Assessing and Evaluating Students' Learning
I am afraid of assessment. Okay, I am not afraid of assessment but I am afraid that on an assessment my students won't record that they have learned anything. I am afraid that when it comes down to whether or not my students understood the lesson they will not record the things that I wished they had gotten from a text. I am a person who does not believe in testing on literature. As the text mentions, this practice doesn't foster a love for literature but instead instills fear in students. Instead of reading a text for enjoyment students will then read a text to digest facts and snippets of the story that they may be tested on. I believe that asking a general question like "What what was your favorite part of the story" is a better approach because it allows the students to give a wide variety of answers.
What I think "learning literature" means is not memorizing facts or the characteristics that a short story needs to have. I think that "learning literature" means understanding over-arching themes about the text. It means being able to articulate why you liked something you read and the value in that. I think that "learning literature" is a personal thing and will mean something different for all of my students. For that reason I believe my assessments will have wiggle room for my students to do or say the thing that they connect to the most. A student cannot just define a term they have to be able to use that term.
I really enjoyed the alternatives to "correct answer" tests section because it outlined how you can assess different types of things in your classroom. I appreciated that there was a list provided on the different things that we can evaluate in a essay. The section on evaluating classroom discussions was especially interesting to me because I had never thought of formally evaluating the discussion that takes place in my class but after reading the rubric it is something that I am going to look into and possibly try. One of the most important things that I must remember about assessment is that if my students do not provide me with the information I hoped they would on an assessment they I need to reflect and find out why they did not learn what I had hope. I would also need to figure out what would need to be done differently to improve the activities I did prior to the assessment.
What I think "learning literature" means is not memorizing facts or the characteristics that a short story needs to have. I think that "learning literature" means understanding over-arching themes about the text. It means being able to articulate why you liked something you read and the value in that. I think that "learning literature" is a personal thing and will mean something different for all of my students. For that reason I believe my assessments will have wiggle room for my students to do or say the thing that they connect to the most. A student cannot just define a term they have to be able to use that term.
I really enjoyed the alternatives to "correct answer" tests section because it outlined how you can assess different types of things in your classroom. I appreciated that there was a list provided on the different things that we can evaluate in a essay. The section on evaluating classroom discussions was especially interesting to me because I had never thought of formally evaluating the discussion that takes place in my class but after reading the rubric it is something that I am going to look into and possibly try. One of the most important things that I must remember about assessment is that if my students do not provide me with the information I hoped they would on an assessment they I need to reflect and find out why they did not learn what I had hope. I would also need to figure out what would need to be done differently to improve the activities I did prior to the assessment.
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