Sorry, got caught up in the holidays. So here's a story/thought that's been stewing in my brain for a while. A boy I work closely with, most closely in reading, absolutely floored me on Monday morning of the week before winter break. He came to school in kind of a foul humor, so I tried to jolly him up by starting with a game that we play in the hall: we toss a ball back and forth and call a word or phrase to each other that has to do with the book he's reading. It can be anything; doesn't have to be vocabulary. This helps me see whether and what he remembers of what he's read.
He's been reading the "Ready Freddy" series, and on that day students were supposed to decide how they would present their independent reading project to the class. I didn't really know how to approach this task with this kid, but it needed to be very concrete. Imagine my surprise, then, when on the first toss he says, "Freddy is always nervous at the beginning of the book." Next toss: "Then he gets help from his friends, and he's excited about his plan." And finally, "He is always happy at the end of the book." Wow. Considering that getting this kid to answer questions about what he's read is about as easy as pulling teeth, this sounded to me like he had all of a sudden started spouting Shakespeare.
I found out later that this was basically a summary of a reading conference he'd had with Ms. Lee and another student (also reading "Ready Freddy") on Friday, which made it less out-of-the-blue, but still impressive that he internalized and could produce all of that at an appropriate moment. So, great. I had him write it all down as part of his final project (a booklet; he loves making his own books) before it disappeared from his mind. I also praised him to the skies, of course. I think he felt good about his work, as well he should have. A good first period on a Monday. I told his mom about it at dismissal. Yaay.
The next day, Ms. Lee was going to give an assessment that corresponded to the Common Core standards for reading. I attended the meeting in which this assessment was agreed on; students were asked to write about a character that they had read about in the current school year and imagine being friends with them; kind of a fun assignment.
This boy turned in a blank sheet of paper for this assessment. Let's just leave aside the reasons for that; suffice it to say that this is not an uncommon occurrence for this boy when it comes to assessments. There was another boy in the class who also turned in a blank paper; this boy's particular challenge is writing, so again, not so surprising as an outcome. But my question is this: isn't this as much a writing assessment as it is a reading assessment? How can you assess one without the other, "formally," as it were? Is there a way to do it?
Assessing these two particular students this way indicates a problem, but it doesn't assess their reading ability. This assessment doesn't tell you that one of these boys reads independently for 30 minutes a day, and the other cannot do that at all. It doesn't tell you that they both read (decode) at or above grade level. It doesn't tell you that one of them just made, with some guidance, a major breakthrough in expressing himself concerning his reading comprehension.
Perhaps this assessment served its intended purpose for all but these two students, although this is far from clear. My question is this: how useful is this reading assessment if it is as much about how well a student writes as about how the student reads, or how sophisticated their thinking is about what they are reading? If we rely on writing to inform us about their reading, and thinking, then what happens when writing is a problem? Do we assume they're not reading? That doesn't seem fair.
Happy New Year everyone. More in 2013!
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