Abstract:

Rachel Amstutz, an NBCT in Maryland, says that some of the formative assessment techniques in this intriguing book are common, but all well-explained. "One of the strengths of the book is the inclusion of detailed examples of real teachers using the identified strategies in their classroom," comments Amstutz.

Fisher, D. & Frey, N. (2008). Checking for understanding: Formative assessment technique for your classroom. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Full Text:

Checking for Understanding: Formative Assessment Techniques for Your Classroom

By Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey
2007 (164pp/paperback)
ASCD
ISBN: 978-1-4166-0569-0
$26.95 ($20.95 for members)

Reviewed by Rachel Amstutz, NBCT
Instructional Specialist
Montgomery County Public Schools
Rockville, Maryland

In our assessment-driven culture, it’s refreshing to read a book that describes a multitude of ways to assess student learning in addition to the multiple choice questions and constructed response items we see in formal, high-stakes assessments. More so, this book stresses teaching for student learning, not just for performance results.

Beginning with a chapter entitled “Why Check for Understanding,” Fisher and Frey provide compelling support for formative assessment. They clearly define what it is and what it is not. With a brief discussion about closing the achievement gap, they note that we have no time to waste and therefore must “focus our instruction and ensure that students are learning, thinking, understanding, comprehending and processing on high levels.” Further, they assert that checking for understanding should:

· Align with enduring understandings (Wiggins & McTighe, 1998)

· Align with differentiation (Tomlinson, 1999)

· Focus on gap analysis (Bennett et al., 2004)

· Lead to precise teaching (Fullan et al., 2006)

The subsequent chapters analyze methods of checking for student understanding in specific ways, with chapters dedicated to Using Oral Language to Check for Understanding, Using Questioning, Using Writing, Using Projects and Performance, Using Tests, and Using Common Assessments and Consensus. Each chapter is organized similarly, beginning with a brief introduction, followed by misuses of this strategy in the classroom (my favorite component because the misuses they describe are SO true!). Each chapter ends with suggested formative assessment practices and examples.

In particular, two chapters provided professional food for thought that challenged me and made me analyze my practice. Chapter 2, Using Oral Language to Check for Understanding, was one of my favorites. The authors’ discussion of the history of oral language and the importance of using it to assess student learning is compelling, and their focus on Accountable Talk is excellent. Reinforcing that the goal is not just to get students chatting, they describe ways in which students can be trained to be accountable as they talk about their own learning.

As the chapters progressed, I felt the suggested practices were common in the majority of classrooms (e.g., wait time, planning questions ahead of time, every pupil response cards, etc.). That said, the authors continuously provide excellent examples and great resources for each practice that are perfect for any teacher. I particularly enjoyed the tips for Helping Students Who Respond Incorrectly (page 41), as I have constantly struggled to publicly correct students in a manner that would encourage them to keep volunteering their answers during class discussions.

Once I turned the page to begin to Chapter 7, Using Common Assessment and Consensus, I was fully intrigued and captivated again. The inclusion of this topic made the book complete as it focused on the professional development necessary to effectively check for understanding. It was almost as if strobe lights went off as I read it: it makes so much sense to check for understanding systematically with a group of colleagues, instead of only independently in my classroom. This chapter really ties it all together. As much as it goes against my rules, I’d strongly recommend reading the Afterword and Chapter 7 first!

Throughout the book, I appreciated that the authors did not discuss formative assessment in isolation. Fisher and Frey weave in threads of other research and cite well-known educational thinkers like Carol Ann Tomlinson (differentiation) and Howard Gardner (Multiple Intelligences) to present a well rounded perspective of effective teaching. They draw important connections between the opportunities students have to revise their work and thinking and the ultimate achievement of better summative assessment results.

One of the strengths of the book is the inclusion of detailed examples of real teachers using the identified strategies in their classroom. These examples provide enough context for the reader to understand what is happening in the classroom and why this strategy is impactful. There are examples from a wide range of content areas and grade levels. Something for everyone!

