Assessment is a big weakness of mine right now. It just seems like there are not enough hours in the day to properly grade and process my students' work. As a writing teacher, I could spend countless hours reading the work of my 140 students and providing feedback. If I spend merely one minute on each student's work, that comes out to 140 minutes--2 hours and 20 minutes. And it certainly takes me longer than that...
On top of that, I started out with no real idea of what effective assessment looks like. How do I effectively measure student learning of an objective when there are so many variables: word choice and format of the questions, comprehension and recall, the amount of time testing takes? It's overwhelming at best and sometimes seems impossible. I have hope, however, that the more I get the hang of the everyday motions of being a teacher--lesson planning, issuing and documenting consequences, calling parents, attending meetings, handling paperwork--the more time and energy I will have to assess my students before, during, and after learning objectives.
The chapter we read on "Classroom Assessment of Literacy Growth and Content Learning" was helpful in providing ideas and models of assessment. I particularly liked the idea of having students create learner autobiographies in which they "examine their personal histories as readers, writers, and learners both in and out of school" (101). It would be helpful to understand a student's experience with and feelings toward the subject area in his or her own words. The Observational Checklist to Screen for Struggling Readers was also helpful in providing ideas for informal assessments. I liked its specificity in body language and the links between content comprehension and behavior.
I agree that effective assessment involves students as partners. I liked the idea of having students recommend possible assessment activities, create rubrics, use rubrics in grading their own and each others' work, and engage in self-reflection about their performance. I have used rubrics in editing and peer review in the past, but I would like to challenge students to create a rubric for an assignment in the future. I also liked the idea of fill-in-the-blank learning inventories such as: "This week I really liked ______ because __________; what really confused me this week was __________; and I would like to know more about ________ because _________." I think that for my sixth graders this would seem less intimidating and would provide more structure than simply asking questions reflecting on the material.
I think I will return to this chapter in the future as a resource for assessment ideas and as a guide for specific modes of assessment.
