Writing and Tests

This week we read two chapters from our textbooks Content Area Writing: the first “Public Writing” and the second “Writing for Tests and Assessments.”

 

These chapters look at going more in depth with student writing. Earlier, I posted about short writing assignments called Writing to Learn. Today, I am moving away from that subject and on to the bigger writing assignments. However, not all bigger writing assignments are research papers or literary analyses. Students also need to learn how to write for the tests and assessments we give them. This means how do we teach writing for essay tests not only within our classrooms but also on Standardized Tests.

 

First we look at this idea of Public Writing. So far we have looked at the private, unedited, spontaneous Writing to Learn assignments that are not graded. What about Public Writing is different? Well, this kind of writing has the following qualities:

• Substantial – longer, more in-depth pieces
• Planned – intentional writing with a focused purpose
• Authoritative – writing that argues a point or gives information in a confident manner
• Conventional – writing that strives to reach its audience by conventional writing standards
• Composed – writing that has been drafted and revised a few times to make sure it is polished and clear
• Edited – writing that pays attention to the pesky details of grammar, punctuation, and spelling
• Graded – writing that will be evaluated

 

Now Public Writing is a great idea, but many times it can be daunting for students. How do we as teacher make Public Writing more accessible and less daunting for our students? Well, we can work on giving students choice. If students have a choice on topics about which they can write, then we are making our assignments relevant and engaging. It is often easier for students to approach an assignment they had a choice on rather than getting forced to write about one specific topic. Besides choice, we can give the students time to write in class. If we make students do all their writing outside of class, many students can fall behind or get confused, but if we allow time in class to write we can provide the support and modeling they need throughout their writing process. Furthermore, we can respond to the student’s writing. Our feedback during the writing process can greatly enhance the student’s writing and give them more confidence when writing alone for tests and assessments. Quelling students’ fears about big writing assignments can be easy if we model good writing and turn our writing assignments into processes that slowly move from step one ‘til the end with plenty of support and feedback along the way.

 

Step Two – let’s look at what kind of writing students will be doing besides the big papers. Let’s look at what writing students will be doing for tests and assessments. Now tests are supposed to assess what students learned; however, there are limitations:

1. We have taught students to write for an external reason. They write for a grade. They do not write to persuade or inspire. They write simply to regurgitate the information we fed to them.
2. Tests do not have a large audience. The student either writes for the teacher or an anonymous test grader they will never know. There is no connection or desire to want to reach people through their writing.
3. Our questions we pose for them to write about are limited themselves. We get what we ask for and nothing more. Students do not elaborate. They answer the question in as basic terms as possible and move on.
4. Students only get one chance to write their answer. They are given a fixed amount of time and no way to add in the writing process of drafting and revising.
5. Tests only look at one moment in time. They do not show how a student progressed throughout a unit. What you get in an essay could be what they learned or it could be what they already knew. Tests do not allow for overall assessment of how that student learned.

 

So now that we know how limited tests are – how do we fix it?

 

We design better essay tests. We ask better questions. We focus on the big picture and long term meaning rather than the specific, tiny details the student will forget the second the next unit is started. We use tests throughout the unit that focus on writing and create a process the student can really learn from.  We give students more time to write their essays either in class with fewer questions or use take home tests.

 

We prepare students to respond to questions in a variety of ways. We give them examples and we model for them. We teach them how to look at a question or testing situation and approach it logically. We teach them how to take essay tests and by extension standardized tests.

 

There are three strategies to do this:

1. Keep students writing year round. Give them assignments that have them explain their ideas, elaborate on them, and connect them to other ideas. The more comfortable they become with this process – the easier the tests will be.
2. Make sure the students know the expectations about what is supposed to go in their answers and how they present their answers. They need to be able to look at a question and decipher what it is asking and how to give their answer.
3. Relate test taking to what they know: video games. Teach them that test taking is all about being ready to engage, being alert, using strategies, thinking over modes of moving forward, and deciding the best route to take.

 

By preparing students for writing on tests, we can help them improve their overall learning in every area as well as improve how they approach other problems in life once out of school. We no longer need to “teach for the tests” because we can learn to use the tests to really teach for the kids.

Stuck on the Tests

Guiding Question: How can we change the way we assess students to better improve their learning?

 

True or false – students are actually learning the material teachers are feeding them at school?

 

I urge you to think on that question for a bit because the answer is not as obvious as we had previously thought (or hoped.) Are students really learning the material nowadays? Or are they just memorizing facts for the tests and then clearing their brains afterwards for the next wave of information to come their way? This entry looks at chapter four of Content Area Reading, “Assessing Students and Texts,” and what insight this chapter will bring to this question.

 

I can tell you from my own experience that there were many classes in which I memorized facts, spit them out on a test, and promptly forgot most of them. And  while I do not think students will ever be faced with a situation in which telling someone the date of when the Gettysburg Address was delivered will ever be a matter of life or death – I do believe that our students are in some ways getting gypped in terms of school.

 

There is that wonderful phrase of “teaching for the test” that haunts teachers. And the sad reality is that most teachers are teaching for the test because of the pressure put upon them to get good test scores. We are in the midst of a high stakes testing fiasco that demands every school use standardized tests to see whether or not the school is meeting the adequate yearly progress (AYP). It is a check for our schools that puts pressure on our students.

 

And these tests are only locked in the present moment. These high stakes tests have the power to impact students for the rest of their lives. SAT and ACT, anyone? Nonetheless, even though the tests look towards the future, they impact the present too. Remember the phrase “teachers teach for the test?” Teachers are given curriculum geared towards the tests, curriculums that ignore basically everything else because that information will not be on the tests.

 

So that is where most teachers are now. And it is not their fault. Teachers are not teaching for the tests because they want to. They are under pressure as well with the state standards and government legislation that demands standardized testing in order to get funding. But teachers are not stuck there! Teachers can go above and beyond what they do now and implement another form of assessment for their students that truly gets at the heart of assessment and that is are students even learning anything?

 

Teachers can do this by doing authentic assessments. These kind of assessments are structured around observation: behaviors during class, work turned in, and even test scores. However, authentic assessments require that teachers go a step further than just observation – teachers must act on their observations and make changes as deemed necessary. So you observe your student acting out during reading time – that means you act by adapting that student’s reading time so it benefits them the most.

 

Another authentic assessment is the portfolio. The portfolio is a collection of the student’s work chosen by both the teacher and the student. The teacher chooses the assignments to be collected and the student can choose the work they think best represents them. It is a team project that provides organization, good student involvement in self reflection, reflection on student’s needs and skills, and assistance in planning future assignments. This collaborative approach helps students create meaning for their work and helps teachers see where their students are and how to help them go farther.

 

Teachers need to move away from the emphasis on high stakes testing and towards the more authentic types of assessment if we want to see if students are actually learning anything because isn’t that was school is for – learning something? It will be difficult and we can’t remove high stakes testing completely, but teachers can go above and beyond their work to really make sure their teaching is for the improvement of their students.