Best way of assessing our students

How can I use alternative assessment in my classroom but still prepare my students for standardized state tests?

A way of assessment that I found relevant and beneficial to my own personal experience was alternative assessments such as artworks, essays, short writing, sketchbook or journals, portfolios, oral presentations, and group projects. These types of assessments are relevant to my own experiences because throughout schooling I always preferred the assessments that were not a fill in the bubbles and turn it in (standardized tests). These types of tests made me really nervous and I always felt like I could not do as well on them. I loved working on group projects and making portfolios because I really enjoyed working with peers and I liked being able to out together my best work for a portfolio. Group projects are also beneficial because they create a cooperative learning experience and give every student a chance to participate and share their ideas. Even know in college I always feel more comfortable writing an essay on a topic rather than taking a test on it, because with writing an essay I can work at my own pace and not be stressed out about how much time I have left to finish the test. In school my teachers have always provided us with rubrics for each assignment we have to complete. This is extremely beneficial because I am able to self-assess with the rubric before turning it in. By self-assessing I can check if I’ve met the skills or performances expected for the assignment by my teacher.

In my placements I’ve found that alternative assessments are really beneficial to all students because it gives every student a chance to show what they have learned as well as giving students other opportunities to demonstrate what they know. When teaching my science mini unit in the field I used an alternative form of assessment, science notebooks, instead of having my students take a test on motion. In their science notebooks students wrote down observations, predictions, conclusions and more as well as visually representing their investigations. This gave every student in my classroom a chance to show me what they had learned by either writing complete sentences, visually representing, using bullet points, etc. So I think including alternative assessments in my classroom is crucial, since in my own experiences I benefited from them.

The Amazing World of Picture Books

How can I encourage students that picture books are not just for younger students who can’t read the words on the page?

 Picture books were, and are still my favorite type of books today. I love being able to see the author’s depiction of the story and the characters in the images. Some of my memories with picture books are when my older brother learned to read, I would sit next to him and look at the pictures in the story and “read” the pictures. My brother would always correct me if I missed any details from the text that were not depicted in the pictures. But looking at the pictures made me feel like I was reading with him. Picture books really influenced my learning because when I was learning to read I had a lot of difficulties with decoding and comprehending text. When I learned to read I still had trouble with comprehension although I could read the words on the page. Pictures in the story helped me with this because I was able to pair up the text I was reading with the pictures in each page and make sense of what was happening in the story. In the reading “It Was Always the Pictures…” by Paula Kluth, Kluth describes how many learners with disabilities learn best when they have an image of what they are learning about; but I think this is true to for all learners, students can really benefit from visuals. Kluth says, “if you look at a picture, it puts more ideas in your head”. I think this is very true because when I was in grade school and was reading, the pictures in the books would add to the text I was reading, to create a more complete comprehension of the story. Kluth describes picture books as, “typically, in these texts, the pictures don’t just supplement the text; they are as important or central as the text”. I think this is also very true because when I got older I still appreciated picture books because the images had so much to say, and combined with the text they were perfect.