Tech Tools for Assessment

Assessment isn't what happens after instruction; assessment is instead what guides instruction and moves it forward. Formative assessment, the ongoing "pinging" of student progress, is a key part of instruction and not an afterthought. Wiliam (2013) stated it this way: “It is only through assessment that we can discover whether the instructional activities in which we engaged our students resulted in the intended learning. Assessment really is the bridge between teaching and learning.”

With this in mind, I've created a collection of over 30 free assessment tools which teachers can use at all stages of the learning process. I've annotated these sites and provided introductory videos which will help you to get started immediately.

Why the Emphasis on Assessment?

When my older daughter was five, she purchased a rubber squeaky hammer from the dollar store. For days she walked around the house, asking what needed to be hammered. So I guess she proved Abraham Maslow to be correct when he said, "I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail" (Maslow, 1966, pp. 15-16). I sometimes feel that teachers are like that when it comes to a new technology. We get excited about a single site or application and seek ways to use it immediately and often, regardless of its appropriateness to the task. “While well-designed tools or assessment strategies are a key component to authentic formative assessment, if they are not what teachers consider the right tools for the immediate task at hand, they are frustrating and counterproductive” (Formative assessment that truly informs instruction, 2013, p. 2).

We should strive to work in the opposite way. Let's first consider our instructional objective, which is never "to use a new technology." Let's then ask, "Is there a technology that we can incorporate to somehow facilitate, extend, or improve this lesson?" When it comes to tools for assessment, we are seeking measures that are timely, frequent, authentic, engaging, practical, collaborative, and reflective. That’s a long list, but not every assessment needs to meet every criterion. We as teachers simply need to select judiciously; if a technology doesn't fit the bill, we shouldn't force it.

Technology tools are especially effective in administering formative assessment. Formative assessment can be defined as “a deliberate process used by teachers and students during instruction that provides actionable feedback used to adjust ongoing teaching and learning strategies to improve students’ attainment of curricular learning targets or goals.” Mursky (2015) goes on to describe its attributes, which include clarifying intended learning, eliciting evidence, interpreting evidence, and acting on that evidence. Few teachers, however, were trained in how to elicit evidence of learning in a manner that is authentic, practical, or engaging. Other teachers fail to differentiate between formative and summative assessments; instead, they simply set assessment tasks, not fully realizing “that formative assessments are for learning, not necessarily of it” (Miller, 2015). As a result, these teachers are likely to associate assessments with summative examinations and standardized testing, and to see them as something that happens discretely apart from instruction. It’s even possible, in cases such as the PARCC test, that teachers view assessment as an intrusion on, or distraction from, classroom instruction and learning. “In a context in which assessment is overwhelmingly identified with the competitive evaluation of schools, teachers, and students, it is scarcely surprising that classroom teachers identify assessment as something external to their everyday practice” (Heritage, 2007, p. 14). We need to see assessment as a key factor in learning, and digital tools can play a huge role in this mission.

The purpose of Tech Tools for Assessment is to introduce teachers to digital assessment applications which will motivate and inspire students while yielding practical outcomes for reflection and continued growth. The tools provide measures that are timely, frequent, authentic, engaging, practical, collaborative, and reflective. Whenever possible, teaching applications and exemplars have been included in each site’s description to assist the teacher in understanding each application’s use and to aid the teacher in introducing the applications to students. As teachers, we need to “effectively communicate to our learners both a description of how they will perform an assessment activity as well as a description of how we will judge the quality of their performance” (Vega, 2015). These tools can play a critical role in meeting these objectives.

Continue reading my rationale for these tools, or check out the collection for yourself.

Feel free to share your own favorites in the comments below.

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Sources:

Formative assessment that truly informs instruction. (2013). Retrieved from National Council of Teachers of English website: http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/Positions/formative-assessment_single.pdf 

Heritage, M. (2007, October). Formative assessment: What do teachers need to know and do? PHI DELTA KAPPAN, 89(02), 140-145. 

Maslow, A. H. (1966). The psychology of science: A reconnaissance. New York: Harper & Row. 

Miller, A. (2015, February 3). Formative assessment is transformational! Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/blog/formative-assessment-is-transformational-andrew-miller 

Mursky, C. (2015, January 30). Formative assessment practices to support student learning. Retrieved from https://www.teachingchannel.org/blog/2015/01/30/formative-assessment-practices-sbac/ 

Vega, A. (2015, January 27). Blended and online assessment taxonomy design. Retrieved from http://www.fulltiltahead.com/edtech/blended-online-assessment-taxonomy-design-infographic/ 

Wiliam, D. (2103, December). Assessment: The bridge between teaching and learning.Voices from the Middle, 21(2), 15-20.

