Birsh Chapter 7 Assessment of Reading Skills

Key Issues

Teachers tin assess their lessons before, during, and after their implementation.
Teachers can assess student progress toward both content and linguistic communication objectives and demonstrations of knowledge in both areas in student products.
Assessments should be integrated into the lesson and focus on students' means of knowing.

As you read the affiliate-opening scenario, think about the problems that it raises about assessment.

Li Lee had been in Ms. Hamilton'due south class for 4 months. The 2nd-grader was responding to the language objectives that Ms. Hamilton included in each lesson and appeared to exist learning English apace. Li also really enjoyed the hands-on science lessons in class, particulary when Ms. Hamilton could help Li brand connections to her former life in Korea. Ms. Hamilton was perplexed, however, at Li'due south scientific discipline test scores: Li consistently scored at the lower cease of the form on the short, multiple-pick exams, merely her performance in class indicated that she should be doing much improve. Ms. Hamilton wondered if Li needed more than time with the ELL teacher or whether she might accept some kind of disability

Groundwork

Assessment is an important component in both lesson design and implementation. Information technology can be used to evaluate how the lesson meets guidelines for skilful pedagogy and how students react to the lesson. Many outstanding resources for teachers describe all aspects and types of cess; this chapter focuses on a specific subset of principles that underlie the development and integration of constructive assessment for diverse learners.^[1]

STOP AND Recollect

Earlier reading Chapter 7, recollect about how y'all might observe why Li's science examination scores are and so low.

Agreement Assessment

Some authors propose that assessments be created by kickoff identifying the desired results (learning targets), and then deciding what evidence would exist effective in measuring those results. In their view, the design of tasks and other parts of the instruction should then be built with the assessments in mind. Whether teachers use this backward pattern strategy (Bowen, 2017) or a linear, beginning-to-finish pattern, the principles that guide the evolution of assessments do not change. Overall guidelines for assessing student learning include those in Figure 7.1.

Teachers usually cannot do much to meet the guidelines shown in Figure 7.1 when they are implementing major graduation or other standardized tests because the utilize of such assessments is unremarkably closely prescribed. However, teachers can certainly consider the guidelines when constructing and using classroom-based assessments or those that are developed past the teacher for her classroom. Whether the assessment is of the lesson or task, the process or production, the more closely the assessment fits these guidelines, the more useful it volition be in understanding students.^[ii]

Guideline	Explanation
Direct related to objectives	Measures progress toward and attainment of the lesson objectives.
Authentic and/or meaningful to the students	Provides useful and accurate feedback. Helps guide students and instruction. Avoids evaluating students based only on testwiseness.
Occurs in multiple contexts	Allows students to show what they know in unlike means during and afterwards the chore or lesson.
Ongoing	Used at various times during the job or lesson.
Integrative	Assesses both language and content.
Balances depth and breadth	Combines alternative assessments and standardized assessments.

Effigy seven.1 General guidelines for assessment. Source: Adapted from Chao (2007).

Information technology is like shooting fish in a barrel to go confused past all the jargon surrounding assessment. The deviation betwixt assessment and evaluation is one crucial point that is often misunderstood. Assessment refers to the full general process of gathering information about something or someone, while evaluation refers to a final judgment (i.east., assigning a class or a rank). In other words, non all assessment is evaluation. Teachers can use assessments to make an evaluation, or they tin utilize the data they gather for goals such as changing educational activity, supporting students, and reviewing existent achievements with students. Most teachers perform evaluations on a regular basis, but evaluation is certainly not the only purpose for assessment.

Purposes of Assessment

Cess has many purposes: some are administrative or programmatic, others pertain mainly to the classroom teacher. Types of assessments that serve administrative or programmatic purposes include placement tests, standardized exit tests, programme evaluations, and graduation tests. These assessments are useful to a variety of stakeholders; still, they do non provide direct lesson information to teachers but rather are measurements of accountability (evaluations).

