March/April Blog: "Make Assessment Instruction's Working Partner"

Assessments.  Just the word sends a teacher's eyes glaze over. We know that they are invaluable, but wow, do we have an abundance of them.  The portion at the beginning of this chapter regarding assessing the assessments reminds me of the "guarding benches" reference in the "No More Independent Reading Text." While it is true that we don't have any room for adjustment on the use or implementation of some assessments, this chapter offers some good guidance in determining the efficacy of some that we do.
Reading conferences are mentioned again in this chapter, and I realize that the implementation of this tool will require just as much training for me as it will for my students.  The lists and graphics included in this section are invaluable.  It will be tricky to do these conferences on chosen readings, as there is very little of that in our classroom due to time and resources, but perhaps I can encourage students to bring in their favorite books from home or one they have chosen at the library about which they could share a little.
The suggested guiding questions and the followup troubleshooting questions on page 104 lend themselves to the development of a rubric. This text does a wonderful job of synthesizing the information of a section into very useful, easily digestible chunks for the distractible reader such as myself. The Reading Conference Framework on pages 104 to 105, as well as those suggested goals on 106 are fantastic.  With self-advocacy being such a  large part of Special education now, to give students the power to effectively assess their own reading, have words to describe their struggles and progress outside of "I just don't read that well" is so empowering!