Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Chapter 5: Annotations: A Trustworthy Source of Data
Who's tried modeling their thinking for their students? Do any of you use annotations as a source of formative assessment? If you don't use them, I challenge you to try it out and let us know how it goes. Don't forget I am here for support. How has this chapter helped you think more about your practices?
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I like the idea of annotating the text. Jamie Powell uses it in her classroom frequently and I think that the students really have gotten a lot out of how she teaches them to annotate. I do like the idea of focus questions to help the students along. On page 77 Tovani talks about being able to visualize (as the teacher) if a student has read. Being a 9th grade teacher, how do you get them to give you quality annotations rather than a bunch of goobly gook just to prove that they have done the work? When would I have the time to check such a thing and if I didn’t and took it at face value, what do the students get out of the assignment? As much as I would love to believe that my students would do things because they will learn from it, the reality of the students that I teach is that they are going to get by with whatever they can get by with AND they want a good grade for sliding by. Assessment, in case you haven’t noticed, is something I grapple with frequently.
ReplyDeleteI also like the ways in which Tovani suggests teaching annotating text. Sure, I can do it, but there are a whole lot of things I can do but I don’t know how to teach someone else to do. Just because I can do it well means nothing in the classroom.
I have used the sticky note idea (page 83) before and I have found it helpful somewhat. I still have trouble with 9th graders being so excited to use sticky notes that they go overboard with them. (I can’t blame them because who doesn’t love a sticky note, really?) I think that with our iPads, this is much less of a problem for us than it was just a few short months ago. I think the iPads, too, solve the problem that Tovani poses on page 86 concerning students who will not annotate. Students who would never have written a sticky note or highlighted or underlined seem a good deal less reluctant when using the iPads.
The idea of annotation is something that I really believe in, but like I said in the first paragraph, what do you assess? When do I have time to conference and still teach my standards? What are the other students doing when I’m conferencing? (Does what they are doing while I’m conferencing create a backlog for me to grade?) I hate to keep coming back to grades, but let’s face it, I can’t put a smiley face or a frowney face on a kids report card instead of a number grade.
I am learning to model my thinking for students, but boy is it difficult! I worked with annotations more last semester than I ever have, with mixed results. I have not thought about annotations as formative assessment, but of course it is. Tovani says when students just annotate with surface comments, to give the work back to them and tell them you know they can think more deeply than that. I have been hearing "anchor charts" for several years. Now I understand what they are and how to use them. What strikes me about Tovani is that she is describing a very complex group of tasks that we will have to attempt and practice over and over before we become adept at them. The whole grading thing makes my head hurt. I am just going to figure it out as I go. Surely if I am using best practices in my classroom, I am going to be able to help more students figure out ways to make meaning from text. Most semesters I have at least one student I fear I have not helped to improve in reading or writing at all. I am still looking for Rachel's magic pixie dust. I keep finding little specks of it in this reading. I just have to figure out which specks fit which kids.
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