Six Ways to Improve Close Readings

"How do you effectively structure and guide classroom discussions about novels?"

"What's the best way to get students to engage with texts?"

"How can you ensure that students read the required chapters for homework? Mine never seem to do it."

I receive questions like these often, and although each deserves a separate answer, as a whole they seem to originate from the same desire: to engage students with texts through close readings.

In Implementing the Common CoreState Standards: A Primer on “Close Reading of Text,” the Aspen Institute provides a formal definition of close reading:

Close Reading of text involves an investigation of a short piece of text, with multiple readings done over multiple instructional lessons. Through text-based questions and discussion, students are guided to deeply analyze and appreciate various aspects of the text, such as key vocabulary and how its meaning is shaped by context; attention to form, tone, imagery and/or rhetorical devices; the significance of word choice and syntax; and the discovery of different levels of meaning as passages are read multiple times.

Timothy Shanahan defined the practice of close reading more succinctly, explaining that close reading "is an intensive analysis of a text in order to come to terms with what it says, how it says it, and what it means."

So is it a rereading of text? Yes, but with a clearly defined purpose. Those of us who teach with novels in the classroom know it can't be a rereading of the entire text; instead, it's a focused analysis of a selected excerpt in order to study a limited number of text attributes such as organization, sentence structure, vocabulary, symbolism, character development, plot advancement, etc. The purpose and focus of each close reading depends upon the text itself, thus leading to the CCSS push for more complex selections.

Below I've provided six suggestions for making the most of close reading experiences with students.
 

1. Read the Text Yourself

This seems obvious, but you'd be surprised how many teachers skip this step. They rely either upon teaching guides or margin notes, or their perceived understanding of the topic or theme, regardless of its treatment in a particular text.

I recall a conversation with a teacher who was reading Stone Fox with her third grade class. I casually remarked, "Have the tissues ready when the dog dies," and with a look of horror she gasped, "The dog dies?!" 

When I pressed her why she hadn't read the entire novel in advance, she replied, "I wanted to be surprised along with my students." In my opinion, she was vastly unprepared to discuss the intricacies of even this simple text. A teacher who likewise relies upon a third-party teaching guide rather than the source text neglects the very literature immersion and interaction which we desire for students.

Bonus: When you've read the entire book, you're prepared for those students who will read ahead. You know who they are: those students who attempt to engage you between periods or during homeroom, asking questions about what's to come, or pointing out connections based on previous close readings. Read the whole book, and you'll be ready to respond appropriately. I rarely dissuade these students from reading ahead, but I do discourage them from providing spoilers for the rest of the class. 

2. Ensure that Students Read the Text

In order to engage in a productive close reading, all students must have read the text a first time. As Nicholas Provenzano at Nerdy Teacher explains in a recent post on the importance of homework to the Reading/LA class:

Students need to read at home and come to class ready to discuss what they have learned. At the high school level, English teachers do not have the time to let kids read all they need to read in class.... Learning to read at home and annotate is an important skill that needs to be practiced at home after the skill is taught in class. So this work that is assigned to be done at home is homework, but it is valuable and important.

So how do we make this happen? I've used a number of methods, including response sheets and reflection sheets (having students respond to one theme-oriented question in context of a chapter), online quizzes such as Testmoz or those included in Edmodo or Schoology (completed either at home open-book or in class the following day), and polls seeking student input on a particular character's actions. I've also indicated that we would stage a debate the following day, and that they should be prepared to argue either side of the issue with text-based facts (the issue of contention itself is only revealed ti students after they read the required selection).

Perhaps the most effective method, however, has been to regularly schedule close readings for the next day. When students learn that they will be put on the spot to "pull a text apart," they're more likely to come prepared. Especially if the close readings are constructed in such a way that encourages lively, if not heated, dialogues. Middle and high schoolers are extremely social by nature, and most enjoy engaging in a lively exchange over a good text. Even the most reluctant contributors to classroom discussions will interact if we, as teachers, are prepared to discuss the intricacies of writing.

When discussing just the first two chapters of The Outsiders, for example, I share a chart which requires students to select which of the Greasers they would choose to take on a double date, back them up in a fight, teach them to drive, and so on. While at first glance it seems to be opinion based, students soon discover that they need to provide textual proof for their choices. (The chart is embedded below, and can be increased to full size using the fullscreen button in the lower right corner).