Classroom assessments, on the other manus, include reviews of lesson design, student progress, and student products. Some are for evaluation purposes; others serve to monitor student progress and thus help learners move alee, develop an awareness of their abilities and progress, and effigy out what goals they should aim for. Traditional classroom assessments, or those that are typically used for evaluation purposes, include quizzes, tests, and structured papers. These assessments are the same for each student and typically require students to choose an answer. Traditional assessments by and large provide a score that designates how students take mastered individual (discrete) content or language items. Alternative assessments are alternatives to traditional assessments and consist of whatever open-concluded method that uncovers what students know and can do every bit students create an answer. Culling assessments include verbal reporting, observation, oral interviews, demonstrations, retellings, role plays, portfolios, journaling, and many other activities. Some of these assessments are described in Figure 7.2. Culling assessments are used to design or redesign instuction, showing educatee growth between assessments. Traditional assessments are oftentimes a required part of the curriculum, simply teachers tin can too add together a diverseness of culling assessments in gild to capture the varied and complex learning that takes identify in classrooms.^[3] Effigy 7.three contrasts traditional and culling assessments.

Type	Explanation
Observation	Teachers tin make informal observations of students during tasks or use a more formal checklist to look for specific items.
Oral or written interviews	Teachers can interview students individually or in groups on whatsoever aspect of the chore or theme.
Demonstrations	The utilise of props (realia) can help students remember what they want to say and to follow a structured program for expressing themselves.
Oral or written retellings	After a reading, the students retell what they understood. Teachers tin sympathize how students comprehend, eastward.g., whether they focus on details or main ideas.
Role plays	For students who do non have a lot of productive linguistic communication or who feel comfortable with drama, acting out understandings can assistance them show what they know.
Portfolios	Teachers help students indicate what they know past assembling and explaining a multifariousness of their work.
Journaling	Dialogue journals, double-entry reading journals, math journals, and even group journals can assistance students express their understandings without fear of being evaluated.

Figure 7.two Alternative assessments.

	Traditional Assessments	Alternative Assessments
Overall purpose	Evaluate cognition of discrete items.	Review procedure and production; gather a more than holistic agreement of pupil knowledge and abilities.
Audience	Parents, administrators, regime stakeholders.	Parents, teachers, students.
Examples of methods	Multiple-choice and true-false tests, structured essays, discrete-detail quizzes.	Verbal reporting, ascertainment, oral interviews, demonstrations, retellings, office plays, portfolios and journaling.
General use of results	Document aspects of student learning; screen and/or diagnose, place, and leave students; decide graduates.	Ameliorate education, provide student examples and progress reports to parents, help students understand their strengths and weaknesses.

Figure 7.3 Traditional and alternative assessments.

Finish AND DO

Earlier reading further, listing the assessments that you have used, experienced, or read about. Note what and who they can be used to assess.

Assessing Student Process and Product

Adapting Traditional Classroom Assessments

Traditional assessments do have disadvantages; most problematic is the idea that all students should be measured in the same verbal style. Notwithstanding, they are often efficient, simple, and useful for getting a general overview of grade functioning. Considering they are then predominant (and ofttimes required) in classrooms, teachers can consider adapting traditional assessments where possible to piece of work more like alternative assessments. For example, hybrid test or quiz questions include features of both traditional (e.g., multiple-selection and truthful-false) and alternative (open-ended, educatee-centered) assessments. Hybrid multiple-choice and true-false questions can include a box in which students can explicate their answers, providing teachers with information almost both the effectiveness of the question and the students' answering process. This is especially useful with diverse learners, who may empathise the questions or answers in a diversity of ways. Examples of hybrid questions are shown in Figure 7.four.

The Milky Way galaxy is shaped like a
doughnut.
pretzel.
ball.
spiral.

Why did y'all cull this answer?

T F In Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen is making fun of the food of her era.
If you chose "False," make the statement true.

Figure 7.4 Examples of hybrid examination questions

Alternatively, teachers can ask students to rate the questions and/or the test, indicating what they thought was fair or not fair, clear or unclear, important or unimportant. Fifty-fifty a review with students at the end of a commercially produced, standardized classroom test tin can assist teachers and students understand what their next goals should exist.

Cease AND Retrieve

What other means can you construct hybrid assessments from traditional assessments?

Student Roles in Culling Assessments

The Affiliate 6 guideline "Practice not do what students can practice" too applies to designing assessments. Students tin and should exist involved in the creation and review of classroom assessments. This involvement helps them to understand the objectives, empowers them by engaging them in their ain evaluation, and provides articulate direction for the linguistic communication and content that they need to access during the lesson. The process of working with the instructor on assessment tin also facilitate the edifice of classroom trust and agreement. Students tin can participate by writing test questions, providing private or group assessment choices, developing instructions and rubrics^[4] for projects that express relevant outcomes, and even scoring and providing feedback for other students.^[five] Teachers can utilise the student cess creation process as an assessment in itself: it can appraise how students understand what they are supposed to larn and how they are to learn it.

