Thursday, March 13, 2008
Assessment
I find assessment really interesting. In math, science, and social studies it is so objective, but in the English classroom that is not the case. I do not think we are, as future teachers, aware yet of the intense amount of grading we are going to be going through every night. It is not simply going to be right or wrong, but we are going to have to justify to the student's why they achieved the grades they did. This is intimidating! And what if we have two students of completely different levels in our classroom? Do we grade one harder than the other? What if they compare papers? After reading these two chapters I still do not have an answer. I like the idea of the Six- Trait Model because it gives students very descriptive guidelines in which they should follow and also give the teacher the same guidelines on which to score. I almost feel like students should be evaluated by their writing before going into high school and put into a classroom with students who are at the same level they are. But, of course, that idea is completely unrealistic. Most schools do not have the room, funding, or teachers to support a program like that. However, I do think the idea of a portfolio is a great one and should be used as a final grade in the classroom. The teacher can evaluate the improvement of the students and then give them a final grade based upon the effort they made to improve. In this way, students who do struggle with English can be rewarded even if their writing is poor.
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Yeah, I'm definitely worring about grading. I mean, I think about the amount of writing some of my English teachers made me do in class, and to think they had a hundred students doing the same amount of work, I wonder if they had any free time to do anything other than grade papers. I'm afraid that if a thorough grading might make it almost impossible for me to get their papers back in a reasonable time (so they can take a look at what they've done wrong and right). But at the same time, I don't want to just breeze through their work and give them bad feedback. I get the sinking feeling that during fall, winter,and spring I'll have absolutely no life outside the school halls. I always hate it when people scoff at teachers because they get the summers off, when they act like our job is some picnic. How many people go to work and are singlehandedly responsible for assessing the work of 150 of their employees? We basically run our own small business when we're at school.
So true! i hate people assuming that an education degree is the easy way out. But back to assessment...
My field class has really wide range of students on terms of ability. After reading some of the classes work i asked my host teacher how she worked with such a variety of writing abilities. She admitted that it is still something that she struggles with. I'd like to say that we should grade student according to individual improvement, but i know that gets complicated with 150 students. Although at the same time it doesn't seem fair to hold all students of different abilities to the same standards
I've been struggling with the grading process myself, and am not sure that i know of a 'correct' way to do it. I would like to be able to grade solely on a student's individual progress but there seems to be a need to have class or school wide standards that everyone must adhere to when grading. If student A is the most proficient in class and can ace tests without any effort but student B shows way more improvement throughout the year than student A, who deserves the better grade? This is why I think portfolios are a better method of assessment than tests.
I agree, this is what makes me like portfolios!! I think doing portfolios keeps the students responsible, too, for keeping up with their work. Even they can look back over and see how they have improved, and as teachers, it is going to be easier to see the individual development of a student.
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