Reading Response: Chappuis: Chapters 8, 9 and 11

Minda Moskowitz

Reading Response

Chappuis: Chapters 8, 9, and 11

EDU 6011

September 29

Chapter 8 discusses the use of personal communication, such as oral questions, conferencing, logs, and journals, in order to find out what students know and understand. In the classroom in which I am completing my practicum, the students have a number of journals, including a math and an integrated studies one. At the beginning of each lesson, the students copy down the goal for the day and then, following the lesson, return to their journals to not only answer a specific question, but to explain their reasoning and/or how they arrived at their answers.  In addition, in that same journal, they assess how much learning they feel they accomplished that day and how much more they might feel that they need to learn. For this part of the activity, the students use a teacher-created rubric which is pasted into their journals.

The students also have a separate integrated studies (IS) notebook. When I planned out my social studies lesson plan, I hadn’t originally realized that what I was writing would become an official entry into their integrated studies journal.  For that lesson, I wrote my guiding question into the teacher’s notebook.  I then projected it onto a screen for the students to copy into their notebooks.  At the end of the lesson, they returned to their notebooks to answer the guiding question. This was their opportunity to reflect upon the lesson and describe, in their own words or pictures, what they had learned.  These are perfect examples of how to use personal communication as assessment tools.

Chapters 9 and 11 present practical ideas about how to keep track of formative and summative assessments, as well as the use of portfolios, in order to make them accessible and useful for teachers and students.  Having the students share the responsibility of completing them, provides clear goals for both the teachers and the students and requires the direct participation and responsibility on the part of the students. Students absolutely learn more when they are part of the assessment process.