Lesson Examples

Affiliate 11 provides consummate lessons with assessments integrated into them. For the purposes of this chapter, Figure 7.5 shows the relationships in 3 lessons among the essential lesson components described in this text. Annotation how the lesson objectives are explicitly related to the connections that students are asked to make, and that they also decide the tasks and assessments. Some of the lessons choose less formal (ungraded) assessments, which are quite appropriate for initial lessons in a unit. Other lessons include assignments that will be graded. All of them use a variety of assessments and follow some of the guidelines presented previously in Figure seven.1. Assessments can be preplanned into the lesson, as in Figure 7.5, but there should always be room to add together additional assessments if the teacher or students see a need to collect further information.

Context	Objectives SWBAT:	Connections	Tasks	Assessments
Third-form science: plants	Identify what plants need to stay alive. Define and use constitute vocabulary. Recognize good word skills. Write consummate sentences.	What are some things that you need every day to stay alive? We'll written report what living organisms need to stay alive. What'south an organism? What is a establish?	Vocabulary give-and-take wall. Review how to participate in a classroom discussion. Brainstorm. Complete diagrams with vocabulary words. Journal according to model.	Observation of discussion. Class rating of discussion. Observation of vocabulary employ during tasks. Final product completion and accuracy. Journaling to cheque complete sentence use, questions, and interests.
Eighth-grade English: persuasion	Identify persuasive techniques. Organize thoughts to be persuasive. Utilize adjectives to illustrate an thought.	How many of y'all accept seen an ad that fabricated you want something? Review the meaning of opinion and other vocabulary words.	Discuss persuasive techniques and the role that adjectives play. Add adjectives to give-and-take wall. Clarify ads and complete a worksheet on techniques, pointing out adjectives.	Observation during discussion Worksheet review Matching/backup-the-blanks examination on identifying techniques.
Fourth-form social studies: woods	Listing mutual products that come from trees. Explain how this natural resource can be renewed. Write complete sentences.	What products practise you lot use that come from trees? "We studied about tree rings and how trees make clean the air. Now we volition come across . . . ."	Review and practise how to write complete sentences using tree products information. Ogranize a scavenger hunt for forest products. Discuss the treasure hunt.	Observe during brainstorm to come across what students know. Observe/discuss with groups of students during the treasure hunt. Brusk written quiz that students respond with complete sentences.

Figure seven.5 The relationships among lesson components.

Terminate AND Exercise

Review the cess plans in Figure vii.5. How do they follow the guidelines presented in this and other chapters? Suggest adaptations for any bug that yous see.

Homework

Another normally used class of do and assessment is homework. Homework often consists of worksheets or reading assignments. For ELLs and other various students, particulary if they do not have assist in English language at home, these tasks are not very effective. More constructive might be activities and assessments that incorporate the characteristics of engaging tasks noted in Chapter 6. Interactive homework (VanVoorhis, 2001; Epstein & VanVoorhis, 2001; Epstein, Simon, & Salinas, 1997) is one blazon of homework that can exist effective for all learners.

Interactive homework assignments are "homework assignments that require students to talk to someone at domicile about something interesting that they are learning in class" (Epstein et al., 2002, n.p.). Parents (or other guardians) have a small just essential function in interactive homework tasks. One of the bases for interactive homework is the idea that family involvement in a child'due south schooling can consequence in higher achievement (Egbert & Salsbury, 2009). Schools tin can as well benefit from the knowledge brought to school by parents and other family members, especially those of various backgrounds (Egbert & Salsbury, 2009). Interactive homework includes the post-obit features:

Teachers guide interest and interaction.
Parents do not "teach"—students are responsible for learning and sharing.
Parents interact with children in new means.
Teachers show children that they sympathise the importance of family interaction.
Tasks are engaging and challenging.
Interactive homework is assigned two to 4 times per month. Family unit interaction is expected to be x to 15 minutes per task, and 2 to iii days may be given for completion.
Tasks are content- and language-based, relevant, interactive, and written in elementary language.
Teachers provide follow-up and student sharing (Egbert & Salsbury, 2009).

