hear about what they are missing, instead of what they have in place. This is how kids come to view themselves as bad readers when they really aren't. The levels of questioning are extremely important to stress, especially as students get older. At the middle school level, my students are constantly asked open-ended, opinion-based questions, and are then required to back up their opinion with evidence from a text in a group discussion format. At first, it was difficult to get kids past those more concrete questions. I had one kid say "This is hard. Can't you just ask us what color his pants were or something?" I asked him if he cared what color the character's pants were. When he responded that he didn't, I told him I didn't either, and that's why I didn't ask him that question. I later witness this same kid give a brilliant argument in front o the entire class on why the character was brave. He used specific quotes from the story, combined with evidence of his own personal experiences, to fully analyze a character's actions. Sometimes, it takes us a little extra time to find the right questions, but when we do, it is a thing of beauty.
ReplyDelete