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Zuzula, Zak CEP813 Critical review of Disciplinary assessment
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CEP813 Critical review of  Disciplinary assessment

Social Studies Guided Reading/ Guided notes.

        When looking at the social studies discipline there are many common themes shared among teachers.  One of those things that tends to be a consistent concept of student assessment is guided reading or guided notes.  Guided reading or guided notes is the process of having the students either read from a text or listen to a lecture with a slideshow playing along and taking notes on pre-formatted sheets.  These pre-formatted sheets usually are sections of the text or notes written word for word and will have fill in the blank spots on them in multiple spots in each section.  The idea is to have the student pay attention to what they are reading/listening to and fill in the parts that are missing in order to prove that they are following along or potentially “learning”.  This will help show the teacher that the student was following along and reading the text or listening to the lecture, if they were on pace with reading or teacher then the blanks will be filled in correctly.  This is usually used when going into detail on a topics content or trying to get through the heavier stuff in the section for content.  The information gained from the assessment helps the teacher see who was paying attention and who was not.

        I personally have many issues with this form of assessment.  I have never liked it, I am not a huge fan of note taking in general when I consider it forced notes.  I do not see much value in what you get out of it nor do I see much learning taking place besides how to properly follow directions.  When I put this assessment up against my recently designed rubric 2.0 the assessment seems to fall apart even more.  

First off the assessment does not allow for multiple views of the students work.  I see this for the man reason that the students are not really doing any work here. They are just proving they are following along. Technically the teacher can be walking around checking the students notes and if they see that they are lacking on blanks or missing a few make their minds up to recite the section(s) that have been missed. Personally I do not see it as checking the students work intentionally though because as Black & Wiliams (1998) suggested, students need opportunities to express their understanding of the material so they can initiate interaction (Black & Williams, 1998, p. 143).   Without the checks allow for students to express their understanding or misunderstandings they are not truly reviewing their work.  

Another issue with guided reading/notes is it does not give the students any feedback whatsoever. It is purly set up to check for students abilities to follow along. Not only does it not give opportunities for students work to be reviewed, it also doesn't give the students opportunities for self assessment.  There is no self assessment here, just a section proving you can copy a word on a page/screen. The teacher in this type of assessment doesn’t give feedback besides repeating what they have said on the notes. Even if the teacher rephrases the information for the student to understand it doesn't check for that in the notes section of their work and it wouldn’t be something the teacher can use to change and adjust their teaching.  It has no way of letting the teacher know why the student is answering in a particular way (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005, p. 47).

This assessment does not allow for anything beyond basic skills and facts. Setting multiple items to assess the student is not shown at all in this sections.  The first type of item that is suggested by Marzano (2009) is present, the facts and basic skills. The second two types of items are normally completely disregarded. Having a set of questions that help the students make generalizations and having the students analyzing the topic (Marzano, 2009, p. 69) would be nice and some forms of guided readings and notes do ask questions for the students to answer that could potentially give the students multiple items to be assessed on. Many of the guided readings and notes though only ask for the basics. The teacher will usually bring out these other two items in later assessments because they need to get through so much material that they tend to only focus on the basic facts.   My major issue here is that many times just writing the words down doesn’t help show or prove understanding of basic facts.

        

        The final flaw when comparing guided reading and notes to Rubric 2.0 is the students never really check for understanding of the standard.  This form of assessment just moves along the content information and rarely stops to check to see if the student is comprehending the information.  Just writing notes and moving on doesn’t allow the students time to think about what they are suppose to be learning.  Now some teachers may have stated the standard at the beginning of the lesson and will consistently reference the standard throughout the reading or the lecture, which would be and is a good thing. My issue here is how to they check for understanding. I know that classroom discussion and debate could help prove understanding for the teacher and the students but the guided readings and the notes themselves do not offer up that type of deep thinking.  I feel those two practices are separate from each other. One Practice has the teacher helping he students see the goals of the lesson (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005, p. 19). The other uses guided readings and notes as mostly busy work for the students and an opportunity to earn points.  

