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5. Asking Students Questions
There are two parts to any school's curriculum - one, the curriculum prescribed by the school, and the other, the curriculum determined by the teacher.
The prescribed curriculum is often laid out in manuals or guides written by committees of teachers and principals, either at the school system level or the state level. These manuals or guides list learnings and suggested means of achieving them by grade level. The prescribed curriculum goes hand in hand with textbooks. As students move upward grade by grade, the textbook plays a greater and greater role, until in secondary school it takes a commanding place.
The part played by teacher-determined curriculum is considerable, particularly in the elementary years, before the advent of courses. This is to say that teachers have much latitude in what to teach. There is no teacher who only covers what is in the textbook or what is in the curriculum guide. One reason for this is that the teacher is responsible for making the learnings relevant to daily living. Our fast-changing world demands that new developments in any field are taken into account. Our times are so complicated that students are always challenged to understand and make sense of their lives, and they challenge the teacher to help them.
Another reason for the large part played by teacher-determined curriculum is the great variation among students, not only in knowledge and ability but also in interests and world-view. Teachers who test often and test widely see needs aplenty and feel a responsibility for accommodating them. It is in this environment that a variety of learning materials becomes so important.
6. Whole Class Instruction: Is It Out of Date?
Assessment of students' knowledge and abilities is the teacher's absolutely best educational tool. It is so powerful because it is an inspiration to the teacher's creativity. When the teacher sees where students' educational needs lie, his or her mind begins to work on what to do about them. An analogy with a politician is in order: the politician who goes out to meet and talk with the people learns what the needs are and then thinks up strategies for meeting them; the politician who lacks the common touch, on the other hand, generates ideas that are often inappropriate. Similarly, the teacher who assesses students' knowledge and abilities begins to think out appropriate educational strategies, whereas, with the ivory tower teacher, there is often a mismatch between what is taught and what is appropriate for the students. When tests are administered in advance of teaching, the teacher sees where the needs lie, and the students realize that there is much to learn - the test results are an inspiration to student humility.
Assessment helps prevent the teacher from teaching over the heads of the students. When the teacher knows that a student is unsure about step 1, there is no point in going on to step 2. For example, if a student doesn't understand subject and predicate, there is no point in teaching sentence diagramming; if a student can't multiply or subtract, there is no point in teaching long division.
Many classroom tests come from textbooks. Math textbooks provide many tests, as do some basal reading series.
Some of the best assessments are the simplest. For example, a teacher's dictating a paragraph, where the students are required to write down what is dictated, is very simple but very effective. Finding a paragraph to dictate is no problem, and student shortcomings in spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and handwriting are immediately apparent to the teacher.
Excellent resources are now available for finding tests. Buros Mental Measurements Yearbook and Buros Tests in Print have for many years been an excellent resource, and now, in addition, there is the Internet[1] accesses the Test Locator. Responding to the "Enter a database query" in the Test Locator brings up a list of tests for almost any school subject or topic.
Educational Testing Service publishes its own catalog of tests available from many publishers called "ETS Test Collection Catalog"[2] (Oryx Press).
In addition to assessing students' knowledge and attitudes before a study begins, many teachers assess students' interests as the study progresses. They recognize individual differences among students and make room in a study for students to go off on their own in some area. For example, in a study of Uzbekistan students might be asked to express interest in pursuing knowledge of Uzbek authors, Uzbek warriors, Uzbek law, Uzbek architecture, Uzbek cities, or Uzbek regions, among other topics. Students would then go off on their own and come up with a true-false test or a short report on their topic to share with the class.
The content of most classroom assessment is specific to the curriculum of the grade or class being taught. For example, if a unit is to be taught on Uzbekistan, the teacher will make a list of the vocabulary words to be taught in the unit, geography concepts, famous Uzbeks, wars, and so on, and will then test the students on their knowledge. The answers are usually open-ended: who was Abdulla Kahhor? Who is Abdulla Oripov? What is the name of the sea west of the Republic? The results tell the teacher - and the students - what the students don't know; implied in the results are what the students need to know. Teacher and students are then ready to embark on the study.
There are knowledge, skills, and attitudes that are the responsibility of all teachers and all students, and the teacher will do well to assess this knowledge and these skills and attitudes. There was a time in American education when a high school social studies teacher, for example, would say that the teaching of punctuation and capitalization was the responsibility of the English teacher, not the social studies teacher. The team approach in secondary schools has done away with this compartmentalization, so that now during team meetings teachers cooperatively discuss educational needs and then plan strategies to meet them.
Similarly, all teachers take responsibility for students' being able to speak correctly, to write good English, to expand vocabulary, to add and subtract, to observe good health habits, to be safe, to have good attitudes toward school, and to learn about current events. The day of sending a student back a grade to learn something is, for the most part, a thing of the past.
Therefore, in addition to teachers' assessing students' knowledge of specific grade level curriculum or subject matter,it comes within the purview of most teachers to assess students' English proficiency, understandings about health and safety, attitudes toward school, and knowledge of current events. Students come to see how much there is to learn and share in developing educational strategies.
The following tests, drawn from the Test Locator, are illustrative of tests that many or most teachers can use profitably, since the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that they test are the responsibility of many or most teachers.
Chapter II
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