classroom assessment resources

Hi everyone,

Thanks to everyone who posted about Tensions & Triumphs. A few of you still haven't posted, so if you can do that as soon as possible, it would be much appreciated. I know you're all in a time crunch with portfolios and finishing up action research papers. Here's what I propose we do for March:

Classroom assessment was one of the hot topics many of you were concerned about. NCTE's website, www.ncte.org, has a lot of article links about classroom management, especially connected with authentic writing tasks. If you get on the NCTE website and click on the menu at the right on "Classroom assessment," a large number of items come up. There are seven that I see as especially useful, broken out into three different categories: Teaching Strategies, Professional Readings, and Related Resources. How about if everyone reads all seven (they're short, I promise) and then we talk online about how these articles' ideas contribute to our understandings of what we'd like our classroom assessment to look like? Here are the article link titles to click on:

Under Teaching Strategies: The Learning Response Log: An Assessment Tool; Exhibitions of Mastery: The Tail that Wags the Dog; Teaching in a World Focused on Testing

Under Professional Readings: Suggestions for Responding to the Dilemma of Grading Students' Writing; Reading the Data: Making Supportable Claims from Classroom Assessment; Improving Learning through Classroom Assessment

Under Related Resources: Framing Statements on Assessment

I'll post on the classroom assessment issue before spring break. If everyone can post by March 31st, that would be fabulous.

Meanwhile, I'm also thinking ahead to April. After reading the first set of postings, I have two titles to propose-- one I've read, one I haven't but have always wanted to read. The one I've read is Letters to a New Teacher by Jim Burke. It addresses some of the issues people posted about, and it's a secondary language arts focus. The other title is The Courage to Teach by Parker Palmer. I haven't read this one, but from what I know of it, it's not geared towards a specific subject or grade level but rather towards helping teachers hang onto their larger vision of why they want to teach and how to do so in the face of standardized testing pressures. Which would you like to read? Let's decide by March 10th or so in order to have time to order copies.

Or, if you have another title you think we should read, post it on the blog so we can discuss it!