Wednesday, March 14, 2012

The Fine Points

I was out of school for some appointments yesterday and so I left a rather concrete assignment, because that just makes it easier on the sub and the kids. On Monday, we were analyzing the grammatical patterns (courtesy of Image Grammar by Harry R. Noden) of their independent reading book titles, so that the students could come up with some "tantalizing titles" of their own. As we worked, it became clear to me that a little parts of speech review might be in order, and so I left a noun packet with the substitute.

Today we went over the answers and after giving everyone an opportunity to ask questions, there was a little quiz to see how they could apply the information they had just reviewed. Such a concrete, right-or-wrong, lesson is quite rare in my class where we mostly focus on the admittedly hard work of writing real pieces, so I was curious to see how they did on the assessment.

The first thing I noted was that with 2 1/2 weeks to go in the quarter, this grade had no impact on their overall grades. A couple of kids moved up or down a point, but nobody moved a letter grade. The next thing I noticed was that some kids who usually struggle when it comes to sustained effort were happy to fill in some blanks, and they enjoyed a much higher level of success than usual.

 This is the difference between grading and assessment. What you do with that information is teaching.

1 comment:

  1. I so agree with your last statement. It's wonderful that you are able to look at an assignment and think of what teaching needs to happen next.
    MH at booksavors.wordpress.com

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