Assessing Students And Evaluating Learning. Blog 4

After reading this chapter of the handout, I have gained so much knowledge on how to access and evaluate my future students learning. I really loved how this chapter explains the many options and ways there are to access student learning when it comes to reading literature. One thing I really dislike as a student is being tested on specific details of a story rather then analyzing the story and being able to actually enjoy the story. I remember in my English classes in high school I could careless about what I was reading all I cared about was being able to recall specific information that I thought would be on the test. I really didn’t learn anything from just being able to acquire facts about the story. Since I have taken my English courses and have been assessed in many ways I believe that I learn far more by critically thinking about each piece of literature I have covered.  I also believe that assessing students using journals, blogs, and portfolio’s are great ways that the article mentions in evaluating students. I also agree with the fact that teacher feedback is crucial for student learning. I have become a much better writer because of feedback from many of my professors at Eastern. I will definitely be giving constructive feedback to my future students so they improve in their learning. This article explains many ways to give feedback but the ones that stand out to me are sticky not annotations, and highlighting parts of their writing. This chapter also answered questions I had about how to access a class discussion. I have found that I learn so much more from my peers and find it very intriguing to hear other interpretations of the same pieces of literature. As a teacher I will have to be the facilitator of class discussions. This chapter explains a rubric type of description on a scale from 5 to 1. It explains that students can be assessed based on participation, interpretation, restating others interpretations, asking questions to the group, linking resources to the text, and adopting critical lenses. All in all I really enjoyed this article and will definitely be referring back to this source for great ideas.