I am glad to have been of service in acting as a sounding board. I only wish I had more experience to offer and to collaborate more on a professional level.
I remember a variety of formats for testing when I was in school. I was much more comfortable with the "repeat what you read or hear" than I was with the creative answers but I eventually grew to be comfortable with both.
Having only experienced being a student and not a teacher, I really am starting from scratch when it comes to using assessments. But taking a stab at it, I will say that I like the "word test" for several reasons. It's flexible, it forces the student to be creative and at the same time allows the student to respond in his or her own language which is incredibly important as Dr. Britton said several times in his speech.
Looking at "collaborative test making", I was always afraid that I would make the questions too hard and the other kids would be mad at me. But incorporating "test prepartion" with the creation of questions would make this a much more socially agreeable option without dumbing down the questions.
As for "creative assessments", I always found that music is a great focal point and can help bring together new information with something already familiar. Again this would be brilliant idea because it is an opportunity to blend learning and schoolwork with something deeply personal to the students like their favorite music.
My favorite of the outlined assessments is the "reaction or response to a story". I am always curious to know how other people react to important themes or classic stories. It is an indirect way to find out about their inner selves and hopefully find out a better way to incentivise learning for that individual.
I have learned a lot of the jargon (but still missed so much) that is associated with being a professional teacher. In the future, I hope to incorporate my fledgling understanding into new paradigms for what it means to be a teacher and part of the education system. Thank you for allowing me to be your student as well as a learning partner.
- Shannon
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Tchundi ch. 13 INSPIRATION
So, I am very excited and inspired after reading ch. 13 of Exploring and Teaching ELA. I appreciate this textbook for this class because it is not only filled with theory but also with practical classroom application and alternative assessments. While reading this chapter I scribbled down pages of notes/ideas concerning my current unit of study: The Outsiders.
My favorite alternate assessment ideas included the Word Test, Collaborative Test Making and requirements for creative assignments. I would like to share some ideas I drafted after reading this chapter. I would appreciate any comments/suggestions you have :) (pg. 364-365)
For Collabortaive Test Making I thought I would take this a step further and incorporate test preparation along with this alternate assessment. I like to explicitly teach my students the three levels of questioning used on standard tests such as the 8th grade EOG and I thought it would be great to gave my students' Outsider Book Groups create tests incorporating the three levels of questions learned and practiced. Then I could rotate the students' tests (after checking them of course) among Book Groups.
Creative Assessments: One activity I thought of for a Tic-Tac-Toe assessment could be for student Book Clubs to create a CD Soundtrack and cover for The Outsiders. Either me or my students would choose 4 essential scenes from the book (maybe reflecting various conflicts) and each group member would have to link a song they know/like that would adequately represent the scene's mood, conflict, importance and characterization. Then as a group they could conduct their CD Cover and we could burn these CDs and rotate them amongst Book Groups or even classes on different teams.
Thank you for listening to my ideas... I was inspired and motivated after reading this chapter and I thought this Blog was a great place to bounce ideas off on you. I appreciate it :)
My favorite alternate assessment ideas included the Word Test, Collaborative Test Making and requirements for creative assignments. I would like to share some ideas I drafted after reading this chapter. I would appreciate any comments/suggestions you have :) (pg. 364-365)
For Collabortaive Test Making I thought I would take this a step further and incorporate test preparation along with this alternate assessment. I like to explicitly teach my students the three levels of questioning used on standard tests such as the 8th grade EOG and I thought it would be great to gave my students' Outsider Book Groups create tests incorporating the three levels of questions learned and practiced. Then I could rotate the students' tests (after checking them of course) among Book Groups.
Creative Assessments: One activity I thought of for a Tic-Tac-Toe assessment could be for student Book Clubs to create a CD Soundtrack and cover for The Outsiders. Either me or my students would choose 4 essential scenes from the book (maybe reflecting various conflicts) and each group member would have to link a song they know/like that would adequately represent the scene's mood, conflict, importance and characterization. Then as a group they could conduct their CD Cover and we could burn these CDs and rotate them amongst Book Groups or even classes on different teams.