The students who neglected to read the assigned chapters for homework are ill-prepared to defend their choices in the discourse that ensues. See more on this lesson here.

Bonus: When students are expected to complete first readings on their own, they begin to welcome short assessments for each chapter. In their minds, their time spent reading assigned chapters is now serving "double duty" as it prepares them for class assessments as well as close reading and discussion sessions.

3. Choose Close Reading Excerpts in Advance

This can only happen, of course, if you followed step one and read the book for yourself. Having done this, you're ready to judiciously select those pages or paragraphs which warrant analysis and discussion.

How to best manage this? Keep your mind in the gutter. In other words, liberally annotate the pages of your own text, making liberal use of the margins and the gutter, that no-man's land formed by the inner margins of two facing pages. I prefer to do this only upon my second reading of a book, in a process I call Deconstructing the Novel.

As you reread the novel,

• Assign each page a title. This will allow you to reference specific events more quickly. Critical quotes make excellent titles, as well as excellent discussion points.
• Form anticipatory questions for each chapter. These are for your own reference, as they will cue you to what you felt was most important in this chapter.
• Jot down questions throughout the chapter. Some questions may review information which is critical to unfolding events, while others may ask students to predict what will occur next, based upon the information that author has provided. It’s important to write STOP at those points where you would like students to predict or reflect; often in the “heat of the moment” we have flown past a point in the story where I had meant for students to stop and share their thoughts, or to predict what action the character might next take.
• Underline vocabulary which is critical to understanding the story. Since close reading is text dependent, can students define these words using context clues? Or, is the term introduced here and then later defined using the “read on” strategy? Which words are unfamiliar, yet not critical in understanding the text?
• Mark any literary devices. Which are employed by this author often? Which are central to the story’s theme or plot?
• Continually ask yourself these questions: What’s worth knowing here? How can students take what is worth knowing and make it their own? How can they organize their own thinking about this novel’s contents in order to comprehend it better? In what ways does this excerpt rely upon, relate to, or affect other portions of the text? In what ways does this excerpt relate to the book's theme and essential questions about that theme? What has the author explicitly stated? What has the author hinted at? What has the author omitted?

Bonus: Students can learn to annotate texts in a similar manner following your model. Using copies of public domain documents is one excellent way to do this with pen and paper, and the Internet provides many sites and apps for practicing this skill digitally. Both Google Docs and WikiSpaces allow students to highlight and comment upon text selections, or Thinkport's Annotator provides an easy, registration-free stand-alone option. 

4. Allow Students to Choose Close Reading Excerpts 

This seems like self-contradicting advice, since it's the antithesis of what is suggested above. However, if we are to give students ownership over reading, and eventually "release them to the wild" to practice close reading on their own, then we should be willing to entertain examinations of those passages they find most troubling. challenging, important, and or entertaining.

Students may also begin to share writing from other sources which they come across in their own reading experiences. While not all of it may be suitable for classroom reading or discussion, you might be surprised by a rare gem.

Bonus: Ownership. And a pretty good reason to get the reading done at home. Most importantly, however, we're encouraging students to read critically, with an eye and ear toward what the author is doing.

5. Ask "So What?"

Once students have dissected the chosen text passage, they need to ask, "So what?" 

By "so what?" we're asking:

• What does this text mean in context of the whole work? 
• What has the author explicitly said, and what has the author perhaps implied? 
• How does the new content affect what we already know, and how does it shape our expectations for what is yet to be encountered in the text? 
• How does what we've read fit into historical contexts? 
• Does what we've read have something to say about our theme? 
• Does it answer essential questions we might have formulated? 
• What questions remain unanswered?
• What information am I lacking to fully understand what I've read?
• What new questions emerged? 

Too many students take on reading as a decoding practice: reading one word after another, rather than putting them together into a meaningful context. Like a bingo caller reading random, singularly meaningless balls plucked from a spinning cage, these students fail to see how these isolated bits of information form patterns of meaning.

By studying the structure of sentences, paragraphs, pages, and chapters, and then analyzing the ideas within those constructs, we lead students to construct meaning from the texts. This process was somewhat simpler, I suppose, in the lower grades when picture books gave students a fighting chance to figure out what was going in; in the higher grades, however, these same students need modeled strategies and plentiful practice to make those same connections with text.

