This chapter really forced me to think more and go deeper regarding how I have been assessing my students. It brought up so many questions for me-- How do I really know that they are learning what I want them to? Are my assessments proving 'mastery'? For my struggling students-- do I know what specific stumbling blocks are preventing them from moving forward and learning more? Can I find ways to isolate those issues to work through them?
I know that I have one student in particular, C, that came to mind. When we're doing group activities, working together, doing something hands-on, etc... he's with the whole group. He totally participates, gets into it, etc. When he volunteers to answer a question in class, he understands some of the higher concepts, can think deeply and critically, etc. He has a phenomenal vocabulary. Yet, when you hand him anything to read, he just goes blank or 'pretend reads' based on what he thinks the book will be about. He'll ask me what the word "I" or "A" or "The" is. He'll ask how to spell "I" during writing time-- although we are at least seeing major progress there. He doesn't recognize sight words. I've had so much trouble figuring out what's going on.. he knows his sound-spelling correspondence, can identify letters on a page and so forth. When you tell him a word, he immediately re-frames it into a sentence, putting it outside of the context it's in a book, if that makes sense. When I was thinking through this chapter, though, I realized that I have to tailor assessments to figure out the issue here so I can move him forward-- and I need to do that soon. This week, I'm going to try to find a way to truly assess him that accounts for C's personal needs, whatever they may be.
I do try to think about assessment as soon as I think about a unit, but I find it's the piece I sometimes struggle most to create. In my current science unit, I've assessed once in small groups (mid-unit), a few times a week through simple CFU's, and I still don't have a real idea of where my students are at in terms of understanding the standards. I'm going to make this a bigger piece of my work in science in the next two weeks, especially since we are leading into Exhibition night and it is crucial that my students understand this unit before that.
One quote in the chapter that stood out to me was that "Attention to the quality of local assessment could not be more important than it is now, when formal accountability demands assessments alighed with standards" (151). As hard as it can be to think like an 'assessor' and really get into the assessment piece of learning, we just need to do it so that we know our students specific strengths, weaknesses, class trends, etc. Assessments are accountability, and I think that is a great thing, especially for those of us who are first year teachers.
I got so many great ideas from this chapter-- things I'm not doing yet, things I can be doing to assess better, etc. I want to build in more CFU's, frame my assessments around our enduring understandings, especially in the science unit, etc. Alongside this, I think I really need to start a big Assessment File, where I keep the data for each of my classes separate. At the moment, it's scattered... some written, some in my computer, some just charted on the wall, some graphed, etc. I need to compile all of that so that what progress I make in my assessments is actually transferred into solid numbers. I've already worried about how I'm going to really effectively fill out a standards-based report card in a few weeks... having all of that information in one place would be a very good thing for me.
Some of the things in the chapter were not necessarily quite 'useful' as a first grade teacher (i.e. the performance task vignettes seemed much more applicable to the older grades), but did give me ideas for things I could do to assess students that could be scaled down to first grade level. The six facets could serve as prompts or starting points for many assessments that I could give in terms of reading comp., science, and later in the year, social studies. I'm looking forward to using this chapter more as I plan more assessments. Hopefully, as I plan my next UbD unit, I will have all assessments ready to go before I begin implementing the unit-- I think this would be a way to establish true personal accountability for how I am timing and teaching my unit.
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Kate, I think it is wonderful that you see the great things you are doing in terms of assessment already and have a vision of how you want to get better in assessing your students. There is always room for growth, and when I read the chapter again I was thinking about the same things. How can I track all of these pieces so that I can use them to do report cards and keep everything straight and organized. Preston has asked us to create assessment walls, and even though I know it is another big piece of work to get done, I do see that it will have its benefits not only for us but for the students to see where they are in terms of progress and growth. I am a firm believer in sharing the results with the students and letting them know where they are and where they need to be. In terms of C... well what can I say? I have the same challenges with him in Math. On Friday, he was actually trying to contain himself from helping I when she was making the numbers using the blocks. He was eager to step in and do it, and that tells me that he knows so much more than he lets on when he is given a written task to do. The more I see of him in action, the more I am convinced that we might have a little genius in disguise. He definately is a unique situation, and I would like to brainstorm to figure out how we can tap into his potential better. I wonder all the time what is behind his complaining and why he wants us to think that he can't do it. He is not as far behind as I thought in September. He is a tricky one, and I wonder if his "act" is to get attention because I don't see a lot of inadequecy there. What do you think?
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