Assessment I

Questions to Guide Assessment

Assessment Resources

Set up a Teacher Notebook for Assessment
courtesy of MIT graduates Abigail Blastos, Laura Henderson, and Cindy Lingel ('02)

Parent Survey from Bonnie Campbell Hill's book, Developmental Continuums. Downloads as a pdf file

IRA position statement on High-Stakes Testing

Assessment II

Assessment Therapy:
To prepare yourself to read the assignment for Assessment Session II, look over these assessment scenarios “posed” by teachers who need your help. Select one of them, then read the assignment with this teacher in mind. What information can you find to help him or her? Be prepared to work with this in class during Assessment II. During class, you and others who also selected the same teacher will pool your resources to come up with Assessment Therapy suggestions. You will share your suggestions in a PowerPoint presentation for the class. You do not have to prepare anything before class -- you will have time in class to work on the presentation.

• Barry Hoonan
  Barry teaches a multiage class of children from 9 to 11 years old. His is an integrated curriculum in which reading and writing instruction span the subject areas and time slots during the day. Barry is particularly strong in guiding readers to think deeply about their reading. However, he has noticed recently that many of his students misspell large numbers of words in their journals and on final drafts of writing projects. Parent conferences are coming up, and he is concerned that he doesn't have the information he needs about his students' spelling strengths or what to do about increasing the words that they can spell in their independent writing.
  How can he gather this information, and what should he do with it?
  
• Loretta Quant
  Loretta' s first grade students regularly read predictable books in their literature circles, yet she wonders about their individual reading strengths. She is concerned that she doesn't really know how well they read. Most children seem to be able to carry on discussions about their literature circles books, and almost all children have something to write about during the weekly journal sessions. What strategies can Loretta use to gather and synthesize more information about her students' oral reading strengths? What guidelines should she use to help her determine if the behaviors she observes truly represent reading processes that she should encourage?
  
• Mardie McIlmoyl
  Mardie observes that her middle school students struggle to answer comprehension questions after they have read a passage, and many of their answers seem to come directly from the text. She wonders if they are truly absorbing the information they read. She is also getting tired of writing questions about every passage. What advice can you give Mardie to help her gain information about how her students comprehend the various kinds of reading they do?
  
• Frankie Sylvestal
  One of Frankie’s third graders, Bubba, befuddles her. It is early in the year, so she doesn’t yet have a lot of information about his reading and writing from in-class work. She has looked at his standardized test scores – very low for reading comprehension and vocabulary. She needs some solid information – what assessments could she give to get a more complete picture of Bubba’s strategies and effectiveness as a reader?
  
• Cable Hogue
  Cable is a first-year teacher hired a week before school started. In his class of 32 second graders, 12 students are just learning to speak, read, and write in English. He reads aloud and weaves literacy experiences throughout his students' day. Yet he doesn't feel he really knows how much they understand from their reading. He has also discovered that his students struggle with writing. Parent conferences are coming up, and he wants to have some concrete information to share about each child's growth as a reader and writer. What assessments could he use to give him an idea of where his students stand in their literacy growth in reading and writing?
  
• Mooley Danzuka
  Mooley believes that the best way to guide students to develop as readers and writers is to help them take ownership of the process. He wants to begin some structured self-evaluation for his fifth graders so that they understand their own strengths and needs as learners. What guidance can you give him as he looks for assessment tools to use?