EDRD 7717 Module 2: Article Response

Making the Most of Assessments to Inform Instruction

      This article was very interesting because it challenged my way of thinking of assessment. Last year in my undergraduate, we talked a lot about assessment and its importance. Therefore, I understand that assessments are tools used within the classroom to determine a child's understanding of the content in order to guide the preceding instruction. Risko and Walker-Dalhouse named three different ways that teachers can "maximize their potential": "assess more than single skills", "use formative assessments", and "design multimodal assessments"  (Risko & Walker-Dalhouse, 2010, pg. 420). 

      I completely agree with their statement that a lot of tests that I have seen administered over the past few years "focus more on literal comprehension than higher levels of comprehension" (Risko & Walker-Dalhouse, 2010, pg. 420). It is so important that we give our children more credit and allow them to think on a deeper level because that is when they will really begin to fully understand and absorb the information they have been learning. One way to get away from very explicit questioning when dealing with comprehension is to ask the students more open-ended questions in order to allow the students to make text to text, text to self, and text to world connections. 

      Formative assessments are also important in guiding instruction because they are something that needs to be done regularly in order to get a true understanding of the children's knowledge. Formative assessments need to be something that goes along with the daily instruction, because as  Risko and Walker-Dalhouse stated, "Yet Popham (2008), who has conducted research on various forms of assessments, reminded us that most of these interim, benchmark, or periodic tests are not helpful for forming instructional decisions and Making the Most of Assessments to Inform Instruction that there is no research to suggest they have direct 

educational benefits for students" (Risko & Walker-Dalhouse, 2010, pg. 421). 

      Times have changed with the introduction of new technology and other educational breakthroughs, and with that needs to come a change in the way we teach our students. Children read and have access to literature such as blogs, social networking sites and other digital articles and stories, so it is important that we begin to bring those types of literature in to the classroom to use as a teaching tool. 

Resources 

Risko, V. J., & Walker-Dalhouse. (2010). Making the most of assessments to inform instruction.

          The Reading Teacher, 63(5), 420-422. DOI:10.1598/RT.63.5.7