My Thoughts on... "Assessing and Evaluating Students' Learning"

This texts looks at assessment in a new and way while exploring the options we as teachers have to evaluate students. The author wants to emphasize the point of using more analysis based assessment rather than your typical objective tests. This will give students the chance to show their true understanding of the text and not just an understanding of how to test. One of the ways that the teacher in this text had done this technique was giving her students a simple entry task. She had asked them to respond personally to a question that had to do with the text they had read. She evaluated them on nothing more than engagement with the text. She even told the students of the informality of the assignment by letting them know that their would be no grammar, spelling, or organization included in the grading. This took pressure off of the students' shoulders because they felt as if they could truly write and not focus solely on grammar and phonetics. This text also discusses the very idea of learning literature. To each teacher the definition of learning literature is different and will ultimately influence their assessment types. I personally feel that this type of assessment makes sense in an ELA setting. For my class the idea of evaluating the engagement within the text using an objective test makes way more sense. I want my future class to be centered around the student and their creativity with a text. Overall, this text gave great ideas as to how to move assessment to more personal and creative outlets. Students have a greater chance to retain what they were reading and use the information in a meaningful way rather than memorizing information to take an objective test. I would use this text to gain knowledge on the concept and to get ideas as well. I would also recommend the text to anyone struggling with the issue.