Assessing and Evaluating Students’ Learning: How Do You Know What They Have Learned?

I really appreciated the “Assessing and Evaluating Students’ Learning” reading. Assessment is an area that I’m familiar with as a student, but the handout was really my first “peek behind the curtain” as a future teacher.

One thing that I found particularly informative was the notion that evaluation should provide students with three things: (1) “a description of what they are doing and how well they are doing when they respond to literature”, (2) “a blueprint for potential improvement in their responses over time”, and (3) “ways of self-assessing so that they determine what they need to do to improve”. I think the idea that assessment is first and foremost about giving students a tool for growth is something that often goes overlooked. So often assessment is viewed primarily (or singularly) as a way for teachers, administrators, and institutions to evaluate students; rarely is it treated as a tool for the students themselves.

Another section I found thought provoking was the section that discussed “Reader-based” responses to student writing. As a student, when I get the chance to review a colleague’s writing, I typically respond to them from the position of a reader (partly because that’s simply what I am, and also) because I find it to be the least intimidating and confrontational form of response. To have someone else evaluating your writing is a vulnerable position to be in, and I’ve found that responding as a reader makes people more receptive to what I have to say and makes it more likely that I’ll give feedback that will actually be helpful. What I hadn’t considered before reading the handout was the fact that responding as a reader also invites the opportunity for the writer to come up with their own solutions to the issues that I point out. Rather than giving students a copy/paste solution to an issue, I can encourage them to thinking critically about the choices they have as writers.

While reading the Spokane Public Schools "Secondary Standards-Based Grading and Reporting Handbook", I had a question that kept arising as I was reading: Should students be assessed based on what they can do, or what they actually do? This sprung from the district’s stance that assessment should not be based on a student’s average scores, but on scores that reflect a student’s current ability (most recent/highest). The article also discussed the debilitating effects of “zeros” and the demotivating nature of slow score growth when a zero is factored into an average score. I get where the Spokane School district is coming from, and being a psychology major, I definitely understand the crippling effect that a zero score can have on a student’s future behavior (I myself have endured the slow and exhausting trudge that follows such a score). I agree that including them often misrepresents a student’s ability, however I can’t help but wonder if there’s a better solution then simply ignoring anomalous or early low scores. As teachers, we need to be able to report scores in a way that actually represents what a student can do, but we also need to prepare them for life beyond high school, where missing and late and half-assed work will not be accepted.

I’m sure there are other proposed solutions to this dilemma, but one that I can think of comes from a personal experience in college. I was taking a class and simply and honestly forgot to take the first exam of the class, scheduled for a weekend. I had no excuse that I felt made it acceptable to ask for a retake; I had simply forgotten to take it, and so I quietly resigned myself to my fate of having to ace the rest of my work for that class. A couple of weeks later, the instructor asked me to speak with her after class. I had taken courses from her before, so she was familiar with my work. She said that she felt like my current grade in the course (including the zero) was not representative of my knowledge or the hard work that I was putting in to the class. I explained that I had forgotten to take the first test and did not feel right about asking to retake it. She said that leaving my grade where it was did not sit right with her and so we devised a plan in which I was to write a short paper covering the material of the first test and the grade I received would replace the zero I got on the test.

Here we have an example of a teacher who both knows her students and is mindful of the ill effects that low scores can have. By virtue of this, she made the choice to address the low score with her student directly and turned it in to an opportunity for the student to grow and maintain a score that accurately reflected what the student knew. I think the mindfulness and direct engagement of a teacher can have a greater effect on a student’s growth and outlook than simply choosing to ignore low scores that drop an average. I understand that this approach would be a tough one to implement at a district level, but as a teacher I plan to be aware of what my students can do and what they actually do, and to address any disparities between the two.

California State Universities Expository Reading and Writing Course Assignment Template

The assignment template “for helping students read, comprehend, and respond to texts” was an informative overview of key concepts that should be covered as we teach our students to engage the reading process.

As I did an initial scan of the article, I wondered if the template, applied as a whole, would be a little overwhelming to try to cover within every reading/writing unit. While each stage of the reading/writing process, as it was laid out, seemed to be quite extensive and thorough (a definite upside of the template), I could also see it being quite a slog to get students through. However, the overview of the process, outlined at the beginning of the article, is what really changed my mind. I think the template makes a lot of structural sense. It covers parts of the reading/writing process that it is easy for a teacher to forget (especially in the pre-reading and post-reading sections). What the template lacks in conciseness it makes up for in comprehensiveness.

If I were to apply this template as a teacher, I think I would present only the basic outline of the process to my students at the beginning of the course without providing a ton of detail up front. Then, as we work through our first reading/writing assignment, I would help them flesh out what each of the steps of the outline looks like as it applies to our assignment, providing as many details and different approaches and resources as they find helpful. I could see this first assignment taking some time as the students slowly become familiar with each of the steps in the writing and reading process. As we move into our second reading/writing assignment, I would then start letting them make choices about how they want to engage each of the steps of the process (e.g. choosing between mapping the organizational structure or descriptive outlining when considering the structure of the text). Slowly, as we continue working through units, the students would become more familiar with the template and be able to engage each step of the process however they find works best for them.

Common Core State Standards

I’ve only been interacting directly with Common Core State Standards for about a year now. When I first started reading them my initial reaction was to bristle a little bit. It felt like a lot of information to soak in. How was I supposed to be able to remember all of this? Many of the standards seemed descriptively vague. How was I supposed to know if my students met the standards or not? How is everyone in the state supposed to teach the same standards? What about differentiation? What about the individual needs of each classroom? I had a lot of questions.

