Tovani Chapter 8

April 18^th, 2012
Tovani Chapter 8



The chapter starts off by talking about assessments. The author talks a bit about traditional assessment, like taking a traditional test. She realized that she is assessing students each day and that ongoing assessment was important. She talks about how traditional assessments do not measure how students think. It is important to show students how to be better thinkers. Tovani introduces us to some starting points like goal setting as well as strategies. She also gave examples of how she organizes students responses.

I like the idea of on going assessment. Though you may not be recording grades it is important to make sure that students are following along. Small untraditional assessments are great to keep up with students progress. I agree with Tovani when she talks about how you need to teach students how to be better thinkers. Simply knowing information is not enough if you cannot deeply think about it. Its like un-rooted knowledge with no connection to anything. Therefore you will not be able to apply that knowledge to other areas of your life.

Goal setting is a great idea. When you have something to work towards it makes you more apt to accomplish what you want to achieve. Conversation calendars are also a great idea. It helps the teacher get a better idea of how to tailor his/her lesson based on the students in her class. Another good strategy. Tovani talked about was reading response logs. This is like what we are doing in this class. It helps the teacher know the students interests and thoughts and how they respond to certain things. While it gets the students to think about what they are reading about.

Some strategies I used while reading were taking notes, rereading and making connections to my experiences.

Citations
Tovani, C. (2004). Do I Really Have to Teach Reading?: Content Comprehension, grades 6-12. Portland, ME: Stenhouse.