March+27,+2012+-+HALR+Ch+6+&+7+reflection

“Proficient Reading in School” Chapter 6

I can see why Chapter 6 and Chapter 7 were assigned in the same week. They work together to strengthen the claim, “If teachers provide more choice and relevance in reading material and the activities they ask students to undertake to process and respond to those materials, students will read more and improve in doing so.” (93) Chapter 6 points out the flaws in traditional ways of measuring proficient reading through dull assessments that typically sort students as competent readers or struggling readers. One cause to a student’s low score could be due to these assessments not taking into consideration the prior knowledge of the reader. Another problem for many students is reading text without a meaningful purpose or motivation immediately puts them at a disadvantage. These results often have lasting negative effects on the students or the often cited //Matthew effect//, where a student’s view toward their own reading stops them from trying and any desire to improve their reading skills disappears at the beginning of middle school. O’Brien mentions a middle school struggling reader that read manga texts and was able to analyze the text at a higher thinking level, as well as write similar complex plots, but this student’s disinterest in the traditional text, that she was being assessed on, impacted her test results therefore labeling her as a “struggling reader.” I see this in my own classroom. Some of my students that score low on the MAP tests are the same students that always have a manga book in their hands and are able to demonstrate proficient or even advanced levels in the classroom when reading text of high interest level. These tend to also be my students that are more computer savvy than the others, which would also demonstrate a level of reading proficiency. I wish that when students were taking these assessments that they could chose the subject matter and genre, giving the student the ability to read what interest s them so a more accurate result could be obtained

Hi Mary, This is the second time I've responded to a colleague in this fashion, I apologize for invading your space. I wasn't sure how else to do this. Anyway, you talk about a subject that irks me to no end about assessment, and I rarely talk about assessment, because it's ugly. However, I think students would do so much better, if they had the opportunity to choose what they could write about. I know this is a huge undertaking for education as of yet, but really how difficult could it be? We already face many challenges when it comes to NCLB and other standards that seem to compile the field. Why couldn't we run a trial with some students, for example, since MEAP is consistently revamped and we work tirelessly to prepare students for it, why couldn't we try this idea?

Why not give students some choices as to what they can write about? You and almost every other instructor I know have all said the same type of thing when it comes to students having more control in their writing. However, they cannot take control unless we and our administrators are willing to relinquish it, at least a little bit of it. We need to push administrators to see this point of view, because until they do, they won't advocate for us. I think the problem is more with power than it is with resources. It only takes a teacher to desire that their students have agency in their work, in order to make this work. If we spent the same amount of time and resources with our students, preparing them to write an essay about their choice of subject, then they would be as prepared to do this, as they are to write about canonical material as well. I just think if there is a will, there is always a way, but I'm the type of individual that sees the glass half full, ot half empty, so maybe that's an issue here. All I know is, we really need to change the way we assessing writing.

Dawn

__**Comment from Kristen Krug:**__ Hi Mary and Dawn! I agree, we should try to give the students more power over assessment. If it is a topic that interests them, then they most likely have had some previous discourse concerning the topic; therefore, the assessment is not merely on spontaneous writing. Where I teach, it is not sufficient any longer for them to do the work and pass the course. They have to take an in-class writing exam and perform on the spot. I have taken liberty with this requirement in a few ways with some success.

The first time I used a topic, technology, throughout the course to illustrate different writing strategies. Each time we discussed thesis, introductory paragraphs, narration, etc., we first used the topic of technology, then others. This provided them with discourse on the topic. When it came time for the writing prompt, the topic was technology. The second time I provided an articles on the parking issues on campus, and they had to write about it, documenting the sources as needed. (This was probably the biggest rule breaker because I actually gave them material to work with for supporting points.)

Finally, I provided multiple topics over multiple weekes until they passed. Starting at midterm, each week they could stay and take the final exam essay prompt. The first week there were two choices. By the last week I offered it (because everyone had passed by then), there were six topic choices. No topic choices were the same in order to avoid preparation (which is funny because isn't that what we want?) Basically, each week a student could determine if they liked any of the topics and write. If not, they took their chances on the next week's topics, and so on. Having control over their topic and testing time seemed to empower them.

In all three types of testing, the people who didn't pass were the same people who didn't do the work for the class so they weren't going to pass anyway.

Kristen