Informing teaching

As I was reading I really liked the idea of an Intrest Inventory for the students. This inventory can come in handy for numerous reasons. I could use them in my class for writing prompts, reading books, or even science and social studies. I also like how the students can create their own topics. Right now in my class my kids are obsessed with Captain Under Pants. I thought what is the big deal from these books, so I read the book to the class 20 minutes a day. I discovered the reason why they like them is because they are gross. It's about poop, pee, mischief, and fighting. WOW very intresting for them. I get the giggles and the smerks. Another assessement that stood out to me is the teacher assessment. It was untill I read the sentences for me to complete that I took a step back and really asked myself these things. In my class I realized I need to show more enthusiaim about reading. Kids can read your emotions and when you are excited, they are excited. While I read the part about grouping based on assessment, this is all new to me. Our school is really different! We don't base our groups on TPRI or IRI testing. We use the SFA program, which suck and diffets the whole purpose for assessing. We don't even use that data. It is sad to say, I guess the teachers personally see their student's growth. Hello obviously it makes sense to arrange groups or teach based on your students scores but not us.

Chapter 7- Using informal and formal assessments

Reading this book is so funny to me because it contradicts everything my school does. Even listening to lectures in class I slide down in my chair because I know our school does that. Not by my choice by any means. The whole purpose of giving an assessment to a child is to run with it and see what they need or your class as a whole. To see how much they have progressed and reading interventions may need to take place. Self efficacy is when a student 's belief regarding his or her ability to be successful. This was first described by Bandura. The book stated that students that like to read become better readers and are more self motivated. Motivation is key when it comes to reading and being a successful reader.Guthrie and Humenick said there are three types of motivation. External- put forth effort to gain some incentives, Internal- satisfies the curiosity, and Self Efficacy- is the students belief to how well they read. A part that stuck out in the book was the classroom observations. I am guilty of saying stuff like he doesn't like to read he would rather draw, and their is nothing wrong with that. If I were to take a frequency count I'm sure it would be different. Reading journals, completing sentences, thought bubbles are all techniques to see how motivated the students are. This gives teachers an insight to the feeling about reading. I really liked the Interest inventory, in my class we have to read basal books. But, it would be nice to do an interest inventory so the students would be more intrigued.

Chapter 5- Formal Assessment

Just thinking about "Formal Assessment" is kinda scary. I personally hate the pressure of a formal assessment. I start to freak out and second guess myself. Imagine how the kids feel. In the book it says that standard scores can be used to compare them to other students and other peers. I have personally ran into using standard scores to identify a learning disablity. I have had students not be identified as LD because of this also. The students that are identified are only in certain areas. Even in some cause they can score lower than average in almost everything, but they are not low enough so they say the student is performing based on their IQ level. One kind of assessment that I really liked (because I have never seen it before) was the Kaufman test. I like the nonsense word decoding subtest because you get to see if the students know there phonics. I feel our school does not give reliable fluency test. The Woodcock Johnson test meausres fluency by being timed. Our school only does TPRI or Running records. There is no formal way to measure that. In formal testing the book talked about being test bias. Even though the publishers and the authors look at this, they still just want to sell there product. I feel cultural characterisitics and background can effect the results of the test.