Literacy for the iGeneration » Assessment

Classroom management/discipline/literacy assessment

gjacobs — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 20:51:16 +0000

I did my stand up routine this week to go over classroom management, behavior management, and the relationship to literacy assessment. It was way too much teacher talk. We then worked on planning for the first two weeks of school. Students will be posting those to their wikis and hopefully use some of it when they actually go to teach. I really didn’t do enough with linking literacy, literacy assessment to classroom management and behavior. In hindsight, I wish I had shown the following clips. I think it would have made the point so much better than my blathering on did.

I made the point in one class, but not the other that behavior problems often are related to literacy issues. If a student is struggling, he or she often acts out. It’s safer to be thought lazy, or “bad” than dumb.

At least there is always next year.

Up the Down Staircase

Blackboard Jungle

The beautiful thing about these clips is that they’re from old movies. The point is that the issues teachers are dealing with today, aren’t new. The teens portrayed in these two films are now old enough to be parents or maybe even grandparents. So if Harry Wong and all those other classroom management/behavior management gurus had the answers, why are we still struggling? I think the issues are muh deeper and something we need to continue to explore.

Teaching, Grant Writing, Assessing Writing

gjacobs — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 00:31:08 +0000

This week I gave the students time to workshop their grants. I don’t think I did a very good job. I didn’t give them a specific task. I know better than that, but it’s been a rough week (for personal reasons), so I guess I won’t beat myself up too badly for that. Their grants are due on April 1. There are a lot of really good ideas that I’m interested in seeing. What I’m wondering about is the quality of writing and completeness. Well, I’ll give them feedback and they’ll have time to revise if necessary.

We spent a far amount of time on assessing student writing. First I explained the protocol to the students, then I did it two different ways. In the first class, I did the fishbowl with me facilitating the group, then after modeling, I sent the students off to assess writing in their groups. It turns out that more than half of the students didn’t bring in any writing. This despite the fact that I had it posted in the syllabus and on the wiki for several weeks. Some said, well my SBE doesn’t do any writing. I had told them that if that wasn’t the case to figure out a way to get some writing (by asking to try it with the students). But nope. Nothing. I’m displeased. But we punted. The groups that didn’t have any writing I told to work on their grants. In the second group (the smaller class) more of the students brought in writing whichw was great. I also worked it differently. I first modeled it in a fishbowl, then had other students come in an fishbowl it. We continued to fishbowl it the whole time. As time went on, the students seemed more comfortable with the protocol, but they really weren’t pulling anything out of the writing. I tried to keep my mouth shut, but wasn’t always successful. I’m especially bothered by the focus on surface features. Few of the students seemed able to analyze the cognitive work going on or the abilities the students are bringing to the classroom. Maybe I’m expecting too much. The bottom line is that I’m going to have to do a better job scaffolding that in the future. One thing for sure, I’m going to share Milroy & Milroy’s historical research on the complaint tradition.

I was really disturbed by the low energy and interest level of the students, so on Thursday I asked the students for their feedback. We spent a long time on it. As usual there were a handful of students who contributed a lot and a few who said absolutely nothing. That’s discouraging. I’m really discouraged with some of the math students. I feel as if I’m jumping through hoops to provide materials related to their content area, but I feel as if I just can’t win.

What keeps me going is that there are enough students who are engaged and interested and willing and wanting to try things out.

Anyway, the student feedback was really helpful even if it was just a small vocal group. I did also collect index cards with feedback from everyone, so that’s really helpful. At least I get to hear the quieter people that way. I really want to hear everyone’s ideas.

So, I have some ideas for the rest of the semester. There is only one class next week. Three students will be co-teaching a lesson. Then I’ll be at AERA. I do have an online discussion forum set up on this blog. For April I’ll be having the students create lesson plans with materials I find. I have lots of things that I want to share with the students in terms of writing activities. I backed off on a lot of what I had originally planned because I wanted to be responsive to their needs, but now I think I’m going to go back to some of those plans. They also requested time spent on talk about the cert exams and behavior/classroom management. So we’ll do that as well. We’ll see how it goes. I’ll keep trying and I hope the students will too.

