Assessing the Assessments that Assess Our Students

In what time period did Of Mice and Men take place?

 

Who is the main character in Of Mice and Men?

Describe the character of Lenny.

How does Lenny die at the end of the novel?

How do you feel about these questions?  I think these questions are ones that I see on assessments all the time, and I really do not like them.  I see the point behind them sometimes, but an entire assessment should NOT be made up of these types of questions.  Do you think you, as a teacher, would use these questions on an exam?  Well, to be honest, I might use questions like these for quick review quizzes at the beginning of class or maybe use them in a discussion setting to get the discussions started, but I would not ask questions like this on a big exam or assessment.  Have you, as a student, ever had questions like these before?  YES!  I sit down to take exams and do assessments all the time with questions like this on it.  It is unfair to me really.  I may have read the entire novel, but how do you expect me to remember little tiny details like “what color dress was Carrie wearing when she went to the theater for the first time?” or “What was the address of the building that the main character lived in?” or “On this page, there are a list of quotes.  From this list, choose seven and tell me the following.  What play it is from, who said it, where he or she was when he or she said it, what time period the play was written and set in, and who this was said to” (and yes, I have been asked those questions on exams I have taken) My response to those questions was either “ WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT?” or “What does that have to do with my understanding of the story?  Many times, teachers may not be aware of the bad test questions, but sometimes it is just pure laziness!  I am guilty of this as well.  I have made and administered exams before with questions like this.  Well, many people do not realize the amount of work that goes into a proper assessment and that included me up to this past week. 

First, let me talk a little bit about assessments.  When someone says assessment, what is the first thing that comes to mind?  That would be test or exam.  Well, that is not always the case.  Assessments can come in many forms and many times students do not even know they are being assessed.  Right now I am taking a course entitled assessing students with a disability.  This class has been very helpful and some of what we talked about in there also carries over to this topic.  Assessments fall into many categories.  The two main ones are formative assessments (ongoing during teaching and provides feedback) and summative assessments (takes place at the end of learning and shows how well students have learned/teachers have taught).  These two types of assessments, in my opinion, encompass all the other types of assessment.  So, with formative assessments, the teacher is doing progress monitoring.  This is a check for teachers to see what the students comprehend and what the teacher has to reteach or teach in a different style.  Summative assessments of course are the after teaching check; so, after administering all of the formative assessments, making the changes in the course work, re-teaching or teaching in a different way a concept or idea, and repeating if necessary, the summative assessment is administered to the students.  I feel like these two types of assessments have been drilled into your head now, so enough with that…time for my assessment!

What is a formative assessment?

What is a summative assessment?

Which type of assessment is this?

J

I asked the question earlier, what is the first thing that comes to mind with the word assessment?  The answer for most people would be test or exam.  This is not always true.  There are many types of assessments; tests, exams, and quizzes are not the only ones.  I have come up with many types of assessments in my course work here at Shippensburg.  These include papers, board games, acting scenes, comic strips, web-enger hunts, pictures, and many many more.  To assess, as defined by my good friends at Dictionary.com, is “to estimate or judge the value, character, etc., of; evaluate”.  This is simply saying that any type of evaluation counts as an assessment.  The teacher is constantly assessing a student; this is a constant ongoing process.

Many hours go into making an assessment.  This past week, each of us in my methods class had to make two assessments; one objective (an assessment that is focused directly on what is asked) and one authentic (an assessment where the student has more freedom in what he or she is doing but still fulfilling the teachers intended goal of what was being assessed).  For my assessments, I used Samuel Clemens’ (aka: Mark Twain) short story “The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County”.  This story was interesting to read at first because I had no idea what it was trying to convey.  Then I reread it, like a good English student, and found its purpose.  I don’t want to go too much into the story itself, just want to talk about the assessment portion.   

            

My objective assessment consisted of ten questions; five multiple choice, four short answer, and one essay.    This exam took me about three hours to make…IT WAS ONLY TEN QUESTIONS LONG!   I had to get up and leave the assessment at one point because I was so mentally drained!   This assessment still was not a “good” assessment in my opinion after talking about it in class on Tuesday.    Then I got to my authentic assessment.     I could have been much more creative, but I was still exhausted from my objective assessment that it ended up being a writing assignment with options.  I was not very happy with that assessment either because I am usually a lot more creative.  Doing these two different types of assessment really opened my eyes though.  I never knew how much work went into those projects and exams that are on the little piece of paper in front of you in class.

The next time you are making an assessment, ask yourself if the question is really asking what you are intending for it to ask.  Does it really have meaning or did you include it because you did not know what else to ask?  Most importantly, ask yourself WHY.  Why did I include this one here?  If you can justify your answer with something a little bit more than “I want to see if they read”, then you are on the right track!

