Assessment, Assessment, and ASSESSMENT!

Assessment is as predictable for a student as the sun rising each day. For older students, the pressure is felt most powerfully in the months of January and June. Assessment is viewed by many students as a dreaded evil. It is quite hard to blame them.

My experiences with language and literacy assessments have been focused on Performance-based assessments. My third graders are currently preparing for their TerraNova Exam next week. It has been quite a challenge to allot enough type to teach test-taking methods from bubbling in the material, giving out tips to going over the material covered. I find these assessments a bit frustrating because I do not like teaching to a test. These tests are used to chart where a student stacks up against children in the rest of the state. Many of the children have confided that they are afraid of failing the test and being held back a year. These tests place added pressure on both the children and the teacher. It becomes the teacher’s job to placate the children. While standardized tests are important, state test makers should use a variety of tools to truly assess where a child stands amongst his or her peers. I believe that summative, formative, and diagnostic assessments are more telling of a child’s strengths and weaknesses.

I believe that formative assessment is one of the least used forms of assessment but one of the more valuable ways to see where a child is. I typed up a small review sheet for my class and handed it out as a worksheet. It was designed to ensure that they comprehended their grammar and understanding of different types of sentences. This provides the teacher a way to see if they need to review the material or give out additional help. It also lessens the shock of the summative assessment at the end of the unit.

Love it or hate it, we need to use assessments. If I had to convince a colleague, I would advise them to use all different forms of assessment. It allows a teacher to monitor a student’s growth as the material gets harder. It ensures that a student is meeting all of the grade requirements and will be ready to proceed to the next grade level come June. Assessment also helps you to get to know a child and help a teacher work well with the parents. The proof is in the pudding. Once a weakness is revealed, it becomes much easier to isolate the problem and tackle it.

Goals and Books

Growing up, I always loved reading and writing. I always found it just a bit odd that some of my friends and classmates preferred video games to reading! I found my love of learning at an early age thanks to the likes of Dr. Seuss and Laura Numeroff. I believe that this love should be discovered early on in the classroom. My main goals for this semester are to learn to develop better lesson plans for beginning readers and emergent readers. My personal goal is to understand how to bridge the gap between creativity and boredom. In addition, I want to understand how to build a solid foundation of certain literary skills at an early age that is not forgotten by summer vacation. By enhancing my own understanding of phonics, oral language, and comprehension, I want this to translate into the classroom setting. My goal for assessment of reading is to learn new methods in distinguishing between all types of leaders. I am interested in learning how to modify a lesson plan based on the needs of a particular child.

As a new teacher, one of the questions that I keep asking myself is: “What are my expectations for my class?” A frequent tidbit of advice that I have been given by other teachers is to lower my expectations. Honestly, this does not seem fair to the students. My expectations are to produce a great group of readers. One question that I have is, how do I incorporate all levels of readers into one class lesson? Many classes tend to focus on children with learning problems but exceptional children should also be considered. Other questions I hope are addressed are learning disabilities and how they can be recognized.

By reading a wide variety of articles by educators, I hope to learn new techniques to help students learn and practice comprehension technique and word study skills. I hope to broaden my somewhat limited knowledge of phonics. I hope that I can effectively distinguish between phonological and phonemic awareness! By looking at a wide variety of authors and educators, I hope to learn different methods and apply them in my own classroom.

I think the case study is going to be the most interesting aspect of the class. I have already decided on the student. I was approached by his parents to tutor him. He is a second grade student who struggles in reading and math. After a brief conversation with his teacher, I was told that he should have been retained but his parents pressured the school so that he would not be left behind. The case study provides a unique and individualistic opportunity to understand one student’s struggles. I want to use my findings with this one student and learn how to evaluate an entire class based on my findings.

While, I have read many blogs, I have not ever kept my own. I think a blog is a useful tool that can keep track of your thoughts in an organized manner. This can help me reflect on my strengths and weaknesses. It can also help keep track of different class assignments as well as thoughts and feelings on my case study. I look forward to reading my classmates blogs and receiving my own feedback.