Classroom Reading Assessments - Ch. 1
âWe must recognize that our assessments are based on the values we have about reading, writing, and our lives as literate people.â (p. 3)
âAssessment of learning and assessment for learning.â (p. 3)
âThe effect of the high stakes associated with external assessments is to reduce what is taught to âtest prepâ.â (p. 4)
This reminds me about how you taught testing as a genre. This is definitely something I can see myself doing in the future!
âStandardized assessments are designed to determine what students cannot do, not what they can do.â
These tests lead to a lot of the deficit thinking in our teachers. They seem to focus on what our students canât show us on the test and reduce studentsâ thinking to only black-and-white/right-or-wrong, when in reality learning has a lot of grey area that requires more than a score on a piece of paper to unpack.
 Classroom-Based Assessments
âThe information generated through these assessment procedures is used to understand a learnerâs growth and progress over time in comparison to him- or herselfâŚthis is called a âlearner-referencedâ assessment.â (p. 5)
âThe more we know about our students, the better the decisions we can make about what lesson will be most effective, what texts they should encounter, and what challenges they may face.â (p. 6)
These types of assessments focus on our students as individuals. They clue teachers into what areas need more work and which areas students have a grasp on.
 âThe stance is one of inquiry or a quest for understanding. The purpose of the assessments used is to gain a deeper understanding of the behaviors, attitudes and conceptual frameworks of each individual learnerâŚmultiple interpretations are encouraged, and each learner transacts with tests and the world to see what meanings they create.â (p. 9)
This reminds me of Rosenblattâs theory of transaction, and how students learn the most when exploring and working with the material and engaging with it.
 âThe challenge for us as classroom teachers is to make the criteria we use to judge studentsâ work and performances available for revision and negotiation and to make our evaluation processes transparent so students understand how we come to the decisions we are required to make.â (p. 12)Â