Finally, in the second class, three students taught a lesson using the materials on WWI that I gave them. I selected their lesson from all the ones that were handed in because it did the best job of drawing on English, Social Studies, and Math to support the overall issues raised within the text. The students, however, struggled a bit when it came to actually delivering the lesson. It wasn’t as integrated as it appeared on paper, and the students didn’t do as much with the text as they could have. The good part was that following the lesson they discussed what went well and what changes they would make if they did it again, and they were able to identify areas they could have improved. So that is good and that is really what I want them to achieve. I’m really not looking for perfect lessons (as if there is such as thing). What I’m really looking for is the ability to reflect on their teaching and use that to improve their teaching. Maybe I need to do a minilesson reflexivity and praxis. Hmm.

Assessments and Rubric Writing

gjacobs — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 15:06:33 +0000

Last week was a continuation of looking at assessments. As a class we created an assessment for the wiki everyone is to generate. I found it to be a rather interesting assignment, and that the discussion was actually a bit more illuminating in the evening class than in the afternoon class. In the evening class there was some disagreement about whether to assign point values or gradations of success for the different qualities that were identified. This discussion lead to some excellent points about the strengths and weaknesses of different types of rubrics that we didn’t get to in the other class. The decision in both classes, I believe (and correct me if I’m wrong), was that we’ll use the assessment we created to provide feedback at midsemester. I’ll schedule lab time for us to look at the wikis and use the assessment to guide feedback. Then at the end of the semester, we’ll use it more quantitatively or to do summative assessment or evaluation. In general, I was more or less pleased with the outcome of the class work. We were able to explore the concept and purposes of assessment. More than anything I want students to understand that assessment is to be used to inform instruction. I also want students to understand that assessment shouldn’t be an after thought but should be an integral part of instruction. I’m not convinced we got to that understanding. After creating the wiki assessment the students worked in groups to create an assessment for something in their content area. It happens every semester. Some groups decide to do something they experienced when they were in high school. I struggle with that because it’s simply recreating existing practice, but in some respects I guess it’s ok because they are using it because it was a powerful learning experience for them. My job then is to push their thinking farther. Not every wheel needs to be recreated. Following the creation of the assessment, I asked the students to assess their assessments using material I had gathered from a graduate course I observed. I did a terrible job explaining the assessment assessment. I did a better job in the second class, but still didn’t do a good job. The biggest issue is that I lifted the assessment wholesale. Bad idea. I know better than that. To make something really work, I need to adapt it. For the most part, I just can directly lift something. Lesson learned. Next time I use it, I’m going to rework the assessment assessment to make it more useable.Finally, we ended by going over the CALLA strategy taken from the Math/Literacy book. I talked a lot. I’m not sure the instruction was particularly helpful. But I really wanted to share the CALLA tools with the students because I found them to be straight forward and useful. The strengths of the CALLA tools are that they move the students in and out of speaking, listening, reading, and writing all within the same task, so language and literacy is really reinforced as tools for understanding. Secondly, I liked the CALLA tools because they reinforce metacognition.So that’s it for this week.

Assessment

gjacobs — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 13:50:15 +0000

I had planned on using this blog to keep track of the things we do in class. The purpose is both to help students and to help myself when I reteach the class in the future. It will give me a place to capture what occured in class, what worked and what didn’t. But, the best laid plans of mice and men… We’re in the midst of interviewing people for positions at Fisher and that’s taking up a lot of my time. Plus I’m trying to write an article, I have a chapter to write (due March 1), and two presentations to prepare for. But enough excuses.So, here’s what I remember happening last week.We did a problem based learning activity where the students were in teams. I gave the students a case about a student whose grades were dropping and the parent was asking for guidance. The students had to come up with hypothesis based on the facts. My point was that instructional decisions should be made based on data gathered from multiple sources about the students. We don’t just do something because we like it or it’s worked in the past, but because it is the most appropriate method to meet the needs of the content and the student as well as our teaching philosophy.We moved through the PBL then developed strategies for helping this young man. My other objective for this activity was for students to understand than these types of things do get done in team meetings, especially at the middle school level. We too often get trapped into identifying a student as this that or something else where as it is more beneficial to identify the student’s strengths and areas we can help them build.The second part of class involved setting up individual wikis. I’m hopeful that the students will be able to use these in the future, or at least develop ways of thinking about integrating technological tools into their teaching so that they have multiple options.