What are the best methods to assess students, and how should these methods be used?

                Chapter 4 of Content Area Reading mentions a number of ways to assess students.  The authors made a distinction between high stakes testing done through standardized tests, and authentic assessment done by teachers.  What I found important about what they said concerning formal assessments was how a teacher should use them.  A teacher should use them to find students with major reading difficulties or compare reading abilities among students.  A teacher should not, however, use such tests to determine a student’s content knowledge or ability to comprehend course materials. 

                What I was more interested in was what the authors said about different forms of informal assessments done by teachers (and students).  Everyday teachers can assess their students through observation.  Teachers can jot notes in journals each day about their students and how they acted and performed during the day’s lesson.  This entails being a good listener and watcher of students.  The authors also recommend using a frequency observation form.   On this form, the teacher writes down observations that he wants to observe, and puts check marks next to the observations each time he observes them.  This is a simple way to keep a tally of student behavior.  This would be useful for meetings with students or their parents. 

                Another form of assessment they discuss, which I would like to learn more about, is the academic portfolio.  Portfolios can provide a holistic view of students’ work and achievements.  They include pieces of student work from throughout the year, and from different areas.  The portfolio is essentially student led, as students decide what should go in the portfolio.  The students then write about why they chose to include that artifact in their portfolio.  The defense of their choice seems to be more important than the artifact itself as it helps to display that the student truly understood the subject matter and the assignments they place in the portfolio.  They also require students to really think about their work on a deeper level.   Students and teachers can also use portfolios to see how the students progressed in their abilities throughout the year.  I would like to know more about portfolios, such as how to introduce and explain them to students, and how to guide them in choosing the best artifacts to place in them.

                A final form of assessment they discuss is interviewing students.  They discuss different kinds of interviews like formal and informal types.  They discuss a Reading Comprehension Interview to find out how well students comprehend a reading and its purpose.  They recommended, though, that teachers could have the students answer RCI questions on paper instead of in interviews because this will save time.  I question, though, the usefulness of such written answers.  One question, for example is “How good are you at reading this kind of material?  How do you know?”  Such a question is hard to answer.  I think that without teacher prompts during a verbal interview a student’s answer would be useless.  These self-reflective questions are difficult for anyone to answer, let alone school students.