        I have mentioned a few bright spots in the assessment but many of them are only focused on the idea that they have a good teacher who is trying to incorporate other ideas and practices along with the guided readings or notes.  There were a few other positives from rubric 2.0 that this form of assessment followed.  When giving this assessment there is a good chance that this practice does not give a letter grade or points assigned to the notes. The teacher may be able to just check to see if the students were able to follow along without having to say things like “each blank is worth one point” or “you need to have this many blanks filled in to get credit for today”  This does not mean that the teacher is giving feedback and showing the students what excellent work looks like.  It would be very difficult to differentiate between excellent, average, and mediocre notes look like when all you have to do is copy words.

        

        The guided readings and notes also give adequate time to complete each portion but that's only because the teacher chooses the pace and the students just have to listen.  So when discussing the ability to give time for the students and teachers to discuss, assess, and give feedback it’s not really all that relatable.

        The one thing this assessment may be very good at is assessing students life skills.  This type of assessment gives students the ability to practice doing some what mundane and meintanis type activities that they may not want to do but are asked to do.  This is definitely a skill they will have to learn in life and will help them to become a good student and citizen (Marzano, 2009, p. 25).   But it will not really be any major life affirming skill that they need.

 

        Overall the concept of Wiggins & McTighe (2005) understanding by design is not really that present in this assessment at all in my opinion.  The authors ask for teachers to look backwards in the lesson and try to ask what is the purpose, what the students need to know and then plan your lessons around those.  This assessment misses all three steps suggested by Wiggins & McTighe (2005): Identify desired results, determine acceptable evidence, and plan learning and experiences (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005, p. 18).  This assessment just looks at what would be considered acceptable evidence for the content.  

Now I will say that there may be a place for this type of assessment if used properly in

the design planning.  If the standard is stated to the students and discussed in length to help the students understand what their clear purpose of the lesson is (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005, p. 17).  Then the teacher sets up the class with some basic knowledge using the guided reading and notes.  The teacher then has to make sure that these readings and notes come along with sections of informative questions from the teacher that have the students using their basic facts and knowledge being written down to guide their thinking of generalizations and higher level questions (Marzano, 2009, p. 69) and a form of self assessment and teacher feedback of student knowledge (Black & Williams, 1998, p. 143).  If all of these things are done along with the guided readings and they all have the intention of helping a student understand the long term goal, I could see this type of assessment being useful (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005, p. 47)

        The other unique thing about the guided readings and lecture notes is that it does give the teacher an opportunity to give the desired basic facts and vocabulary (Marzano, 2009, p. 69) without really having to be present with the students at all.  A nice way of possibly being able to do this is to have the students use an online format to deliver a lecture such as Edpuzzle to allow the students to listen to and read the lecture as a form of guided notes and reading but do it on their own time at their own pace.  Students could view the lecture or reading online and have questions periodically appear for them to help check for understanding and learning.  All three levels of Marzano’s item suggestions (Marzano, 2009, p. 69) could be posed to the student throughout the online lecture. The teacher could view these answers and have it guide their teachings based on how the students answered the online portion of the question (Shepard, 2000, p. 11).  The teacher could then continue posing the same higher level questions to the students in a variety of settings for the students to be able to check for understanding and have the students self assess their learnings and how they have changed and adapted their understandings based on how they have answered these questions in the past (Shepard, 2005).

References:

Black, P. & Wiliam, D. (1998). Inside the black box: Raising standards through classroom assessment. Phi Delta Kappan, 80(2), 139-144.

Marzano, R. (2009). Classroom assessment and grading that work. Alexandria, VA: Association

for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Retrieved from

http://p2047-ezproxy.msu.edu.proxy2.cl.msu.edu/login?url=https://search-ebscohost-cm.proxy2.cl.msu.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=e000xna&AN=179528&scope=site

Shepard, L. (2000). The role of assessment in a learning culture. Educational Researcher, 29(7), 4-14.

Shepard, L. (2005). Linking formative assessment to scaffolding. Educational Leadership, 63(3),

66-70. Retrieved from

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Wiggins, G.P. & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design. Alexandria, VA: Association for

Supervision and Curriculum Development.