Response Log Entry

Like Module 2, Module 3 was very content-heavy. It began with various looks at assessment. The TeacherVision website was pretty much a review. It is always worth restating that assessment is continuous and on-going. I have experienced and witnessed both formative and summative assessments. Formative assessments are concurrent with teaching and learning. Summative assessments are after teaching and learning are over with. However, I would like to mention that summative assessments can be formative to as student that is intent on his/her own improvement. The Kathy Au video was superior. That woman really knows her stuff and can state it plainly. I do think that end-of-year assessments can be used for baseline assessments (for the following grade). I also think a lot assessment practices are dependent upon the skills and experience of the teacher. New teachers, such as myself, need to strictly abide by assessments and become assessment-fluent to ensure the correct evaluation is obtained. More experienced teachers require fewer anecdotal notes, and other assessments because their minds are more in tune with each students level and progress in each area. I have found these teachers truly dislike 9-week assessments due to their time consumption that takes away from instructional time, and that their mental assessments are every bit as accurate as the formal assessments. For me, I need to assess to confirm that grade level benchmarks are being met. The evaluation portfolio seems like a particularly advantageous assessment method, with additional uses, like parent conferences and teacher evaluations. I also love what she said about a rich curriculum is the best way to prepare students to do well on a test. Teachers cannot predict exactly what situation the test will present. The rich curriculum covers most, if not all possible contingencies because the student has learned the higher level thinking necessary. The module proceeded with various types of assessment, such as shadowing and keeping anecdotal records, checklists, student surveys, and interviews. All of these would be important for a teacher trying to get to know his/her students and establishing a type of baseline from which to develop lesson material. These also serve as a start to the portfolio. GIST is still not well understood by me, other than something to do with checking for understanding during a teacher-student conference. Internet searches were not very helpful. However, conferences seem like a great tool to find out some things you cannot know from daily teaching and activities. (Is conferencing really the correct word? Would confer not be the proper base verb?) The next progression was informal reading inventories. The IRI FAQ paper was interesting. The reliability statements lent the IRIs to doubt. However, it was important to note that the paper said no single assessment should even be used exclusively. I did take issue with the statement that IRIs should be administered at the end of a school year, then again at the beginning of the next. Thats two IRIs with no teaching between them, and is, therefore, redundant. I have used the QRI-5 assessment (last term) and found its results surprisingly consistent with other assessments. Reading the QRI-5 manual again was good. I listened to the Pam and Cynthia audios, though found Pams a little tedious. Yet, it is understandable that the correct administration of the QRI-5 is imperative. Assessing the assessments: AR: The United States government is a highly flawed organization, and in many ways it is terrible, is it not? Yet it is the best governmental system in the world. I think if there was a world-wide vote on this the U.S. would win hands down. The AR program is like this (in response to the Mod 3 article "How the Accelerated Reader program Can Be Counterproductive

for High School Students"). I have yet to hear anyone dispute the positive correlation between the amount of time spent reading and reading comprehension level. This is the basis for the AR program. It is certainly flawed and imperfect. But the show-stoppers, the things that make AR unacceptable, are they really the AR program? Or are they more about how the program is implemented? I think they AR program can be a wonderful program if properly done. It should not kill motivation to read, but it should encourage non-readers to read much more. If motivation is killed, then it is done wrongly. I love when school requires me to read non-text books. It's even better when they give me a choice. As I understand AR, there is a lot of flexibility in how it can be (mis)managed. It integrates technology wonderfully. I have yet to see a reading program that is better. The final paper concerned instructional malpractice. What a great piece for conversation! First, inquiry teaching is inductive, and didactic teaching is deductive. Which one is ultimately better is not usually debated. That inductive teaching requires more time is also not commonly debated. In fact, I have an REA Elementary Education book that states this as fact. Therefore, if not teaching inductively because of time constraints is malpractice, then there must be assumed to have either have extra time in the schedule, or accept malpractice in another area. I agree with the point that subject integration is at least part of the answer; maybe a great part of the answer, but subject integration does not always exist at any level. The teacher that gave the students the bags with the materials to make the bulb light was fantastic. I think I will borrow that one. And the teacher dealing with DIBELS as the sole assessment determination for struggling readers (I know were not supposed to say that) is improper, as we have seen in the materials from this module. In most of the cases presented in this paper the problems seem to rest more with the schools administration of the curriculum than with the teachers being negligent. I am sure that all of us pre-service teachers will try to provide as robust an approach as we can. This was a good, heavy module with much to think about. Assessment is particularly important because it can be very difficult to administer properly and interpret results accurately. Understanding all aspects assessment is critical to successful student learning and teacher teaching.