Assessing and Evaluating Students' Learning

The idea of assessment is a tricky one in many ways.  Assessment can be something as simple as listening in to group conversations to gather knowledge on who is participating and how much they understand the topic.  It could be an in depth portfolio covering work from the entire school year compiled and reflected on.  Or it could be an entrance or exit tag where the student comments on something they learned or something that confused them.  This particular article focuses on way to assess learning in regards to literature.  This can be an even more tricky subject to tackle.  I agree with the text's assumption that how a teacher assesses her students depends on what she expects them to take from the text.  If she values facts and specific literary devices than she would probably use a test which would reflect that.  She might have multiple choice or fill in the blank or matching or short answer.  She could even include an essay which deals with how exactly the work uses similes or metaphors.

I do not want to teach my students to regurgitate facts; at least not when it comes to literature.  I understand that it is difficult sometimes for teachers not to "teach to the test" in the storm of standardized tests that students must face.  And those texts are largely a regurgitation of facts.  But I believe that it is important to grow beyond that and to take your students with you on the ride.

In a previous work I read, it said that students who learn to really understand and analyse literature are actually better prepared to take on the mind-numbing standardized test.  I agree with this assumption.  As a student I was always good at dissecting a piece of literature.  I was also prone to higher scores on standardized tests when it came to reading and writing.  I believe that these things go hand in hand.  And I hope that all of my students can find that connection as well.  It will be my greatest work and my greatest honor to lead my students into critical thinking and all of the help it will give them in life (not just on tests).

In line with that point I want to speak on a specific paragraph in the text being discussed.  On page 237 near the bottom is a quote from the International Reading Association and the National Council of Teachers of English which, summarized, states that testing should be based in how people actually acquire language.  There is not one right way to persuade someone of something.  There are different tactics and language involved with selling a house or asking someone on a date or persuading a boss as apposed to a subordinate.  Because persuasion does not come in a single form, it makes very little sense that a persuasive essay would be the same for every topic.  Knowing this, instruction and assessment should reflect it and trying to assign a single meaning to such a concept is unacceptable.

At the current time, being in school as I am, I find myself torn in my classes between these two poles.  I have been taught to take multiple choice tests and I'm good at them.  I know test taking strategies and I can apply them easily.  But I LOVE discussions about a text.  I love debating and hearing new perspectives.  I love expanding my view by trying to see someone else's.  I love that I can write an essay about a topic that interests me and pour my passion onto the page.  I am more alive when I am being challenged by a counter point to something that I believe in.  And all of this lets me know that there is not single way to approach something, especially literature.  I wouldn't be happy if there was.  And I hope that I NEVER fall into the trap where I start to expect autonomy from my students!  Because I certainly don't expect it from myself!

Spokane Regional ESL Conference

A great opportunity is happening in about a weeks time.  Next Saturday, February 28, Spokane will host the 26th Annual Regional ESL Conference.  It is open to teachers, future teachers, and anyone interested.  The price is $30 if bought online before the day of the conference.  Online the day of it's $40 and it's $45 at the door.  This price includes an entire day of presentations (of which you get to choose which you would like to attend), a light breakfast, and lunch.  It runs from 8am-4pm and I suggest showing up a little early if you wish to find a good parking spot.  It is held at the Mukogawa Fort Wright Institute and the presentations are held in buildings all across the campus.  In other words, wear sensible shoes.  If you would like to go, and I suggest every teacher or pre-service teacher in any subject go at least once, I'm placing the website address here.

I look forward to seeing anyone who attends!!

http://spokaneesl.com/

Readicide

This book is worth a read to any English teacher either in-service or preparing to be.  I admit that it does read a little obsessive in places.  Mr. Gallagher is very passionate about his position and this is obvious throughout.  This being said, his points are highly valid and useful. 

His advocation for ingraining a love of reading in students through a press towards recreational reading and a lessening of focus on test taking is a golden image that I would love to see happen.  Even he admits it is a difficult road to travel though.  Current and pre-service teachers are already aware of the politics and budget constraints of schools and districts, so I won't go back into that here.  What I will say is that I agree it is worth the struggle to create proficient readers who actually enjoy the task.

I appreciated how Mr. Gallagher interspersed his position with quotes and figures to back in it.  One such interesting fact, beginning on page 39 and continuing to be used throughout the book, describes the scientific effects that reading or the lack there of causes in the adolescent brain.  Basically the study that is quoted states that if a child is not adequately stimulated through varying type of reading and information acquisition, then the frontal lobes of their brains will not properly develop.  It is not simply schema that is left in the dust from the lack of reading, it is also the physical development of the brain.  This is something I will be chewing on for quite some time.