Teaching Reading and Promoting Literacy

Read-i-cide: n: The systematic killing of the love of reading, often exacerbated by the inane, mind-numbing practices found in schools.

For this week, our prompt or idea is teaching reading and promoting literacy.  These ideas are great to think about and it is a simple blog to write about.  These ideas can also take you in many different directions too.  So, to help me out, I am going to be looking at the book Readicide by Kelly Gallagher.  This book is a great read for anyone going into or already is a teacher of English at any level or any subject for that matter.

Teaching reading in schools can be hard.  We have the kids who do not want to read for a slew of reasons (They forgot to read, they did not want to read, they did not understand it, they cannot read, etc.).  This hinders the learning experience in the classroom.  For most teachers, we like to teach all over Bloom’s Taxonomy; focusing not only on the knowledge and comprehension at the lower end but also synthesis and evaluation as well.  If the teacher is focusing on trying to get the students to show knowledge and comprehension of the book, it is almost impossible for them to get the whole way up to synthesis and evaluation.  Kelly Gallagher comments in his introduction about Readicide and how there are four main contributing factors:

·         Schools value the development of test-takers more than they value the development of readers

·         Schools are limiting authentic reading experiences

·         Teachers are over teaching book

·         Teachers are under teaching book



One interesting thing I see in this list, that goes against my thoughts above, is the idea of that it falls mainly on the school and the teacher.  I agree that some or most of the responsibility falls on the school and teacher.  We are there to promote the reading and learning about literature, but at the same time, we cannot teach to the students if they shut down on us.  This connection was brought up the other night in my Assessing Students with a Learning Disability class.  We said that teachers have been taught different methods of getting students to read ie: round robin, popcorn reading, etc. and this can hinder a student’s learning.  For example, if Jimmy who sits in the front row of my classroom is not a strong oral reader, but can comprehend and understand everything he reads silently to himself and I as the teacher call on him to read out loud, what is that going to do to him?  He is going to refuse or not do it or he does do it and he has a lot of trouble which causes the other kids to make fun of him.  All of these items hinder a child in their learning environment and we want to have an LRE (least restrictive environment) classroom.  This is going to cause Jimmy to shut down, not participate in class and the worst of all STOP reading all together.  If he knows he is going to be made fun of if he tries, then why would he even try?

Like I have been talking about, this blog is off of the book Readicide and I could sit here all day and talk about ever little aspect of it.  We focused on chapters one and two for this first post.  I think it would be best to post my questions in response to the first two chapters now instead of making so many other points about the book.



High stakes testing like a carrot on a stick

At one point in the first chapter, Kelly Gallagher talks about the Texas Miracle.  This was the “remarkable progress Texas schools made when educational ‘carrots and sticks’ were attached to high-stakes, multiple-choice reading exams” (Gallagher 19).  Well, here is where my question comes in.  It goes on to talk about how “school officials did not count many students who gave up and dropped out” and “at the height of the Texas Miracle, special education students were not counted in the test scores” (Gallagher 19).  Well, if these students were not held to the same standards as students today (EVERY child must be accounted for) how and why did the policy change?  They are basing their information off of something that should NOT be compared to students today.  That is not right and then the government wonders why student testing is not the same.  Any thoughts on this would be great!

Like building a skyscraper on quick sand

My next question has to deal with the idea of our schooling practices in general.  I have two quotes from chapter one that go along with this idea.  First, “…as their (the student’s) state scores were rising to impressive heights, ‘only about one third of Alsine’s graduates entering public colleges scored high enough on college readiness tests to avoid remedial classes’” (Gallagher 20).  This is simply stating that the students were scoring really high on these high-stakes tests, but were not doing well on the things that actually matter (college placement testing).  How horrible is that?  The second quote to go along with this is “Building a national education agenda on the Texas model was like building a skyscraper on quick sand” (Gallagher 21).  So, here is my question to this.  If we have all of this information about our way of schooling and we know high-stakes testing is a bad idea for the well-being of our students, WHY DO WE CONTINUE TO DO IT?  That is so wrong!

Those two questions are the two most important questions I found in the first two chapters.  Of course, I came up with many good ideas for my own classroom, but do not want to give them away until I have had the chance to work them out and refine them first.  I hope the questions I pose are not to strong or do not make sense.  I think Mr. Gallagher has written an outstanding book and again, if you have not had the chance to read it.  PLEASE do!  You will learn so much and it will open your eyes to something totally different in the world of education.

 

“You don’t have to burn books to destroy culture.  Just get people to stop reading them.”

                                                                                                            --- Ray Bradbury