Constant assesment of students abilities

For best results listen to this song while you are reading this post: The impossible dream



Post 7:

Chapter Six takes what was said in chapter 5 and now it says that this is how you are able to assess the students and their abilities within the classroom. They suggest that this step be taken before you assign things to students. That you must understand their abilities prior to picking what they should be writing and writing. I think that this is a hard thing to ask of teachers. To find a quick and easy way to know what they students are capable of. I think that previous information and understanding is important but with our education system students are pushed through with so many different teachers, writing styles and previous exposure that for me to assume that all of my 11^th graders read Romeo and Juliet in the 9^th grade and Macbeth in the 10^th grade so I can make references to those plays is a fallacy and it will harm my students because my assumption makes them feel like they are already behind because they don’t know something.

            While I do not completely agree with everything that is being said, any book that takes 20 pages to go over how standardized testing has its flaws and how they can be political, situations, racial, or just plain poorly written is in my good graces. Instead the authors want to focus on more than standardized testing, they want to gauge student abilities in reading writing which is good but from there they want the teachers to also find gauge the abilities of the students in their subject and also the interest the have in the subject. I love this part of the book; they want to make sure that students want to be in the class, that they are able to be in the class. If I know what types of things my students like to read about I can bring in books about them. With the craze for werewolves and vampires I can work with that. Students who want to talk about the oppression of a people I can work with. My students are huge into super heroes I can cater an entire unit on the idea of a hero and what makes a hero. Bring in traditional ideas of heroes with traditional books of what a hero is. I can talk about "the Odyssey" or the "Iliad" and juxtapose that with the "Don Quixote" and other anti heroes we can even watch the movie "Birdman" and talk about how the world sees heroes and how they see themselves. I can create a multi-genre project based just on how happy heroes make my kids. If my students want to talk about skin walkers we can talk about the lore of the tribes her and do a compare and contrast piece on the lore of different indigenous people from around the world. Talk about the similarities and differences. Read books that cover things like that.

            The authors mention a few ways to gain this information from informal questions, to surveys, to reading assignments, and grades. They also point out that this is something that needs to be going on CONSTANTLY, that as teachers, we should be finding out what our students abilities wants and needs are so that we can adjust to them and make them work for us. I really liked this chapter and am excited to use some of these methods in my own classroom approach.