#2 - Testing, Testing, ABC

My experience with assessments in Literacy education is rather limited, consisting mostly of observation and analysis. Though I do have a couple of years of experience in the classroom, my role in assessments has been limited because I have always been an assistant teacher. The responsibility for assessing students reading and writing abilities has rightfully been, in my opinion, the role of the more experienced educator in the classroom. This is because, I believe, it is an extremely tricky endeavor. It is difficult to accurately judge where a child’s level is, largely because kids are generally very good at “faking it” – copying what they have heard adults write and say. For example, the first thing an emergent reader often “reads” is a storybook that has been read to them so many times that they have memorized it. Thankfully, this appears to be an area of extensive research, so as beginning teachers, we have many resources at hand to help us decode the mystery.

At the second grade level, where I am getting my student teaching experience, I am amazed by the variance in skills and knowledge when it comes to reading and writing. In addition to the problems related to learning English as a second language, there is just a huge range of exposure to language across the grade. It is obvious, at this age, which children have been read to when young and which have not. Similarly, there are some children who are comfortable with writing, and others who are terrified by it. This is the most concerning thing to me. With a little extra attention, it seems to me that a second grader can catch up relatively quickly in his/her reading abilities, but based on my experience with third and fourth graders, it seems much harder to correct bad habits or attitudes in writing. Writing, a task which involves both brain hemispheres, requires emotion, intuition, and abstract and metaphorical thinking, all while utilizing learned structures, conventions, and fine motor and graphic skills. This balance is something that if not acquired early on, can be severely limiting to a child’s development in all areas of education, not just in relation to literacy.

Assessments are critical to literacy education for two main reasons. Not only does the child need to be assessed in order to determine the correct course of education for them in the future, but the teacher and curriculum likewise need to be continually assessed in order to improve further practice. For the student, first we need to know what prior knowledge or skills they bring to the table. When this is accomplished, we need to judge how their ideas and thought processes are developing. Finally, we need to understand what they have understood. What have they learned and what will they be able to apply to successive lessons? For the teacher and the curriculum, we simply need to understand how to improve practice. William Ayers writes in his 2001 book To Teach: The Journey of a Teacher “good teaching is forever pursuing better teaching; it is always dynamic and in motion, always growing, learning, developing, searching for a better way… Good teachers, then, are what they are not yet, and so their first and firmest rule is to reach.” Assessment, in sum, is just as important for the teacher as it is for the student, and cannot be ignored or glossed over.