Assessing and Evaluating Learners.

I, like Heidi Murphy, had never really taken a traditional test on literature other than just chapter quizzes to show that we read the text. My assessment of literature was based on our ability to write essays on the themes and characters in the reading. While I still believe this to be the best way to assess understanding of literature, the chapter Assessing and Evaluating Students’ Learning had some interesting ideas that I hadn’t thought about. The first being that in order to decide how you should be assessing the students in your classroom about their understanding of literature, you have to decide what you value most about that literature. If you value the knowledge of factual information from the literature (characters, plot points, etc.) then traditional methods of assessment like testing and simple quizzes with “correct answers” can accomplish that. But if you value the ability for your students to critically analyze the themes of the text and create new ideas about the text, then more open-ended assessments such as essays in which students interpretive strategies and critical lenses to look at themes and the author’s purpose are more appropriate.

I am more aligned with the latter group of thinking but I also value reflection highly. I really liked the example from the text that talked about “exit memos”. Exit memos or slips give students the opportunity to reflect on what they’ve learned and how their thinking has changed. As a coach and future teacher, reflection is key to my success in helping my players and students learn. If I coach a football practice or teach a literature lesson, I need to be able to look at how that practice or lesson worked for my players or students. Did it accomplish what I wanted? Did they learn what I wanted them to learn? If not, I need to go back and change how I taught them. The same should be expected of my students. When they write, they should think about how well they got their ideas across on paper and if it really came out the way they wanted.