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 :)