Prior to reading each chapter, I identified several questions about the topic that I expected to be resolved by the end of the chapter. For the most part, all of my questions were answered, many immediately! However, the one topic that I felt was unresolved throughout the book pertains to the practical classroom management challenges for constantly assessing ALL learners. How do you track your informal assessment of each student?

When I was a full-time middle school teacher with over 100 students journeying through my room each day, I struggled to document my formative assessments. Relying on my memory simply wasn’t enough, especially when I needed to speak specifically about my conclusions about a particular student. While the authors mention that you are using this information to inform instruction (implying that tracking the data is not as important), there are many times when having a record of these formative assessments would help. In a revised edition of this book, I’d love to see tips for managing the documentation as well as other classroom management strategies that I can ‘grab-and-go’ to make formative assessment easier to manage.

While I did not feel that I learned a multitude of new strategies, I was reminded of many strategies I have used throughout the years. The authors review basic classroom techniques that most (hopefully all) teachers employ on a daily basis and show how these practices can and should be used to inform instruction. Checking for Understanding is a breath of fresh air and even a hearty pat on the back for teachers who are committed to providing their students every possible opportunity to be successful.

Many teachers who read the book will recognize that the authors are suggesting you keep doing what you are doing, because it works. I highly recommend this book for all teachers new to the profession and to anyone looking for new ideas about including formative assessments in their daily teaching practice.

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Donna C. White, an elementary teacher in North Carolina, says that Turville's book provides strategies for addressing students' lack of motivation with lessons that will relate to their own interests. She also comments that Turville "does not dodge the assessment bullet" as she presents ways to incorporate student interests into lesson plans.

Turville, J. (2007). Differentiating by student interest: Practical lessons and strategies. Larchmont, NY: Eye on Education.

Full Text:

Differentiating by Student Interest: Practical Lessons and Strategies

By Joni Turville
2007 (184 pp/paperback
Eye on Education, Inc.
ISBN: 1-59667-047-9
$29.95

Reviewed by Donna C. White
Elementary Teacher & Literacy Coach
Fayetteville, North Carolina

Parents of three-year old children quickly learn that the only way to happily coexist is to offer children choices: “Do you want to wear your red shorts or your blue shorts today?” “Do you want to eat green beans or green peas?”

Based on her observations of her own son, who struggled with the drudgery of book reports during his elementary school years, Joni Turville researched the role of choice and differentiation by interest with her students. Her book Differentiating by Student Interest: Practical Lessons and Strategies examines the evidence from research, gives step-by-step strategies for the implementation of interest based differentiation, and provides a wealth of lessons and resources that can be easily used in the elementary classroom.

Turville cites compelling research that supports the link between student interest, student motivation, and student learning. There is probably not a teacher lounge in the United States where teachers have not talked about how “unmotivated” students are today. Yet teachers know that personal or situational interest is a certain motivator for students. Translating that knowledge into lessons and strategies for our students is the challenge. Turville provides a guide for effectively creating a classroom environment that values and supports the unique talents and abilities of each student.

She begins by illustrating a plethora of methods to assess student interest. These include interest inventories (even for non-verbal students) and surveys that can be completed by students and by parents. All of these techniques provide the teacher with the information he/she will need in order to design effective lessons based on student interest. However, the greatest value of these tools is the message they communicate to students: “Your teacher genuinely cares about you.”

The activities can be easily incorporated in typical classroom instruction. For example, a “VIP Venn Diagram” is used as a tool for students to compare the interests of everyone in the class. Another activity has the students tally their interests and make a classroom graph. Recognizing that teachers need to have an idea of what differentiation by interest would look like, Turville provides sample lessons in Language Arts, Math, Science, and Social Studies. With the caveat that these lessons would necessarily need to be adapted to fit the specific interests of a teacher’s own students, she helps even the most reluctant teacher take those crucial first steps.

Differentiation by interest does not seem to be so overwhelming because Turville highlights a few strategies and shows how they can be used throughout the curriculum. A subsequent chapter gives further strategies for creating new lessons that focus on specific understandings and learning outcomes. A lesson plan template is provided.

