The Tovani Finale (Ch 8 & 9)

The chapter on assessment was another which I read with great interest, as this is one of the more alarming aspects of the role I am about to undertake. How on earth do I set assessments? How do I mark them? Even more frightening, how do I do either of these things in a way which is worth a damn to my students or to me as a teacher? Tovani raises the point that teachers want to know "...how I can tell if my students are improving as readers" and says that she as a teacher wants to "assess my students' thinking in a way that informs my teaching". Yeah. What she said.I loved the quote from David Perkins that says "...inert knowledge is the knowledge equivalent of a couch potato: It's there, but it doesn't move around much or do anything." This quote made me laugh out loud - and it's so true of so much of the way that knowledge is taught and assessed.

I thought the idea of "Conversation Calendars" was a great one, an excellent way of getting to know students and finding out what they care about in order to help them see how the work they do in class connects to their lives. "Reading Response Logs" - helping students get better at reading, writing, and thinking by reading, writing, and thinking. Seems so obvious when it is illustrated in this way. A "File Folder Collection of Work Samples" - collecting throughout the year especially selected pieces of work which give a piece of the puzzle as to who our students are. And final examinations which explicitly examine metacognitive processes. Testing what they have learned about their own reading and learning processes. What a great idea! I really appreciated the importance of getting students to share their thinking - so valuable for them as learners, and so valuable for us as learners about learners.

And then the piece de resistance: "Base your assessment on what you value". I remember Dr Shann saying just that. And then I thought about this very unit of work and how it is being assessed. I realise how much I have enjoyed this unit. How very, very valuable blogging has been as a means of contemplating readings and tutorials, how validated I have felt as a learner by being able to express exactly what I have thought (not what I am expected to have remembered), and how all this has really enabled me to engage with the material I am being asked to consider. I have really enjoyed it, and I have learned a lot by thinking about the material. Lol! There it is. Just what Tovani is saying. In a nutshell.

Three things are highlighted in the concluding chapter of the book. Firstly, "...focus on what is important and, as much as possible, ignore the rest". That statement really struck a chord, because one of the things that surprised me most on prac was how very disrupted a place a classroom really is. Fire drills. Sports carnivals. Dramas (unscripted ones). It really is important to prioritise and focus, and teach these skills as well!

The next thing was the final verse of the poem "Did I Miiss Anything?" by Tom Wayman. I highlighted it for no other reason than I loved it, I thought it was such a beautiful thought:
Contained in this classroom
is a microcosm of human existence
assembled for you to query and examine and ponder
This is not the only place such an opportunity has been gathered
but it was one place
Yes! Learning is important! Significant! Worth turning up for!

And finally - this: Tovani hopes that I, her reader, am saying to myself "I can do this!"

I can do this.