But thankfully, as the book continues, Mr. Gallagher gives the reader options on how to avoid this problem.  I appreciate the appendix in the back of the book that includes a list of books that his actual students have found interesting and worthwhile.  These are books that adolescents have actually read, will actually read, and that I am glad to have listed for me to use in my future classroom.

edTPA

I readily admit that as a future teacher the edTPA terrifies me.  This is an assessment which must be passed by all Washington education students.  It includes written lesson plan units with in depth commentary, a self assessment at the end with a focus on how to better instruction should you teach the same lesson again, and a video of specific clips of the actual instruction within the classroom.  The scope of the project is vast and daunting to someone who is just starting out.  Though I have been assured that I will be thoroughly prepared for this assessment by the time it comes around.  The text I'm speaking about today is a support guide for the edTPA so that candidates can make better choices.  I admit that it is helpful to receive a pamphlet like this one, where specifics of what the assessors will be looking for in judging the edTPA are given.

I am aware that there are more in depth aspects to the edTPA that are simply implied in this particular text, but I still feel a little better prepared.  A perfect example of this is the fact that this text answered at least one of my questions about what would be required of a student teacher who was restricted by a school which specified lessons and how they should be taught.  This containment that I have heard of being used by some school and/or districts left me to wonder how a student teacher was to prove their own teaching skills on the edTPA.  This text informed me that it is still possible.  That in the commentary I can address how I "selected or modified curriculum materials with [my] students' background and needs in mind, and how [I] adapted a lesson to meet [my] students' learning needs, and/or how [I] made accommodations for particular students' needs."  I have not yet been placed in a school, so I am unaware if I will need to worry about a set curriculum or not.  It was simply nice to know that if I should come across it, I have options.  These options can also apply to my future and the chance that I might find a teaching position in a school which has a set curriculum.  Even in an environment such as that, a teacher still has some autonomy to make sure the material is suited to her class.

I also appreciated that advice that when it comes to the video portion of the edTPA an expensive video camera is not actually necessary.  And the best way to know if the camera you use will record a clear enough picture and sound is to test it.  I had not considered this before.  The text's claim that a trial run will not only help me to understand the mechanics of the picture and sound, but will allow my students to become more comfortable around the equipment is a brilliant idea.  I know how I react when I'm faced with a camera, even when I've been warned.  If my students are anything like me, they would feel shy and become far more quiet than they normally would.  This would be counter productive to my needs in the edTPA.  A trial run is simply a good idea all the way around!

I read it, but I don't get it

I really appreciated this text for the practical uses it supplies.  Yet what stuck out the most to me, for the first time in all of the previous texts I've spoken of here, wasn't the practical side.  Instead I was struck by the constant need for explicit instruction.  I admit that somewhere inside of my brain I had already adopted the idea that by the time a student reaches high school, they should be capable of reading.  Page 20 says that "it's not that children haven't been taught to read in elementary school ... rather, reading instruction needs to continue after elementary school.  Reading instruction at the primary level focuses on decoding and reading with fluency.  Intermediate instruction emphasizes meaning and ideas in both literature and nonfiction."

This is a very new concept to me.  And throughout the book even the author admits that she is constantly being reminded that students do not enter her class with the knowledge that she thinks they should have; more aptly, they enter with only the information that they have been directly taught in the past.  These two ideas do not often parallel each other, or at least that is what Mrs. Tovani found in her years of teaching.

I admit to having laughed when Mrs. Tovani spoke of there being voices in her head, much like her students did.  Then I thought about it while I continued to read the text.  I heard the words as they were written on the page repeated in my mind.  Then I saw the movie that it created just behind that first voice.  And every so often a third voice would interject with an inference or question that I had about the text I was reading.  It was a unique experience for me to notice these aspects of my own mind.  I have always been a good reader.  I memorized books before I had actually been taught to read.  And I remember trying to read every single sign that I passed while driving in the car with my mother.  I got so good that I almost could read every sign.  And while I remembered this experience, I applied it to the subject of this book and realized that I was also making connections and inferences while I practiced.

In particular I remember a sign that we use to pass all the time.  I loved that sign.  It was a business called Baby Bumpers, Beds, and Britches.  And I thought it was a wonderful tongue twister.  When I first tried to read it, I would get all jumbled up (even just reading it in my head).  Then I got good at it.  Then I got fast at it.  And I would compare it to the tongue twister "Rubber Baby Buggy Bumpers."  I remember thinking the sign was a better tongue twister and I would look forward to going past it and reading it as quickly as possible.

I share this story because that is the premise of this book.  To go from sounding out words, to making connections with yourself and your knowledge, to understanding what exactly is happening within your thought processes.  I have a new appreciation for what exactly it is that I, as a good reader, have done all these years.  And though I have never really struggled with reading, I hope that I can still find a way to deal with the sullen "This is stupid"s and "I don't care"s in such a way that can nudge my readers forward into enjoying and understanding the art of reading.

Social Justice in the Classroom

Defining Social Justice is a difficult thing to do. As I've looked over a multitude of articles, blogs, etc, that is what I keep reading. But is think the simplest definition I found does in fact work. That the idea of social justice is to address the injustices of society. It is backwards and files almost neatly into a logical fallacy, but it is correct. Societies throughout the world are struggling with issues that are destructive to their ways of life. Famine, war, genocide, disease... People are suffering. There is also the idea of racial injustice/inequality that can hit a little closer to home for people in the US. The disparities of the socioeconomic system - that's another good one. But a definition isn't enough. It's not nearly enough. As educators (or future educators) it is our job to move beyond informing future generations that bad things happen and into a special place where we drive them to ACT.