Interactive homework assignments that focus on content can be conducted in the language of choice for ELLs, making it more probable that they will understand the content and be able to complete the tasks. If this homework is being used every bit an assessment of educatee agreement, this is an important reward over worksheets.

Examples of interactive homework tasks for the lessons in Figure 7.5 are the following:

Plants: Students will create interview questions nearly plants to ask their family member. They can record, write down, or describe the answers they receive. Questions and prompts can include "What is your favorite found?" or "Tell me nearly something you've grown."
Persuasion: The educatee briefly explains persuasive techniques to the family member. The student and then interviews the family member, request which technique is most persuasive to her or him and why. The pupil records the information and adds whether he or she feels the same way as their family member. In form, students compare answers and discuss.
Woods: The student and the family fellow member hunt for woods products in their home and the student records the findings. The educatee interviews the family member nearly which wood production is most valuable to her or him and why. The student shares the findings with the class.

These tasks permit students to share their knowledge, and they allow teachers to assess whether students understood both the homework consignment and the lesson.^[vi]

STOP AND Do

Find an interactive homework activeness on the TIPS website at http://world wide web.csos.jhu.edu/P2000/tips/index.htm. Conform the activity to fit a class that yous are teaching, accept observed, or have participated in. Draw why yous think this activeness will piece of work for the students you have in mind.

Additional Guidelines for Assessment

In addition to the suggestions above, two guidelines tin help teachers design effective assessments during lesson development:

Guideline one: Be Transparent
One important concept that affects assessment and supports educatee accomplishment is transparency. For instance, teachers need to assist students see the relationships amongst the lesson parts (connections, objectives, tasks, cess). Students should also be aware of how task elements affect procedure and outcomes. In the same style that students should non wonder why they are addressing a topic or participating in a task, students should empathize essential lesson components; this blazon of transparency leaves the components open for discussion and possible change, helping to proceed students engaged and achieving.

Teachers can get-go with transparency at the outset of the lesson by using the following suggestions:

Make sure that students know what the language and content objectives are and how they will be assessed. Post them on the board, refer to them, and hash out them as needed.
Model and explain the task, linking the task process to objectives.
Explain what the product expectations are and how achievement can be demonstrated in relation to the objectives.

Such transparency also allows students to play a bigger function in assessment because they sympathize the focus and procedures of the lesson.

Guideline 2: Reconsider Grades
Grades do non indicate actual knowledge and operation, which are the goals for many assessments. Grades for content knowledge, specially for ELLs, can be lower than they should be because of issues with the student'southward linguistic communication proficiency. Nevertheless, teachers can score content knowledge separately from linguistic communication proficiency. To score content noesis, teachers tin can use the results of multiple assessments to determine how well ELLs understand key concepts, how accurate their responses are, and how well they demonstrate the processes they employ to formulate responses. Language can be assessed on a scale of progress or according to a rubric based on the English language standards for the grade level and content area.

Figure vii.six summarizes these guidelines. Additional guidelines are presented throughout this textbook.

Guideline	Example
Be transparent	Help students sympathise the part of assessment. Clearly listing and hash out objectives and other components of the task or lesson.
Reconsider grades	Dissever language and content grades to provide a more than realistic picture of student achievement.

Effigy 7.half-dozen Additional guidelines for cess.

Assessing the Lesson

In one case the lesson is complete and incorporates the essential components—including assessments—teachers can evaluate their lesson design to brand sure that the lesson is appropriate and relevant and meets pupil needs. Whether the lesson design is effective for diverse learners, specially ELLs, can exist measured in a number of means earlier, during, and afterward the lesson (Chapman & King, 2005). These evaluations tin can be used to improve the lesson. Suggestions include the following:

Before

Use a component checklist based on ideas in the chapters. Teachers tin create their own checklists with the components (objectives, connections, engaging tasks, cess) and relevant guidelines, or they tin use parts of the "Preparation" and "Edifice Background" sections of the Sheltered Educational activity Observation Protocol (SIOP) (Echevarria, Vogt, & Brusque, 2016). An example of a component checklist is provided in Figure vii.7 (reproducible copies of this figure tin be plant in Appendix C and Appendix D).
If something is missing or does not come across the guidelines, adjustments can exist made to the lesson before information technology is implemented.

During

Teachers can use observation and discussion with students to make up one's mind whether the lesson is going equally planned and whether that plan is appropriate for the students.
If there are bug with the lesson, teachers and students can brand just-in-time adjustments, keeping the objectives, connections, and relevant processes in heed.