Thank you for listening to my ideas... I was inspired and motivated after reading this chapter and I thought this Blog was a great place to bounce ideas off on you. I appreciate it :)
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Writing, Dialect and Social Status
I spend more time now in my 4th year of teaching allowing students to share more of their writing with one another than ever before. After attending the Capital Area Writing Project (CAWP) I was reminded about how important it is for students to have an audience. Without an audience a students is a writer; with an audience the student is suddenly transformed into an author. Your discussion of chapter 9 in Tchundi caused me to question the role that language and dialect plays in student writing.
Slang and informal language is so dominant in my students’ lives it has become ingrained in them. My students literally do not realize that they are grammatically incorrect when they say “he go to the bathroom.” This lack of standard English usage obviously is prominent in their writing in addition to their speech. I am hesitant (and was more so in my first years teaching) to have students share unpolished work at times because of the dialect and language they use. Tschundi’s discussion on dialect as identity reminds me that even “non-standard” writing needs to be shared and embraced. This is not to say “proper” grammar and usage should be ignored, but in order flourish in our writing we need to share and be exposed to each others’ writing. In order to truly build a community of writers we need to allow students to be in a position of author.
Tsundi brings up that many see Ebonics and divergent dialects as “broken” and “lower-class” dialects. (295) It is difficult for me to teach “proper” grammar and usage to students who are unaccustomed to hearing it throughout their day. Like Lisa brought up in class last week, it is our job to expose students to this language and explicitly teach them HOW to use this language and WHY, “The motivation behind this instruction has been to provide students with access to higher social levels.” Yes, it is our job as English Language Arts teachers to teach students to be critical readers, competent writers and well-presented. It is also our job to urge and expose students to as much mobility as possible.
At our school in Durham we have to attend “Poverty-Training” professional development sessions dealing with how our population of students does not necessarily reflect the middle-class values and structure we teach to. Our middle school is a middle-class setting. There is much discussion about how oral language and body language are all intertwined in this middle class environment. If you are interested here are the titles to these books we read for our sessions. It all links with dialect discussions we have been discussing in class:
1 A Framework for Understanding Poverty by Ruby K. Payne
2 Learning Structures/ Understanding Learning (workbooks) by Payne
Slang and informal language is so dominant in my students’ lives it has become ingrained in them. My students literally do not realize that they are grammatically incorrect when they say “he go to the bathroom.” This lack of standard English usage obviously is prominent in their writing in addition to their speech. I am hesitant (and was more so in my first years teaching) to have students share unpolished work at times because of the dialect and language they use. Tschundi’s discussion on dialect as identity reminds me that even “non-standard” writing needs to be shared and embraced. This is not to say “proper” grammar and usage should be ignored, but in order flourish in our writing we need to share and be exposed to each others’ writing. In order to truly build a community of writers we need to allow students to be in a position of author.
Tsundi brings up that many see Ebonics and divergent dialects as “broken” and “lower-class” dialects. (295) It is difficult for me to teach “proper” grammar and usage to students who are unaccustomed to hearing it throughout their day. Like Lisa brought up in class last week, it is our job to expose students to this language and explicitly teach them HOW to use this language and WHY, “The motivation behind this instruction has been to provide students with access to higher social levels.” Yes, it is our job as English Language Arts teachers to teach students to be critical readers, competent writers and well-presented. It is also our job to urge and expose students to as much mobility as possible.
At our school in Durham we have to attend “Poverty-Training” professional development sessions dealing with how our population of students does not necessarily reflect the middle-class values and structure we teach to. Our middle school is a middle-class setting. There is much discussion about how oral language and body language are all intertwined in this middle class environment. If you are interested here are the titles to these books we read for our sessions. It all links with dialect discussions we have been discussing in class:
1 A Framework for Understanding Poverty by Ruby K. Payne
2 Learning Structures/ Understanding Learning (workbooks) by Payne
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