Assessments

Assessments! That area teachers always feel like they are forced to administer but aren’t really sure why or what purpose it serves! There is always this gray area of what should assessments look like and how we should take the data from assessments to improve student learning. In addition, there is always this notion of how assessments are derived and who is behind them. For example, in my district, teachers number one complaint about assessments is that no one ever includes the teachers in the assessments. Rather we get an email dictating to us the following assessments are to be given, at this time and once completed you are to meet with your grade level and analyze the data. While this may seem fine to some, we have no idea why we are administering such assessment, what we are supposed to do with the data we analyze and so forth. This becomes very frustrating for teachers. We are never given background information and it becomes difficult when the students inquire why they are taking said test, and realistically we do not know either!

I found the video to be rather interesting in that I liked their model of the teachers were going to do most of the work rather than them doing it. I agree with the preparation of the assessment and how including the teachers, support teachers, administration, just to name a few is a huge component to developing successful assessments. I also loved the component of gathering all the educators and making it clear what the purpose of the review is! There are areas our district lacks significantly!

As a Reading Specialist in order to make sure students are learning what we are teaching them requires a few components. One of the main components is to ensure that the teacher truly understands why they are administering such assessment and what they will get out of it. In order for students to learn what we are teaching them, we as educators need to know why we are teaching them what it is we are teaching. Strengths and weaknesses should be identified within the classroom, school and district and such assessments can be derived. No good comes out of giving assessments for the sake of giving them, although some districts do do this!

In order to provide effective and meaningful assessments to improve student achievement, the student’s interests must be taken into account. A variety of texts should be offered and instruction should be differentiated to accommodate the various needs of your students. It is also critical to analyze throughout the school year and make changes as needed.

The district I work in utilizes the following district wide assessments:

PARCC

Dibels (grades k-2)

Standard Based Assessments (new this year)

SGO Assessment

Marking Period Assessments (has been replaced by Standard Based)

Of these assessments, SBA, SGO, MPA were not created with a group of teachers, professionals, cst, etc. They were all created by either literacy coaches or the ELA supervisor. While it seems these assessments are helpful, many of them contain errors that make analyzing the data very difficult. In addition to these assessments, teachers are encouraged to create their own assessments and can even create them using the LinkIt program so they can take them via chromebooks.

Overall, assessments are only as good as the information being taught. If data is being properly analyzed, assessments are created in the right way and used for the right purposes districts can see the benefits.

References:

Jetton, T. L., & Alexander, P. A. (2001). Interest Assessment and the Content 

Area Literacy Environment: Challenges for Research and Practice. Educational Psychology Review, 13(3), 303-318.

Wisconsin DPI. (2015, January 16). Leading A Balanced Literacy Assessment System: Conducting A    
             Literacy Assessment Review. Retrieved April 14, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?  
             v=uruFu6f-kg0

Writing

As many of the states across the country have conformed to the Common Core State Standards, it has become evident through these new standards that students need to be writing. These writings include but are not limited to opinion, argument, informational, and narrative. While this may seem like an easy task, it is actually one that is quite difficult. Many teachers simply assign a writing prompt and expect students to produce quality pieces. However, as educators we need to do more. Simply assigning a prompt and setting high expectations will not manifest successful writers. In addition, students develop a hate for writing rather than a love! So what needs to be done? Teachers need to be sure to engage students in a motivating way. Also, they must not utilize solid writing blocks and write across all disciplines.

According to Fisher and Frey, teachers must pay close attention and focus on writing as a performance assessment tool and check for student understanding through their writing not just within literacy but across all disciplines (2013). Fisher and Frey focus on three strategies which teachers can use to enable student writing across the school day. These three strategies are power writing, shared writing and writing from sources.

“Power writing is a method for building writing fluency through brief, timed writing events.” 

(Fisher & Frey, pg. 97, 2013)

By utilizing power writing students are able to put their ideas down on paper quickly and with accuracy. This can take place within all content areas and can be integrated daily as a routine. This will ensure students are given adequate practice with writing and aren’t required to write essays that they feel are daunting. As the routine is established, students get more comfortable and their writing fluency improves drastically.

“Shared writing is a term that is used to describe collaborative experiences between teacher and students.” 

(Fisher & Frey, pg. 98, 2013) 

By taking part in shared writing, students are discussing with the teacher what eventually will be put on paper by the teacher. This is to show students that things in print can carry a specific message. Interactive writing is similar, although the student is the writer.

“Writing from sources in an important aspect of content area learning.”

(Fisher & Frey, pg. 99, 2013)

 Writing to inform and explain is a great opportunity to produce writing in content areas such as social studies and science. These writings can be research based, with focused questions and maintain understanding of a given topic. Students can also be given the opportunity to write informative/explanatory pieces in which they convey ideas through their writing. Students can be given engaging opportunities to research and collect evidence to fulfill the requirements for such reading. Technology plays a huge factor in the success as our students are becoming more technologically savvy.

According to Ramos, Reading to Learn approach is a genre-based framework for helping culturally and linguistically diverse learners develop increased control over the academic language resources needed to successfully read and write in school (pg. 656, 2014). This approach will ultimately strengthen the student’s capability of writing persuasive essays that are deemed appropriate. An example of a prompt in which students can utilize such approach when dealing with US. History is the following:

Students will take part in the five stages by doing the following:

·      Building Field Stage – Students will interact in lessons surrounding the Constitution.

·      Preparing to Read Stage – Students will begin formulating ideas using what they have previously learned and decide upon the purpose of their persuasive essay.

