On tests- chapter 10 Content Area Writing

Tests and assessments are an essential part of education.  They are used to make sure that students are learning what they need to.  In Content Area Writing chapter 10, we learn that this is not always done well, and is not always valid.  Tests have a number of limitations the authors say.  For example, writing for tests is an artificial situation.  When writing, the students are solely writing for the teacher for a grade, and are writing things the teacher already knows.  This is a type of writing that does not take place elsewhere.  Another limitation is that tests are single moments in time.  They do not necessarily reflect a student’s progress or demonstrate what the student really knows.  I would add other limitations like anxiety, “blanking,” and time constraints as well. 

We are given several ideas for making tests better, and I liked a number of them.  One was to have tests be more thought provoking.  They should not just require restating facts, but should require higher levels of thinking.  Another idea was to allow students to take home tests.  I think that this would especially work if the tests require more than just restating facts that the students can look up in their text books, but require them to apply or analyze information.  By having take-home tests the students get more time and can polish their writing. 

I also appreciated the chapter’s thoughts on rubrics.  Often, we are told to use rubrics in our assignments but are rarely told the drawbacks of rubrics.  The book states that rubrics can constrain students in their writing and teachers in their grading.  Rubrics can be so detailed that all assignments end up looking alike and little thought is put in to them.   They recommend that rubrics be kept short and that flexibility be built into them.  These are both good ideas which I will follow.

10 words for social studies

Columbian exchange, colonialism, primary/secondary sources, constitution, amendment, industrialization, supply & demand, nuclear proliferation, longitude and latitude, emancipation.

It is tough to pick 10 important words for social studies that students need to understand because there are so many, and social studies includes so many different topics.  The 10 words I picked are not the most important words (who could know what are the most important) but as I went through the state standards for social studies these words stuck out.  I am sure if I did this another day, different words would stick out.  These words are necessary to understand the various subjects in social studies.  To understand history, especially American, students need to know things like colonialism, the Columbian Exchange and industrialization.  To do research, students need to understand the differences between secondary and primary sources.  To read a map students need to know longitude and latitude.  Understanding the government requires knowledge of the constitution and amendments.  Economics is based on supply and demand.  Understanding these words is necessary to understand social studies.  

Helping diverse students

Here is a strategy guide from the Council for Exceptional Children to help diverse students succeed. 
http://www.cec.sped.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=CEC_Today1&TEMPLATE=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&CONTENTID=11474

Multicultural classrooms

A common occurrence in American classrooms, especially in urban schools, is to have students from different cultures.  These multicultural students might be immigrants or the children of immigrants.  They might be English learners or might speak different dialects of English.  Whatever the case may be, it is likely that teachers will encounter students from multicultural backgrounds, and so will need to know how to educate them properly.

Different cultures have different ways of approaching things like education.  They also have different ways of looking at things and talking about things.  Teachers will need to understand their students’ cultures so that they can approach them on common ground.  Teachers should try to learn about their students’ cultures and what their expectations are.  They might ask the students or meet with their parents.   By understanding the cultures, teachers can better understand their students and better understand how they understand things.   It is also recommended that teachers have students read books related to their culture.  For example, a teacher might have students read a book about Mexican Americans and their experience.  This way, the students will be more engaged because they will relate to the reading.  I think, though, that teachers should not go overboard in this, though, and primarily rely on multicultural books, as I am not sure this will be doing the students any favors.  The students should learn about the dominant they live in, so that they will be better able to understand it and thrive in it.  If teachers primarily focus on other cultures to try to engage students, they will be depriving them of necessary knowledge.

It is also recommended that teachers allow students to speak and write in their own dialects, or allow English learners to use the grammar structures of their native languages.  This will get the students more likely to engage in learning, and they will better reflect on the subject matter.  It is recommended that students only be required to learn and use the dominant English dialect in English class.  What’s interesting about this, though, is that it seems like everywhere else it is recommended that learning to read and write not be solely relegated to the English classroom, but that all subject area teachers should teach students how to read and write.  This principle does not seem to apply, though, to students who use other dialects or are English learners.  It seems like this could put them at a disadvantage. 

How can students effectively study texts?

Reading and studying texts is one of the primary sources of learning.  It is very important for students to know how to best study texts.  They need to know this for while they are in school, but they also need to learn it for when they leave school, when reading will be one of their only sources of learning. 

Chapter 10 of Content Area Reading gives several tips on how to effectively organize and learn from texts.  There are two methods that they mentioned that I like.  One was using graphic organizers, and the other was writing summaries.  A good use of graphic organizers is to make them to reflect text patterns.  If a text involves comparing and contrasting, readers can create a matrix involving the subjects and the categories for how they similar and different.  If the text is about sequencing things like facts, events or concepts, students can create a series-of-events chain.  Another graphic organizer is the network tree.  Readers can create this show the relationship between central ideas and its attributes and examples.  Using these graphic organizers, readers can visually see the organization of a reading.  They can thus better see how the reading all goes together and better understand its meaning. 

The other method I mentioned was writing a summary about the reading.  By summarizing, readers break a text down to its essential points.  They are thus are able to extract the main ideas from texts, while excluding non-essential information.  By teaching students how to summarize texts, I think teachers are teaching students how to truly understand texts.  They are teaching them how to critically read so as to get the necessary and important information from the texts.  If a person can properly summarize texts it is because they can properly understand them.  Thus, being able to summarize texts is a necessary skill for understanding what one is reading.

Mini lesson reflection

In preparing for the mini lesson, I first needed to make sure that I fully understood the concept of the point of view guide, so I re-read the section in the text a couple of times.  I then considered how I would introduce the strategy.  I decided that the class would do a POVG on women suffragists since I figured this would be a fairly easy subject.  I then decided what I would say during the lesson, and practiced it a couple of times to make sure I was within the time limit.  I edited in my head what I would say as I thought of new ways to say things in a clearer fashion. 

I think that my mini lesson on point of view guides went fairly well.  I think that I effectively showed the class how to teach the POVGs to their students.  I think that my classmates will know in the future the things to emphasize with their students when they want to show them how to use this strategy.  They will know to make sure they understand that they are speaking as the subject, and so will need to be reminded to write in first person.  They will also make sure that the students understand the concept of a point of view before assigning the strategy. 

I think that my introduction to strategy went well.  By beginning with the basic idea of what a point of view is, and moving on to how the students usually write their points of view, I think that concept of POVGs would be easier for students to grasp and write.  If I were to do the lesson again, I think that I would write out the POVG that the class did together on the board so the students would see how it should be written, instead of just hear how it should be written.