Over time and with a little more interaction with the Common Core State Standards, I’ve come to appreciate their value. One thing that helped me conceptualize the standards was to think of them as goals for growth rather than benchmarks to be met. I think this is one of the greatest strengths of the CCSS in that it really allows teachers the freedom to meet their students wherever they are and help them progress. Rather than giving students a standard they must achieve it gives them a framework for growth.  This means that the CCSSs can be applied to students who are high achievers just as well as it can be applied to those who are struggling; each student has room for progress.

I also found it helpful to look at the corresponding CCSSs for each successive grade level. In most cases, there is a common objective or theme within the corresponding CCSS, and each successive year simply brings out further nuances. This made the organization of the CCSS feel a lot more comprehensive to me and also made sense with regard to the teaching practice of building on prior knowledge.

Overall, I think I’m a fan of the Common Core State Standards. They aren’t without their challenges, and I think the Beach, Thein, and Webb handout did a good job of noting those. But overall, I think the standards, when applied the way they were intended to be applied, can provide a very helpful framework on which teachers can build a comprehensive curriculum.  

Graphic Novels in the Classroom

I’ve had a relatively meager degree of interaction with graphic novels (which surprises me a little because my interests and tendencies make me think that I would gravitate toward them more than I have). I have however enjoyed and had quite fulfilling reads of the graphic novels that I’ve managed to pick up.

The first interaction with graphic novels I remember encountering was a reprint series of the original Spider-Man comics, starting with the Amazing Fantasy Spiderman issue. I’m not really sure where the reprint series came from (might have been a thing the local newspaper was doing?), but I do remember it being a fun family thing that we did. We only got one issue a month and so my brothers and I would wait eagerly for the new issue to appear so we could figure out what had happened to Spidey after last month’s cliff hanger. In reflecting on this experience, I think there’s something to be said for this experience of waiting. Historically, a large part of the experience of reading graphic novels has been the drama induced by these cliff hangers, and the ensuing agony experienced by fans as they wait for the next issue to be released. There’s something there that is missed when graphic novels are released as a completed work. I think it can be related to the recent trend of “binge watching” TV shows. It can be fun to sit down and watch 12 hours of a show and get a complete narrative from beginning to end, but I also remember the days before online streaming where writers of TV shows loved to torment their audiences by dropping narrative bombs right at the end of episodes and then making fans wait a whole week to figure out what happens next. It’s a choice that writers make to forgo these waiting periods, but something is sacrificed as the waiting period is omitted.

The next graphic novel that I remember interacting with was Volume 15 of Usagi Yojimbo: Grasscutter 2. I stumbled across this one as I was foraging in my middle school library. It was the only graphic novel I ever found in that library and I think I mostly picked it up because I was so surprised to find a “comic book” in a school library. I almost thought some kid must have left it there by accident. I checked it out and to my surprise wasn’t told by the librarian to go back and check out a “real book” instead. Boy was this one a fun read. It’s a pretty violent graphic novel (ninja forest creatures slicing and dicing and whatnot) but the drama and character development that occurred throughout the book was captivating.

The most recent graphic novel I’ve read was the classic Batman: The Dark Knight Returns. This one was a little more challenging than the others that I have read, but it was also even more rewarding. It was more challenging because some of the images and dialogue required a closer analysis to really grasp what was going on, but the time was well spent as the themes throughout this graphic novel become rich and well developed.

I’m strongly in favor of using graphic novels in the classroom setting. As English teachers, I think we can become entrenched in the idea that literature simply refers to text based representations, but the reality is that encouraging literacy in students requires us to address a far broader range of material. Advertisements are a form of literature that warrant interpretation. Videos are a form of literature that warrant interpretation. Still images are a form of literature that warrant interpretation. And graphic novels are a form of literature that warrant interpretation. Graphic novels can in fact serve as a helpful sort of crossover between text based and image based forms of literature. I think graphic novels definitely serve an important purpose in the English classroom.

Discussion as a Way of Teaching

A number of the strategies in Discussion as a Way of Teaching dealt with preparing a group for discussion well before any discussion actually begins. A prevalent theme throughout the article is the importance of mutually agreed upon expectations for discussion. I had heard of groups agreeing on ground rules prior to discussion, but I had not encountered specific strategies for working with a group to help them develop their own ground rules for discussion. Initially, I was skeptical of this approach; I could see this approach being difficult for certain groups of students. Younger students might struggle to reflect on past discussion experience. Older students might have such diverse past discussion experience that consensus on ground rules could be difficult. What if the ground rules that the group generates aren’t particularly conducive to learning?  But as I continued reading and reflecting on this approach, I began to see its merits. The approach would need to be modified and augmented and guided by the instructor to fit their specific group of students and their goals, but allowing a group to create its own discussion ground rules can have some major benefits. Student generated guidelines for discussion encourage buy-in. Allowing them to have a role in deciding how discussions will be conducted empowers them to participate in those discussions. This strategy validates the voice of the students before discussion even begins.

Another theme that appeared throughout the article was the ground rule that discussion participants must preface their own comments by drawing connections to the ideas of the previous speaker. I could see this strategy adding a number of benefits to a group discussion. Enforcing this ground rule encourages participants to listen to what other people are saying and keeps the conversation cohesive. It also makes each speaker feel heard as the next speaker acknowledges something that they said. It could also limit the degree to which tangents veer from the topic at hand.

The “Newsprint Dialogues” strategy was an interesting approach to discussion largely because it reminded me of online comment conversations. Getting to walk around and comment on responses that other groups have made resembles a facebook post comment train. With this, comes an opportunity to teach students about the crossover between this kind of discussion and discussions that they may have online. It could be a great way to model for them a way to have thoughtful and fruitful conversations in this kind of context.