·      Detailed Reading Stage – Students will use organizers to construct their arguments.

·      Joint Construction Stage – Students will begin writing their pieces with teacher support.

·      Individual Construction Stage – Students will work on their persuasive essays independently utilizing all previously taught strategies within the Reading to Learn approach.

References

 Fisher, D., & Frey, N. (2013). A Range of Writing Across the Content Areas. Reading Teacher, 67(2), 96-101.

Ramos, K. (2014). Teaching Adolescent ELs to Write Academic-Style Persuasive Essays. Journal Of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 57(8), 655-665.

Module 2: Comprehension

The blame game! When no one will take responsibility for the short comings of student’s success and points fingers on everyone else.

Upon initial reaction of the Vanderbilt Resource it reminded me of one of the flaws we have as educators. Why do we play this so called blame game? Why do we feel the need to not be held accountable for all areas of teaching regardless of what specific content are we teach?

Upon initial reaction of the article Using Collaboration, Co-Teaching, and Question Answer Relationships to Enhance Content Area Literacy it his close to home as I teach Special Education and often see my students struggle with content subjects. When working with special education students often times co-teacher exists. This co-teaching can be especially helpful in that the general education teacher has an expertise in teaching content areas while the special education teacher can teach the content area as well as strategy based instruction. This combination can prove be to very beneficial to special education students. I found it comforting to read the various strategies presented to assist in student learning. In particular, the QAR strategy is a personal favorite of mine. We utilize the question answer relationship strategy in our district and I really think it works. According to Fenty, McDuffie-Landrum, and Fisher (2012), QAR allows students to demonstrate their ability to determine importance, make inferences, and monitor their comprehension. These three components are very important pieces of information for us educators. By utilizing the QAR strategy we teach the students that there are two different ways to find answers to comprehension questions. These two ways to find answers are found in either the book or in my head. In the book simply means the answer can be found within the text whereas in my head means the students need to think beyond the text to compile an answer.

QAR is a beneficial strategy that can be utilized across all content areas. Since this strategy can be used across all content areas, repetition is extremely useful when working with special education students. The consistency allows for these particular students to eventually utilize this strategy on their own. Furthermore, as mentioned above this strategy can be used in collaboration and co-teaching situations. Table 1. Collaborative Planning Template for the Question Answer Relationships Strategy was a wonderful chart to provide insight as to just how co-teaching and collaboration can work in a classroom. This chart broke down the roles of the special education teacher and content area teacher while shedding light on the steps needed to execute the lesson and even the materials needed! I felt this was such a helpful chart that I made copies of it for some of my colleagues.

Moving on to the Vanderbilt Resource I particularly liked the Frayer Model. I find it interesting to think back to the initial video and how no one felt they were responsible yet there are so many great and useful resources to help assist in this learning/teaching component of the classroom. The Frayer Model is a graphic organizer that assists students in building vocabulary. Like much of our teaching, this model will only work once it has been heavily modeled. Why model? I have seen this time and time again. Teachers who tell the students to read the following pages and answer the questions. How are students expected to read and answer the questions if they cannot comprehend what they have read? Students need to have things modeled. They need to see how we think and how we work through such organizers. We need to show them the expectation and outcomes so they can follow suit. This doesn’t just apply with organizers but in almost every aspect of teaching.

Another component of the Vanderbilt Resource I found interesting was “Page 9” activating prior knowledge. “Students’ comprehension of new information can be improved by activating their prior knowledge, a process that helps students make connections between new information and information they already know.” (iris.peabody.vanderbuilt.edu, 2016) Activating prior knowledge can be helpful when working with special education students because often times they don’t or can’t conceptualize an idea on their own. They need prompting and someone to help initiate that thought. By doing so, these students can take what they are learning and make the connection to something they may already know.

Personally, I am a graphic organizer lover. Why might you ask? Simply spoken because I am a visual person. I have a very very hard time doing or understanding anything without seeing it. This can be especially difficult in my day to day life. For example, I am currently working on the baby’s nursery. Without physically putting things in the room and hanging things up, I can not for the life of me make a decision until I have seen it. It drives my husband nuts! In teaching special education students, I have come to learn that many of them need just that same level of visualization to understand or have an “ah-ha” moment in their own learning. Page 11 focused on graphic organizers and their uses. Graphic organizers allow for students to gather information into specific categories, relationships and etc. “Teachers can find or create a variety of graphic organizer templates to improve reading comprehension in the content areas.” (iris.peabody.vanderbuilt.edu, 2016) Once again we go back to this idealization that content area teachers can in fact teach “reading comprehension and vocabulary” by utilizing various strategies. These teachers just need to be guided in the right direction. Of course as mentioned previously, when introducing any new organizer, the teacher needs to model how to use it and what it’s purpose is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pIe6CZX6PM This was a quick video that focuses on co-teaching with special education students.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StP9VavNr10 This is a 10 minute video that focuses on vocabulary instruction across content areas in particular science in this video.

Fenty, N., McDuffie-Landrum, K. and Fisher, G. (2012). Using collaboration, co-

            teaching, and question answer relationships to enhance content area

            literacy. Teaching Exceptional Children, 44(6), pp.28-37. 

Iris.peabody.vanderbilt.edu, (2016). IRIS | Seconday Reading Instruction (Part 1):

            Teaching Vocabulary and Comprehension in the Content Areas. [online]

            Available at: http://iris.peabody.vanderbilt.edu/module/sec-

            rdng/cresource/#content [Accessed 15 Feb. 2016].