After

Teachers tin review the lesson, jotting downwards observations of individual students or the whole class. They tin can note when time on tasks and engagement were or were not obvious and where it seemed students needed more aid in accessing the language and/or content. Teachers tin can also find to what extent the objectives were met and create ideas for revising the lesson.
Teachers tin take others review the lesson, including request students how it went, what the nearly effective parts of the lesson were, and how the lesson could exist improved to better arrange their needs.

This data can be incorporated into the adjacent iteration of the lesson.

Cess of the lesson is an important office of effective lesson design and provides a firm foundation for ongoing lesson blueprint.

	Component
	Language objectives Are tied to standards. Are tied to content objectives. Are based on student needs. Are measurable. Are presented to students.
	Connections Are based on educatee interests, needs, backgrounds, abilities. Tie current topic and tasks to past lessons. Tie electric current topic to students' personal lives. Tie lesson tasks to students' personal lives. Are assessed for relevancy and accuracy with students.
	Tasks Address both content and linguistic communication objectives. Are engaging, accurate, relevant, multimodal, explicit, and implicit. Interruption linguistic communication down every bit necessary. Are culturally responsive. Are learner-centered and/or -produced. Focus on process and production elements. Provide students with reasons to heed.
	Assessment Is ongoing. Is authentic. Uses multiple measures. Provides practice and review. Is transparent to all participants. Homework is relevant, engaging, and interactive.

Figure seven.7 Example of a lesson-component checklist.

STOP AND THINK

Afterwards reading Chapter 7, what advice would you requite to the teacher in the affiliate-opening scenario about Li's low science test scores?

Conclusion

Affiliate seven presented principles and guidelines for the measurement of both lessons and student processes and outcomes. Teachers tin utilize a large array of assessments for assessing student progress toward both content and language objectives. Well-nigh important for the assessment of diverse learners is to focus on students' ways of knowing, providing them with opportunities to express their understandings and how they came to those understandings. In plow, teachers can employ this information to design constructive lessons.

Extensions

For Reflection

Reviewing tests. Discover examples of standardized tests that your current or future students may have. Think about how you might help ELLs and other diverse students be successful on these tests.
Use your personal feel. Think about your teacher educational activity classes. Did y'all take an opportunity to show what you knew? Did yous ever feel that y'all were evaluated unfairly? Why? What can you lot employ from this experience to your own teaching?

For Activity

Justify your grading. Write a letter to your chief explaining why you are including a grade report for each student that has separate grades for language and content and what these grades mean.
Meet the guidelines. Choose an assessment blazon (for example, oral retelling or a portfolio) from a lesson or book. Describe how this cess contributes to a lesson meeting the general guidelines for assessment listed in Figure 7.1.

References

Bowen, R., (2017). Understanding by design. Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching. Available from https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/agreement-by-design/.

Chao, C. (2007). Theory and inquiry: New emphases of assessment. In J. Egbert & E. Hanson-Smith (Eds). Telephone call environments: Research, practice, and critical bug (pp. 240–277). Alexandria, VA: TESOL, Inc.

Chapman, C., & Male monarch, R. (2005). Differentiated cess strategies: 1 tool doesn't fit all. 1000 Oaks. CA: Corwin Press.

Echevarria, J., Vogt, Yard., & Short, D. (2016). Making content comprehensible for English learners (fifth ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson/Allyn & Bacon.

Egbert, J., & Salsbury, T. (2009). Out of complacency and into action: An exploration of professional evolution experiences in school/abode literacy engagement. Teaching Teaching., twenty (4), 375–393

Epstein, J., Sanders, M., Simon, B., Salinas, K., Jansorn, Due north., & Van Voorhis, F. (2002). Schoolhouse, family, and community partnerships: Your handbook for action (second ed.). K Oaks, CA: Corwin Printing.

Epstein, J., Simon, B., & Salinas, Thousand. (1997). Involving parents in homework in the middle grades. Phi Delta Kappa Research Bulletin, 18.

Epstein, J., & Van Voorhis, F. (2001). More than minutes: Teachers' roles in designing homework. Educational Psychologist, 36, 181–194.

Van Voorhis, F. (2001). Interactive science homework: An experiment in dwelling and school connections. NASSP Message, 85, 20–32.

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