Module 6: Assessment
Teachers spend their entire day teaching students. They teach content, skills and strategies, and even how to reflect. In order to ensure that students are actually learning what is being taught, it is critical that they are assessed in some way. Many assessments are districtwide or part of a packaged curriculum, but there are also assessments conducted informally during every lesson that help pave the path of instruction. The results of these assessments can determine students' achievement and be used to improve this achievement by shifting the instruction in the classroom or level of support as needed.
According to the National Institute of Literacy (2007) formative assessments are the most useful in determining whether students met the objective for individual lessons in the curriculum. These assessments are considered formative "evidence from them is used to adapt instruction to meet student needs” (p.28). In the end this is what I feel assessment should be for; to make sure that students are meeting a lesson's objective and to adjust instruction accordingly if not. Using questioning as a gage of skill development and process is one of the most meaningful types of assessments we have access to as teachers. Asking the right questions can not only reveal whether students understand a concept, but also whether are not they are using a reading skill or strategy effectively. A teacher might ask students to turn and talk to answer "What does the word isolation mean?" and then write on a post-it "How did you figure out the meaning of the word isolation?" The answer to the first question would reveal content understanding and the second strategy use (p. 28).
Tamara L. Jetton and Patricia A. Alexander (2001) introduce us to another type of assessment: interest assessment. There are two types of interest that teachers should be aware of and attempt to assess; individual interest and situational interest. Individual interest “represents a concern that reaches deeply into an individual’s cognitive and affective nature,” while “Situational interest, is evoked from the immediate environment and can be more temporal or fleeting.... In other words, this manifestation of arousal is not linked to an individual’s sense of self as much as to the attributes of the current situation or context” (p. 305). What this means is students might be interested because they feel the content personally connects to or affects them or their interest stems from the engagement they are getting from the content or way it is being presented. Interest is important because it often determines the level at which students will comprehend. High levels of interest in reading materials have been linked to deeper levels of comprehension (p. 308). Interest can best be assessed through a think aloud, but this process is not perfect. However teachers choose to do so, knowing students' interest level and catering the content and presentation of material to meet student interest can help ensure they are learning what is being taught.
While much of the work of assessing students, especially informally falls on the classroom teacher, the reading specialist also plays a part. Reading specialists have a critical importance in schools from the elementary to the secondary level. Their work can range from providing direct student support, working with teachers to find ways to support individual students or ways to improve the curriculum to meet the needs of all students, and working with administrators in designing curriculum and assessment. Often this results int he administration of diagnostic assessments, which according to Jetton and Alexander can determine students current level of reading ability and how that ability stacks up to grade level expectations. In addition, these assessments can be used to "design instruction that integrates information learned in steps one through four and that results in content and literacy development" (p. 30).
When it comes to assessments, reading specialists have the additional goal of making sure that the summative assessments a school is choosing truly assesses what is being taught. In the video module by the Wisconsin DPI featuring Laura Adams and Barb Novac, I was introduced to the idea of conducting a Literary Assessment Review. In a Literary Assessment Review teachers, specialists, coaches, and administrators get together to discuss the state of assessments in the district. Rather than looking at assessments broadly they determine their purpose for a review from the onset. One such purpose could be to look at the content of the assessment and ensure that what is being assessed matches the objectives for the school or the greater common core standards. Once the purpose is established the team specifies grade levels they will be considering when looking at assessments and then lists all assessments. Once this base work is done, details are then listed about each assessment and analyzed by the team. The team then makes a plan for improving the assessments as needed.
In my district the common assessments used in literacy from kindergarten through fifth grade are Teacher's College Running Records, quarterly Writing on Demand graded according to rubrics from Lucy Calkins, Words Their Way inventories, and Prose Constructed Responses graded according to the PARCC rubric. It is important that the reading specialist understands each of these assessments and what the "Meeting Grade Level" expectations are for each assessment at each grade level. Once specialists are aware of the expectation, they need to know what can be done for students who are not meeting the standard on any of these assessments and whether the responsibility for providing that intervention lies on the teacher the specialist or some other support staff in the building.
For curriculum decisions data from all of the sources along with anecdotal data from teachers shared at curriculum meetings is used. One example is that the "Meeting Grade Level" standard for narrative writing was changed based on a consensus across teachers and the numbers that expecting students in fourth grade to write at a level 10 in September and a level 10 again in June didn't make sense. Since most of the students who had scored a 10 in June scored at a 9 in September, the expectation was adjusted. The types of narrative skills taught throughout the year were also adjusted with the first unit being more of a repeat of third grade with a few lessons on different types of endings for stories. In June students were taught about flashbacks, foreshadowing, and varying dialogue tags, all skills that would help students to score a 10.
The only data used for student decisions in ILA are running records. The only way students can receive basic skills support in reading, unless they qualify for special education services, is if their running record score for the end of the quarter is "Below Grade Level." In fourth grade students are supposed to be reading at a level Q for the end of third quarter. To receive additional support from the reading specialist they must be at a level O or lower. While I understand there needs to be a cut off, there are some students that might be at a P running record, but need to support in writing about their reading or students who have stalled at level P for multiple quarters. With the way the system is currently designed, these students are not pulled or supported by the reading specialist at all.
In conclusion, assessments are a very interesting part of the educational system, especially at the elementary level. They should be constantly evolving and used to inform instruction. The specialist in the schools should not only understand the formative assessments and how to support students who do not meet expectations, but they should also be a liaison to curriculum supervisors in sharing how assessments or curriculum need to be modified for student success. Results on assessments can reveal gaps in instruction and curriculum that need to be addressed.