Simply asking, "So what?" and then waiting for answers, and thoughts, and epiphanies to happen is key. My most difficult challenge at this point is to shut up and listen and nod and listen some more, and let students piggyback on the ideas of their peers.

The "So what?" stage might be accompanied with written reflections or extensions on the close reading, but not as a matter of course.

Bonus: The answers to this simple question may yield indicators to what students will need to tackle next. 

6. Reflect on the Experience

This step is all on you, teacher.

Based upon the results of your close reading experience, where do you go next? With what concept or skill do students need additional practice? Based upon unanswered questions and confusions, which text excerpt would be best for the next close reading?

In my experience, what worked well one year didn't the next, so this is the stage where our professional knowledge, judgement, and sensitivity to the text and the students themselves must guide us to make the appropriate instructional decisions.

Bonus: The ability to do this is what makes the best teachers irreplaceable. 

In Conclusion 

Students who weren't expected to approach texts with such intensity and laser focus might need several opportunities to "get into it." Some students will be suspicious of your motives, others will be too shy to share ideas, and others, of course, will be content to ride on the coattails of the few who initially carry the conversation.

But by approaching close readings in a purposeful way, and demanding more intensive interpretation of what the texts have to say, we can bring about a change in students' default approaches to reading.

Need more ideas on building those skills that students need for reading texts with greater complexity? I recommend The Challenge of Challenging Text by Timothy Shanahan, Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey, from the most March, 2012 issue of Educational Leadership.

Responding and Reflecting; Colaborating and Collecting

If you've ever used Wallwisher, you know how powerful such a tool can be in creating collaboration and on-line dialogue between students.

Lino It is a similar online bulletin board, allowing anonymous and instant posting, permitting only the posters (and the administrator) to move or peel off the stickies that have been added. It's super easy with few frills to distract students. It's easily embeddable to most web sites and wikis, retaining full functionality.

Check out the example of students responding to Paul Laurence Dunbar's "The Sparrow" which was read in juxtaposition to Poe's "The Raven." You can see that this group of four students generated a bunch of questions they wanted to discuss, and even posted a picture, the poem, and a related video to the wall. 

Interestingly, some groups assigned stickies by color to each member, while others decided that "blue is vocabulary, and pink is questions," and so on.

One neat feature of Lino It is History, which highlights the ten most recent additions, allowing users to quickly see what was added since their last visit (when you view the example, click on Highlight New, and then keep clicking the arrow beside it to view the ten latest additions).

Applications for the Reading/Language Arts Classroom:

• Demand Exit Tickets: all students respond to an open ended question based on the day's lesson.
• Collect Ten Word Stories, ala Sparky Teaching's Ten Word Stories page. This ten word story might be a reflection on a day's lit piece.
• Ask students to list running questions or observations about a challenging text piece.
• Encourage students to collect colorful figurative language and "cool sentences" from their reading that they would like to discuss during later close reading sessions. Some of these sentences can later be submitted to Notable Sentences... for Imitation and Creation (see my write-up here).
• Add a "What's New and Notable" bulletin board to your teacher's page. Include assignment updates, links to current events, etc. See mine at the bottom of my main site.
• Share files and videos related to classroom discussion topics.
• Get instant student responses to poems, song lyrics, facts, and quotations, perhaps as a warm-up to each day's lesson.
• Allow students to record thoughts and questions as they watch a video or read a chapter.
• Check out more ideas at this blog.

Notes and Caveats:

• Limit the number of users on a single board to five or less. Otherwise, you'll have too much traffic and many redundant responses.
• If you care to know who posted which items, instruct students to include their initials on posts. As mentioned above, some students chose to assign a different color to each member to differentiate responses.

Animated History of the English Language

Check out the very informative and funny History of the English Language in Ten Animated Minutes, posted at Open Culture.

Great intro to the subject of how the English language continues to evolve and "borrow" words from other languages.

How Do You Encourage Students to Read Assigned Selections at Home?

In a previous post titled Stirring the Pot: Fueling Discussion in Reading Class, I mentioned that I'd share some ideas for ensuring that all students read assigned chapters for homework. In truth I have several methods that will increase the probability that all students will read the assigned selection. Unfortunately, you and I know that no method will guarantee it (but I certainly welcome your ideas!).

Testmoz: Simple Online Assessment

My number one strategy these days is to individually assess students online using Testmoz. If your students have one-to-one access to computers in the classroom, this might be for you.

