Choice Lit Topic: Assessment Tools
Making sense of the enormous amount of student data in any classroom or school is probably the biggest challenge we face individually and in our school communities. Here you’ll find everything from one-page templates created by teachers for use in their classrooms to videos of staff teams poring over large data sets. We don’t have all the answers, but we do provide tools to help you ask better questions as you evaluate students and talk about assessments with your colleagues.
Results
Grow and Innovate with Reflection
My son is nine years old, and he never stops moving or talking. He never walks when he could run, and he never misses an opportunity to jump over something...
Formative Assessment From Share Sessions
Learners need endless feedback more than they need endless teaching. —Grant Wiggins The share session offers valuable opportunities for growing a community of learners and for formative assessment. Still, it...
How to Use Students’ Reading Logs as a Formative Literacy Assessment
During an instructional walk in a third-grade classroom, all the students were reading independently. The teacher, conferring with one of her students, got up and started to come my way...
Reading Quiz
As a first-year teacher sifting through the file cabinets full of materials left from the previous teacher, I found a lot of reading quizzes and tests. I’m sure you know...
Rethinking Late-Work Policies
As the first quarter of the year, which had been completely virtual, came to an end, I received the following email from one of my students, an 11th grader named...
From Seed to Blossom
The beginning of the school year is full of anticipation and potential. We begin to plant the seeds of learning and plan the ways we want to nurture those seeds...
Assessing Students Online: Small and Powerful Moves
Assessing students as we teach online is tricky, as the hours of kid watching are now unavailable. How do you know where to begin? How do you know which skills...
Learning Standards: No Best Way
Not long ago, I took part in a work group to deconstruct standards for language arts teachers. I’d reluctantly agreed to serve on the work group as a favor for...
Data That We Can Trust
Data analysis is not a clean process, at least if we are trying to gain a true measure of student success. Many schools (including mine) rely on screeners and benchmark...
Navigating the Interpretation Process
“Wait. What’s a symbol?” “I forget. Is the theme what happens in the story?” “Is the setting where the story takes place, or is that the plot?” Let’s face it:...
Observing Skilled Readers
I recently made an interesting observation in my middle school class. My most skilled students, who usually have to read things only once to have a decent grasp of concepts...
The Power of Teaching Journals
When I was in graduate school, we watched videos (yes, I'm old enough that these were VHS videos) of expert teachers instructing and sharing their thoughts and reflections. I loved...
Remembering the Big Picture in Reading Assessments
At bedtime, when reading to my three- and four-year-old daughters, it’s sometimes all I can do just to get through the books. Never mind reading with expression or reacting to...
Making Learning Stick: Learning Progressions and Student-Created Exemplars
As teachers, we have electrifying moments. Those moments when a student shares an interpretation and actually “grows her thinking” right in front of our eyes. We think, My teaching is...
Can a High-Stakes Assessment Create Readers?
If I were to ask any educator which instructional practices create joyful readers, you might expect to hear any of the following: a rich classroom library, access to just-right books,...
Teaching Constructed Response Before Exams
I arrived in the fourth-grade classroom. The students were seated and waiting with anticipation; it was not every day that the principal taught a lesson. “Good morning,” I said. “I’m...
Status of the Class: Reflecting on Reading Communities
I have used information from some sort of “status of the class” for most of my teaching years. Asking students at the beginning of reading workshop what they are reading...
A Better Status of the Class
The room was calm and quiet on this Thursday afternoon. Students were settling in to their reading spots and their books. The next 30 minutes would be dedicated to independent...
Releasing the Teaching to Students
I have watched my students grow in many ways since the beginning of the school year. They have picked up various skills, understand the standards and their use more competently,...
Forming Groups Using a Planner
It was late October, and I was feeling great about my one-on-one reading conferences. I was listening more than I was talking, taking succinct but valuable notes, and feeling like...
Don’t Forget to Marvel
“You’re here!” Lora Bieghler said as she bounced into my office. “I’m so glad, because I want you to see this first-grade response to Freckle Juice.” Lora’s arms were full...
