Last Sunday
NCTE held an amazing chat hosted by Franki Sibberson and Antero Garcia on
formative assessment. I’m embarrassed to share that it has only been in the
last four years that I have even thought about formative assessment. While my
elementary education program was good, there are definite gaps in my learning.
We talked a lot about assessing students, but it was never broken down into
formative and summative assessments. It was only in getting my second masters
to be an administrator that I heard the two terms. Wow. I remember sitting in
the class thinking of how powerful it was. I clearly remember reflecting that
so much focus is on the summative assessment when, in my mind, formative is the
critical piece.
I am now
constantly reflecting on assessment in my classroom. Sure we have the “big”
assessments that loom over us – ISATs (our state test), benchmarks, etc. – but
in my mind they don’t create the picture of who the children are that fill my
room. It is the daily assessments that do. This week I reflected on all of the
ways that I “assessed” my students and what those assessments told me. I
thought I would share just a few here today.
Status of
the Class
In reading
class we begin each day the same. Kids enter, pull out their assignment book,
and fill it out. One student walks the room and initials each book to ensure it
is filled out while I call out their names. They tell me what book they are
reading and what page they are on. (I began this after reading IN THE MIDDLE
from Atwell.) This is just a quick check in to see where my students are in
their books. What I love is the comments:
Owen
checking in with Bomb by Sheinkin told me his page number and said, “You
were right, I love this book.” Several kids immediately swiveled in their seats
to check it out.
Leah
shouted her page number for Paperboy and said, “When am I going to learn
his name? This is making me crazy.” The kids who had read it began to whisper
excitedly.
Madi looked
up from When the Butterflies Came and said her page number before
looking back at the book. Lexi and Sari looked at her and then me, “She’s at the
part!!” Madi looked up and grinned.
The buzz of
excitement, the titles being shared, the comments about books let me gauge the
pulse of our reading community.
Read Aloud
My three
reading classes meet for fifty-five minutes each. In my mind, that time is far
too short. As a result, I don’t do novel length read alouds often. (Novel
length read alouds are read by homeroom teachers instead.) For my current
poetry unit, however, I do. Sharon Creech’s Hate That Cat gives me the
opportunity to teach figurative language embedded in a text that they love. It
works beautifully for this purpose and the kids love it. On Wednesday I was
reading to them and we reached a poem that said,
This is just to say
That Skitter McKitter has run away.
In all
three classes a gasp rose from the collective group, a clear sign of engagement.
When I finished the poem, I closed the book. That was our stopping point in
each class so we could finish on Thursday and take our unit test (summative
assessment) on Friday. The outcry that rose upon the book being closed made me
smile. Many comments were shared about how I left them at a cliffhanger. As we
moved to independent reading and conferring, I heard whispered conversations –
would Creech let Jack’s cat leave and not return? Someone said no, she wouldn’t
be that mean. Another child said, “But remember Sky…” J These kids are invested in the book and it is
amazing.
RTI
I teach six students each day
in our reading intervention class. We do a variety of things – work with short
texts, check out websites like Wonderopolis, read alouds, work with fluency and
comprehension, etc. Friday was one of those days you dread as a teacher. I
didn’t feel great before school, but thought I’d be fine. I arrived at school and
knew that I had been wrong. My stomach was rolling, by lunch I had a slight fever.
At that point I knew that I just needed to push through. By the time I could
get a sub, it would be time to go home. With that thought, my RTI class came
in.
I looked at them and
confessed, I felt horrible. I didn’t think I could teach an entire lesson. I
asked each to grab an iPad and said I thought we could work on reading
comprehension. I wanted them to think of a topic they were interested in – any
topic. For the next 15 minutes they were to research that topic and monitor
their comprehension. When they learned something they thought they would want
to share with us, they needed to jot it down so they could remember it later.
What followed was possibly the most amazing fifteen minutes of RTI this year. Each child was beyond engaged. They researched a variety of topics, from Kazu Kibuishi to whether cheerleading is considered a sport.
They were far from silent,
shouting out cool facts as they went and having conversations as they read. The
text they were reading was far above their reading level, yet they all were understanding
what they read. I sat back, tears pricking at the corners of my eyes, and was
amazed. When I called time they immediately began to buzz about the information
they learned. Several shared that one article led them to another, and another.
My favorite comment came from Simon (who previously did not enjoy reading),
While I had created the
lesson on the spot as a time filler when I couldn’t “teach”, I gleaned more
formative assessment data than I had ever dreamed. When engaged with a subject
matter that was important to them, all six students were highly successful
readers. When allowed to talk without reminders for quiet, without
admonishments to get back to their reading, they deepened their comprehension. Amazing.
Formative assessment is part of our daily lives in our classrooms. If you would like to continue your thinking on it, please check out NCTE’s amazing position statement on it HERE.
Also, be sure to check out Franki Sibberson's blog, A Year of Reading, for more posts about formative assessment next week. I think this is a conversation we need to continue.