Teachers often consider it important to teach material to students in the format in which it will be tested. To her credit, Turville does not dodge the assessment bullet. Instead, she confronts the issue from the perspective of mandated and/or standardized testing as well as teacher management and accountability. She provides many tools for formative as well as summative assessment and guides the reader through a thought-provoking discussion of what should be assessed and how the information should be used. She makes a convincing argument that if the students learn material through their own choices and interests, they are more likely to retain the information and succeed on subsequent tests.

In summary, Differentiating by Student Interest: Practical Lessons and Strategies is a teacher-friendly and useful resource. Turville provides a wealth of tips and hints in addition to easy to follow strategies and lessons. The book is filled with examples, templates, and blackline masters that can be copied from the book or downloaded from the publisher’s website. While it is easy for an individual teacher to follow the path that Turville has blazed (several teachers in my school have ordered copies after I shared some of the activities I am using), this book would also be an excellent choice for a book study by a faculty or small group or teachers. The reflective questions at the end of each chapter, in addition to the many suggestions for collaboration, enhance the application of the strategies school-wide. The online resources and incorporation of technology throughout each chapter strengthen its relevance in modern classrooms.

Yet, through it all, Joni Turville never lets the reader forget that the basis for all effective differentiation and instruction begins with teacher knowledge of each individual child.

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Math and social studies teacher Cossondra George, of Michigan, describes Jacobs' book as a collection of strategies for achieving schoolwide language instruction. She outlines the chapters, from active vocabulary use to ways of incorporating blogging and instant messaging, and calls the book "common-sensical and practical" overall.

Jacobs. H.H. (2006). Active literacy across the curriculum: Strategies for reading, writing, speaking and listening.Larchmont, NY: Eye on Education.

Full Text:

Active Literacy Across the Curriculum: Strategies for Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening

By Heidi Hayes Jacobs
2006 (150 pp/paperback)
Eye on Education
ISBN: 1-59667-023-1
$29.95

Reviewed by Cossondra George
Mathematics & Social Studies Teacher
Newberry (MI) Middle School

“Meaning-making is not a spectator sport – people don’t get ideas; they construct ideas.” So writes Heidi Hayes Jacobs in a book that offers a clear, concise message of how and why every teacher, regardless of content area, should be teaching language — and teaching students how to construct ideas from that language in the context of other material they are learning.

The chapters in the book are actually strategies for achieving school wide language instruction. Strategy One: Revising Roles – Every Teacher Becomes an Active Language Teacher advocates using curriculum mapping to guide this process. Weak literacy skills are cited as the reason students perform poorly on standardized tests. Specific skills such as text interaction and editing and revising are discussed. The common thread running throughout the discussions in this chapter is that content area teachers too often fail to focus on reading, writing, speaking and listening skills in the context of their subject.

Strategy Two: Teaching English as a Foreign Language – Employing Three Distinctive Types of Active Vocabulary contrasts the way a foreign language class is run versus a typical English class. Foreign language instruction relies heavily on spoken words, both by teacher and student, in order to master the new vocabulary. Jacobs proposes a three arena method for carrying over this vocabulary-building approach into other content areas. Every content area has (1) high-frequency words, (2) specialized terminology, (3) embellishments. High-frequency words are commonly the vocabulary words students are expected to learn and use. Specialized terminology is often explained to students, but most often they are not expected to use these new words in speaking and writing, and therefore have difficulty committing them to long term memory. Embellishments are described as those “vivid, precise, engaging words that embellish and give power to thinking in print and in speech.” Content area teachers must not only introduce these types of vocabulary words to students, but expect them to use them consistently and correctly. “We should be pumping our students full of words,” Jacobs says.

Strategy Three: Creative Notetaking – Activating Extraction and Reaction from Texts points out that note-taking by students should be an active process in which the student makes his own meaning from the material covered in class — not simply filling in blank worksheets or copying teacher notes. Student notes should demonstrate the ability to extract and explain ideas and concepts, and by doing so develop ownership of that content. Four forms of note taking are presented: gathering and categorizing, commenting and questioning, organizing graphically, and outlining and sequencing sets. This chapter does a great job of showing how note-taking becomes a creative process rather than a regurgitative one when teachers make it a priority.

