RESPECT MY AUTHORITAAYYYYYY: Assessment Strategies

           The article I chose this week was "Terrific Teaching Tips" by Carol Owles and Donna Herman that was published in the Illinois Reading Journal. It covers interdisciplinary teaching skills for elementary and secondary. For the purpose of this class, I will just focus on the two main strategies presented for the secondary teachers. 

            The first strategy that they propose is getting kids to understand important terms that could be used in multiple areas (English, Science, History, Math). The example they use is the word "sphere" which can be used to explain multiples things in each of the areas. This a term that can be applied to every disciple and used to expand their knowledge of other terms that come along with it. They propose going over the importance of understanding key terms and then, as a class, coming up with a list of vocab that can be used in multiple areas and define them for each content area. Once they have done that, come together and go over them all as a class to allow students to share their definitions and come to a collective agreement in the class. 

            Another strategy they talk about is providing students with a short piece of challenging text and have them underline words that they do not fully understand. Then write all of the words that students struggled with on the board. Note when multiple people picked the same words for misunderstanding. Then go over each word that students didn't understand and define them and look for possible applications to other content areas. 

            The second strategy that they shared was teaching proper annotation to students. And in doing so, allowing students to interact with what they are reading and, therefore, better understand the material. In this method they also encourage the teacher to work with students on a short hand that can be used to make this process easier and more understandable for all students. They suggest short hand like “OMG” when it is something that they didn’t know before, a “?” when they don’t understand something, a smiley face when they get it or find something interesting, “!” when they agree with something, and “*” when they find something important. This should help students become more active readers and better understand what they are learning and reading. 

            Overall, I think this article was extremely helpful in assessing student learning. As an English teacher, I anticipate requiring active reading notes when students are in a novel to assess their understanding and also to ensure that they are in fact completing their reading. It will all be used as formative assessment obviously, but that will hopefully extend to better performance on summative assessments related in the future.