Every person can make a difference.

This is a hard fact for many to swallow. Sure, the idea has been thrown at us on a regular basis. Sure, we talk about wanting to help others when we hear about some disaster. But how many of us have actually done anything? Even a small anything? That is what educators need to strive for in their classrooms.

Shelley Wright is a teacher and blogger from Canada who waits with baited breath for the portion of the year where she can teach her students about social justice.

Everything about this semester is intricately crafted. As a class we’re going somewhere. I teach the Holocaust for a reason beyond the fact that my students find it interesting. I teach the Rwandan genocide for reasons other than to show them that genocide has happened, and continues to happen, repeatedly. The truth is I teach both of these to show my students that the bystander effect is lethal, often on a scale beyond our imagination.

She quotes Bono

We can be the generation that no longer accepts that an accident of latitude determines whether a child lives or dies — but will we be that generation? Will we in the West realize our potential or will we sleep in the comfort of our affluence with apathy and indifference murmuring softly in our ears? Fifteen thousand people dying needlessly every day from AIDS, TB, and malaria. Mothers, fathers, teachers, farmers, nurses, mechanics, children. This is Africa’s crisis. That it’s not on the nightly news, that we do not treat this as an emergency — that’s our crisis.

Future generations flipping through these pages will know whether we answered the key question. The evidence will be the world around them. History will be our judge, but what’s written is up to us. We can’t say our generation didn’t know how to do it. We can’t say our generation couldn’t afford it. And we can’t say our generation didn’t have reason to do it. It’s up to us.

And this is just the point I am hoping to make. Social Justice is a broad and convoluted topic, but teaching our students to ACT is not! We can review the racism is Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird As Wright did. Or we can attack more recent issues in the world as another teacher by the name of Johnathan J. Cavallero did in 2011 when the earthquake and tsunami ransacked Japan. He offered an alternative to his normal research paper to students who would like to do a service learning project. This project would still require research and writing, so he did not give up on those skills. But the students were also able to create and enact an extra step where they actually set up a fundraiser for those affected in Japan. They may have raised $320, but one of the student's journal entries sums up what Cavallero hoped for them to take away from the project.

"The money was not the most important part of it for me. I learned that people can change the lives of others, even ones all the way across the world."

I am a passionate supporter of teaching social justice in schools. By this I do not mean the intellectualized and separated-from-self regurgitation of information that has been taught in the past. I mean teaching the students to be empowered by their own ability to influence the world. With the Internet and our global connectivity, all current and future generations have a distinct advantage in acting to better the world. As educators we should all be striving to instill the drive for this action within our students!




Credits -

Shelley Wright - The Power of the Connected Classroom: Why and How I'm Yeaching Social Justice
http://plpnetwork.com/2011/05/23/the-power-of-the-connected-classroom-why-and-how-im-teaching-social-justice/

Cavallero, Jonathan J. "Engaging Millennial Students In Social Justice From Initial Class Meetings To Service Learning." New Directions For Teaching & Learning 2013.135 (2013): 75-80. Education Research Complete. Web. 4 Feb. 2015.

Critical Pedagogy and Popular Culture in an Urban Secondary English Classroom

This particular article is incredibly useful in my opinion.  As a future teacher I am well aware that I am staring down a future curriculum that will require teaching classic literature to classes who may feel no connection to the text.  It's hard for many ethnic minority students to see the value in learning about white characters within works where the language is already difficult to traverse (I'm specifically thinking about Romeo and Juliet or any other Shakespeare).  This article addresses that problem in such a novel way that "the classics" seem less like a chore and more like an exiting challenge to tackle. 


In particular they suggest that every classic text can be approached in some way to make it appeal to a more diverse audience.  They first suggest that a work can be dissected for its portrayal of minorities or those who are considered "other."  Asking the students to question just what makes that character "other" in the first place.  This is an unique perspective to take on literature.  And I was a little shocked when they mentioned that a culturally diverse text does not always mean one written by a minority or concerning another culture.  In my mind that is exactly what I thought when I considered a diverse text.  But their assessment rings true with me, that an oppressive approach to a culturally diverse text still makes it oppressive.  It is not always the text that is the problem, sometimes it is the instruction.


The authors also suggest pairing classical works with more contemporary works.  Their example is poetry and rap music.  Students who fall behind in their literary studies, who struggle to understand any poem placed before them, can walk into class having memorized and analyzed an entire album of rap lyrics.  There is a bridge to be made here that might otherwise be hard to find if not pointed out.  Perhaps it is my current generation of incoming teachers and the new aspects of education we are being taught, but I have heard this point on more than one occasion.  This is perhaps the first time I have heard it applied as a way to approach classical literature in diverse ways.  Before it was simply a way to get students to care.  Now it is a bridge to help them connect classical literature in a text-to-self way that I had not considered before.  I really appreciate an article that can expand something I think I know into new and interesting avenues.  This text does that.