“One-Shot assessments such as chapter tests don’t help me teach. They measure finite knowledge, but don’t give any information about the way students think” (Tovani, p104).

How do we make our student become better thinkers? The theme of this chapter is about assessing strategy’s goal setting. Here is a list from I would like to share with you that I felt may be very helpful my class and maybe yours.

1. Activation of background knowledge: Can students access existing information to make connections between new and know information? Is there evidence that makes connections help students to relate to subject matter in a way that enhances interest and deepens understanding?
2. Student questioning of text: can students ask useful and authentic questions about the text in a way that enhances understanding and encourages deeper understanding?
3. Drawing conclusions and making inferences: can students combine their background knowledge with textual evidence to draw logical conclusions?
4. Monitoring comprehension and using fix-up strategies’: can student recognize signals and indicate they are confused.
5. Determining importance in text: Can students identify different purposes for reading? Do students recognize unique feature of texts, author styles, and similarities in topical information to distinguish important ideas.

Tovani talks about how she uses or begins every class with goal setting. Starting with brainstorming and writing goals. Each student will be responsible to choose one. They frequently revisit these goals through the year. I really like the idea of goals and revisiting these goals. I also think it would be good to ask the students to tell me when they have made their goals or not. We can discuss it and even change the goal if we find it to be unreachable. With goals Tovani recommends using calendars and why not have weekly goals. She even has one calendar that I think is cool were each day they get points from 1-20 for that day.

Here are some tips for making a calendar and making them work:

1. Have a tray in the room were calendars go every day.
2. Respond daily.
3. Make the calendars worth doing.
4. Decide how to manage lost calendars.
5. Consider who will use the calendars.
6. Experiment and vary the use of calendars.

I don’t really know how I can use them in a math class but they can be as simple as turning in homework or doing homework assignments and turning them in on time.

What works?

1. Decide what you want to assess. Give a variety of ways for student stop demonstrate understanding.
2. Design assessments that are checkpoints for understanding.
3. Teach students how to use the assessment tool. Don’t let format interfere with demonstration of knowledge.