Test Moz is a simple-to-create, simple-to-use, online assessment application. You can create interactive, self-checking quizzes in several formats (multiple choice, true/false, check boxes, and type in boxes). Detailed reports tell you who took the test, how long it took them, which questions they answered correctly, and their overall percentage score. A separate grid of corrects/incorrects also visually reveals whether one question was missed an inordinate number of times versus another.

Before we move on, take a sample quiz. You'll get a feel for the format and the ease of use.

In my own class, I typically use this tool to assess student understanding of a chapter assigned the night before. With every student on a computer, it's quick and easy. It also provides a permanent, printable record of the test.

If you don't have one-to-one computers in the class, students can complete the assessments at home. But won't they be able to look back at the reading selection and cheat? If your goal is to ensure that students read the selection, then is "looking back at the text" really a big issue? When I create quizzes with Testmoz, they're so text-specific that even a student who gets a peek at the assessment before class will still need to know the reading passage to score well.

You can also use this assessment tool in conjunction with any online reading selection. Have students open the target reading selection in one window, and the Test Moz quiz in another. With the windows side by side, students can answer questions about the reading selection as they read.
Need some reading or viewing materials? I like the online news articles at Scholastic News for younger students, and the current events articles chosen specifically for learners at The New York Times. You can also learn about and access images from the NY Times photo prompt site. Or, simply search for a daily, student-friendly article (such as this one on the Attack on Pearl Harbor) and create a quick five question quiz for a warm-up.

I will warn you, however, to RECORD your test number and your passwords carefully! There is no way to retrieve either from the site once you've created a test!

Google Docs

If you need another assessment tool that provides students with a more open-space writing environment, I'd recommend using a Google Form to collect student responses. Google Forms allow you to solicit answers of all lengths and types, and then organizes all student responses nicely into a spreadsheet. Writing prompts from the NY Times Learning Network would work nicely for this approach (the linked article about pet peeves will really get your middle schoolers writing!).

Google Forms can also be used with video prompts, such as those offered at TeachHub. Check out some lesson plans and ideas for this approach at a previous post on video writing prompts.

Other Quiz Generators

If you like Testmoz but want to see what else is out there, check out this link listing online quiz generators. You might find one there that better serves your purposes. Zoho Challenge is another you might want to check out; while it's a pay application, it does offer more bells and whistles than your typical free program.

Online Discussions

For online discussions, I'd recommend the new Collaborize Classroom site, which is a social media tool designed for specifically for education. You can read more about it in my previous post on Stirring Up Discussions. This free online portal allows students to vote on ideas, post their own, engage in online discussions, and share many types of digital media. Requiring students to respond to prompts at home eliminates the need for accessing computers at school. By asking for responses to be supported by text evidence, you're increasing the likelihood that students will read the assigned selections.

Character Dialogues

One method I used in third and fourth grade, and a bit last year in sixth, required students to take on the persona of a character from the book and converse with another.

When students read Because of Winn Dixie they didn't seem to mind that young Opal is permitted unlimited freedom to go where she wants, and to spend time with whomever she chooses. She disappears for hours at a time, unaccountable to anyone (not a mistake by the author, mind you, but a necessary element of the relationship between Opal and her father, the Preacher).

In one dialogue exercise, some students are presented with this scenario:

You are Sweetie Pie's mother. You're concerned that your young daughter has been spending too much time with the Preacher's daughter Opal. It seems to you that Opal not only roams unsupervised, but also befriends the "less desirables" in the community. On top of that, Sweetie Pie has been telling you some far-fetched stories about what happens at Gertrude's Pet Shop. You confront the Preacher with your concerns.

Students know that they'll need to not only read through tonight's assignment to get "ammunition," but also skim through previous chapters for examples to include in their dialogue.

The dialogues are unscripted, and the flow is entirely dependent on the two actors. The student who plays the part of the Preacher is likewise prompted with details, but his perspective of Opal's activities is naturally different. 

The fun of this particular exercise is its unpredictability. Halfway through one such dialogue in our classroom, "Mom" called up her daughter Sweetie Pie from the audience, and the unsuspecting Sweetie Pie had to immediately fall into character! Not to be outdone, Preacher called up his daughter, Opal, to explain her side. (By the way, all of this was done in Southern accents to match the story's setting). Students quickly learned they would need to read assigned chapters each night or be ill prepared to engage their peers the next day.

What methods have you used to encourage your students to complete reading assignments?