Rubrics to be used for writing across content areas within every classroom are suggested in Strategy Four: Editing and Revising Independently – Using a Consistent Developmental Policy in Every K-12 Classroom. Jacobs suggests that teachers across the school work together to create a pool of assessment criteria for teachers to draw upon. The criteria, which could be tailored to particular assignments, would thus remain consistent across content areas. Students would begin to edit and revise their writing using the same standards and techniques in every class.

In Strategy Five: Speaking and Listening in Groups – Working with the Discussion Types of Models, common misconceptions about how to best generate rich discussions in the classroom are addressed, as well as specific models for enhancing these events. One especially interesting part of Jacob’s discussion is her reflection on the reason many teachers avoid true classroom discussions — they are messy with interruptions and side conversations. By cultivating caring communities within classrooms, teachers can generate and sustain a learning environment where discussion is commonplace and less likely to be viewed by students as a novelty to be exploited.

A variety of options for encouraging student growth in speaking and listening are suggested in Strategy Six: Tuning the Speaking/Listening Instrument – Giving Voice Lessons in Each Classroom. Digital tools like instant messaging and blogging are touted as new avenues for encouraging students to grow in this area. A list of possible speech types is given, as are criteria for evaluating the effectiveness of speaking and listening in students.

All the ideas given in the first chapters are brought together in Strategy Seven: Mapping Active Literacy – Revising and Integrating Curriculum Maps K-12. Jacobs says that best practice in the classroom, as well as in professional development, are critical to success as schools work to increase literacy among students. By using technology to map curriculums within a district, all teachers can view and use all content area maps to understand where students are, what they are learning in other classes, and how their own curriculum can enhance and integrate with other subjects. She suggests an ambitious seven-phase plan for best utilizing curriculum maps to achieve literacy goals.

Overall, I found this book to be common-sensical and practical, giving me ideas as a math and social studies teacher for using my content to increase literacy among my students, as well as helping them construct deeper meaning of the curriculum content I am teaching. Some of the ideas are a bit overwhelming and intimidating. Perhaps by looking at what is already in place, thinking about our final goal for student literacy as a district, and implementing in small steps the suggestions in the book would be less monumental.

I left the book inspired to rethink how I teach vocabulary in my own classroom and armed with thoughts of how our district can revitalize our curriculum maps, which quite frankly are collecting dust.

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How can teachers stay energized in a highly stressful occupation? Leslie Maple, a 20-year classroom veteran, shares six of her best ideas in this article from Classroom Leadership (June 2005). Although she aims her comments at "new teachers to help them in their transition from a brand-new, overwhelmed teacher to a brand-new, confident teacher," her distilled wisdom will be welcomed by any teacher in need of a fresh infusion of "verve."

Maple, L.T. (2005). Sustaining the verve. Classroom leadership (June 2005, Vol. 8 No. 9). Retrieved from ASCD 21 Apr 2008. Link: http://www.ascd.org/portal/site/ascd/template.MAXIMIZE/menuitem.29d4046b...

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If you're interested in building middle and high school students' comprehension of fiction text, you'll want to take a look at this oft-cited article from the English Journal (May 2004), "Beyond the Yellow Highlighter: Teaching Annotation Skills to Improve Reading Comprehension." Annotating a text can be a powerful strategy to comprehend difficult material and encourage active reading, says high school teacher Carol Porter-O'Donnell. "Annotating is a writing to-learn strategy for use while reading or rereading. Annotating helps readers reach a deeper level of engagement and promotes active reading. It makes the reader's 'dialogue with the text' a visible record of the thoughts that emerge while making sense of the reading." O'Donnell provides several activities and tools to help students learn to purposefully mark up what they read. (270k PDF file)

Porter-O'Donnell. (2004). Beyond the yellow highligter. English journal (Vol. 93 No. 5, May 2004). Retrieved from the National Council of Teachers of English 18 Apr 2008. Link: http://www.ncte.org/pubs/journals/ej/articles/116395.htm

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