In their chapter “Thinking Through Assessment,” Brenner, Pearson, and Reif offer many valuable suggestions for creating meaningful assessments- for students, teachers, parents, policy makers, taxpayers, everybody! The authors suggest that when students are being assessed, they are looking to answer the questions “How am I doing?” and “What shall I do next?”

One of their suggestions for making assessments useful for students is to include self-evaluations. When I read this, I was instantly reminded of my experience with self-evaluations in high school. My senior year, I took a philosophy class that assigned a short paper every week. Along with the paper, we were required to fill out self-evaluation forms. They were printed on bright yellow paper, and always contained the same list of questions, things like- “Rate your paper on a scale of 1 to 5 in terms of clarity, argument, etc.” There weren’t any short answers or free responses. I can’t really remember the specific questions too well, but I do remember that I HATED filling them out. At the end of the form we had to write what we thought our grade should be, and then when we got the paper back, our teacher wrote what he thought the grade should be, and also corrected our ratings from 1 to 5 in terms of clarity, etc.

I think I had a pretty negative association with self-evaluation, the way I experienced it was never fulfilling for me. So when I saw Linda Reif’s example of a self-evaluation form for a paper I was very excited! She calls the self-evaluation “Process Paper (Background History of the Writing) and Evaluation”(p.269). I loved the questions she included- they really encouraged reflection on the writing process.  I especially liked the question, “What do you want me to know about the writing of this that I might now know just from reading it?” I think this question really opens up a door for student-teacher communication about writing. The question “How did you come up with the idea for this piece?” also invites students to share their thought process with the teacher.

I think this template is an awesome example of how to make self-evaluation meaningful and useful for students. I definitely want to use it with students in the future!

“In the same way stairs are a constructed barrier to buildings, there are constructed educational barriers in our classrooms and in our pedagogies. We can, and should, address those barriers too.” – Patricia Dunn, “Re-seeing (Dis)ability,” p. 16

I really liked this quote from Patricia’s Dunn’s article about rethinking disability. I thought the entire article was full of great suggestions about how to be a more inclusive and conscientious teacher. What I liked so much about this quote in particular was that it took the conversation about disability beyond the physical. I think many discussions about disability focus on the physical barriers students’ face, and fail to give adequate consideration to the other educational barriers they come up against. Breaking down physical barriers is often easier than breaking down the barriers in pedagogies. I really appreciated Dunn’s suggestions about broadening the definitions of reading and writing, creating diverse ways of assessing students, and using novels and stories with disabled characters to help students understand disability and break free from stereotypes.

Another important piece of Dunn’s article was her emphasis on using new technology to help break down barriers for students. This made me think a lot about my own experiences working with students. For the past four summers, I worked in a summer program for special needs students, and saw a lot of cool ways technology was used as a vehicle for communication. One non-verbal student used a touch-pad that allowed him to communicate when he was hungry, needed to go to the bathroom, wanted to play etc. It allowed him to communicate and express himself in a way he was otherwise unable to do. So cool!

I also loved Dunn’s comments about Universal Design:

“If accessibility were more a part of our cultural consciousness, if inclusiveness were something we didn’t always have to be reminded about, if disability were seen as a part of ‘normal’ life, our buildings and classrooms would not need so much expensive retrofitting and people wouldn’t need to have to ask not to be excluded. Buildings would be more usable by more people from the beginning, which is the main idea behind Universal Design.”

What a wonderful vision for the world!

My friend Garrett LOVES video games. I think he could talk about them all day! So he jumped at the chance to share some of his ideas with me. I started by asking him very generally- “What do you like about video games?” He answered my question with a question-“Well what kind of video games, Sarah?” He explained that there are many different genres of games and said that each game has its own “feel” as well as its own set of goals and central features.

I asked him to describe the features that most attract him to his favorite games. He said that he loves science fiction and fantasy books and movies, and that the games he likes take these genres to “another level.”

I think he explained very well: “Instead of reading from a third party perspective, you’re a part of the story. You take on the role of a character and you preform that character’s action. It is a totally different feeling than just reading or watching a story unfold- you can be much more actively involved in it.”

He elaborated further on the different ways that video game players can become engaged in the storyline: “In some games, there is an overarching storyline that your character is following, but you can change the way that story is created and change the way your character achieves their goals. In other games, the emphasis is less on a specific character or story- it’s more about immersing yourself in a new world, almost like a second reality.”

He also noted that video games require practice and willingness to examine your mistakes and create strategies- “When you’re playing video games, you can watch replays, figure out what went wrong, and practice specific strategies to help you get better. It actually reminds me of playing lacrosse, or even of preparing for tests in schools. Really competitive video gamers wake up early in the morning and practice, because if they don’t other people will learn new strategies and they’ll be left behind.”

A lot of what Garrett said echoed the ideas expressed in James Paul Gee’s article “Learning by design: good video games as learning machines.” Gee emphasizes that the interactive element of video games is essential in motivating players and making them feel invested- concepts that can be applied to learning. He writes, “Good learning requires that students feel like active agents (producers) not just passive recipients (consumers)”(p.6). Gee also discusses the important learning skills video games teach- like devising strategies, practicing, examining mistakes, etc. I think video games provide a model of skills and aspects of learning that can be applied to school, especially the idea of making learning enaging and interactive.

For me, one of the most compelling points in Spector and Jones article about Anne Frank and critical literacy was the idea that teachers should unpack what students already know (or think they know) before diving into a lesson. I think this is especially important when teaching about historical events or characters that fall under the realm of “common knowledge.” Spector and Jones suggest that teachers “ask students to discuss their knowledge of Anne Frank – and how they came to that knowledge” and to create posters depicting their idea of Anne Frank’s story. I think similar activities could be created for almost any historical event or character that students would have prior knowledge about. Inviting students to share what they know is important because it allows teachers to better understand what they need to teach, but also because it gives students the opportunity to think about the sources of information that shape their ideas about history.

While reading this article and thinking about student knowledge, I was reminded of a story that my friend told me. She is student teaching in New York City this year, and is currently working in a middle school social studies classroom. She’s been teaching lessons about Colonial America, and one day a student made a comment about Native Americans being “less civilized or less advanced” and that they needed the colonists to help them create a real society. She asked the student where he had come up with that idea, and he said “I don’t know I just heard it”(similar to the students studying Anne Frank!) When my friend asked the rest of the class what they thought, a great majority said they thought that too, they had heard that version of history as well. Knowing that many of her students were approaching the study of Colonial American from that perspective changed the way she thought about teaching them.