Authentic Assessment - Chapter 7 Content Area Assessment

This chapter identified different ways of assessing area content and planning for instruction. The two new reforms of Thinking Curriculum and Standards of Performance were discussed and designed for all learners for their higher-order thinking and for higher order standard performance. The basic assessment approaches are all good suggestions particularly the vocabulary assessment that I can use with students in higher grades to practice with their vocabulary skills. For example, I may assess my students with vocabulary in sensing and inferring relationships. The other two basic assessment approaches I plan to use are assessing students with short stories using the conceptual knowledge and the reading comprehension. I like this reading because it gave suggested guidelines on content assessment and scoring rubrics for teachers to use with students in the classroom.

Standardized Assessment of the Content Knowledge of English Language Learners K-12: current trnds and old dilemmas by Francis A. Butler & Robin Steven

The article focused on the students who are classified as limited English proficient and that teachers are now challenged to teach the content knowledge of English. These students are also challenged wit the high stakes of standardized assessment of the content knowledge wit the mainstream English language. For second language learners of English, it is considered a problem as well as unaccountable to use the standardized content assessment due to test material unknown to the students. Although approaches were attempted and discussed, they were found to be problematic or had mixed results. Now the authors state that research should focus directly and facilitate for the ELLs on the issues of: academic language assessment, opportunity to learn, and inclusion approaches. While reading this article, it reminded me about a time when our site principal stressed his concerns to the teachers about the annual yearly progress for our school. The teachers had to become highly qualified to be teachers, too. Then questions like, "Should I teach to the test?" came up among the teachers. Now there is always testing going on in the school. Sometimes a teacher will call me saying she will test so and so during Yup'ik time. Then I will say, its fine with me. While inside of me is sadden with the thought of trying to teach those students their native language with the little time I have with them each day. But, we do what is best for our students.

Writing Assessment Chapter 6 by O'Malley & Pierce

For writing in Yup'ik for fourth grade on up, I have students make word lists for their standards in their levels. In a word list the students write the Yup'ik and English words. For spelling practice, the students write each Yup'ik word five times, then make up sentences for each Yup'ik word relating to their background knowledge. The students can also draw pictures to make meaning more clearer for themselves. Other writing practices are creating acoustic poems or creating their vocabulary map. The word search and the crossword puzzles are extension individual work to help with word recognition and more spelling practices and to comprehend meanings. I have second and third grade write short story pages and illustrate from storybooks they listen to learn in Yup'ik.

Reading Assessment & Instruction - Chapter 10 Peregoy & Boyle

The reading assessment and instruction chapter addressed on various aspects of teaching reading. The discussions began with the theoretical view of language proficiency in listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Reading assessments focused on processes of mature readers and how non-native English speakers bring their background knowledge, language knowledge, word recognition, vocabulary, and comprehension to help their learning in process of reading. Others included were the description of informal reading inventory and how to determine a student reading as an Independent, Instructional, or Frustration level; and other ways of evaluating learners in reading, such as in Echo reading, Guided Reading, and Read Alouds. I would like to experience some of these reading assessments with my students in various grades to see if they will actually work with the Yup'ik reading. It will be interesting to find out which reading assessment and instruction will benefit the learners.

Chapter 5 Reading Assessment by O'Malley & Valdez Pierce

The chapter on reading assessment focused on the nature of reading in school, authentic assessment of reading, and using reading assessment in instruction. This semester I experienced teaching reading with short stories in the second and third grade Yup'ik classes. We spent time reading the book entitled, "Assaliayagaaq." The students wrote and illustrated the story in Yup'ik on paper. We checked for vocabulary understanding as we read in class as groups, pairs, and individually. We made vocabulary list for the story and practiced them as a class each day. We also made a story map to review the story at different times. A couple of students were delighted to read their storybooks in Yup'ik to their parents during parent/teacher conference. I hope to experience other reading assessment activity suggestions and examples from this reading chapter in the future.

Assessing Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students by Robert L. Rhodes

This chapter on the Disproportionate Representation of Diverse Students in Special Education reminded of our special education students here in our school. The Sped teacher stated that seventeen elementary and high school students are currently attending special classes. These students spend shorter time in the sped room and spend longer time in the regular classroom. The sped teacher has plenty of paperwork for each special ed students and that he is still learning about sped. Generally,special education teachers teach in most minority groups throughout the nation, but all cultures have special education. There are many factors such as mental retardation, learning disabled, emotionally disturbed, and educable mentally retarded among the nation who are referred to special education. Many years back, I referred one of my children to sped to receive help with her speech. Parents and teachers refer students to Sped to assist them and to improve learning.

Dynamic Assessment in the Language Classroom

While reading this article, the terms, Dynamic assessment, Vygotsky's theory of the Zone of the Proximal Development, Formative assessment, and Summative assessment stood out for me. I realized that I may have used some mediations of these assessments at one time or another in my classroom. What makes this article interesting for me are the relationships and differences of interpretations among these assessments when used between the teacher and the students. The authors defined Dynamic assessment as outstanding for being systematic which is aimed at long term development; unity of true assessment and instruction for learner development; and that DA, as defined by Luria, is that an assisted learner with performance tasks benefits to finishing tasks are able to transfer their performance to different tasks. This article as given me ideas to make assessment improvements with students in my classroom.