Quick Key on Kickstater

Recently, an interesting app crossed my Twitter feed, and the creator is looking for a little help.  Quick Key is a simple app that can help you quickly and easily collect and grade formative assessments.  Think scantron for your phone!

I saw the demo that Walter posted and was instantly enthralled by it.  I immediately saw implications for tracking behavior as well as what it was originally created for.  It also connects with Learning Management Software (like PowerSchool and others), so you data is automatically uploaded and available in your grade book.

Walter is getting very close to releasing this app, but needs a little more help.  Take a moment and check out his Kickstarter campaign, to raise $20,000.  He's over halfway to his goal, and still 41 days to go!

http://tinyurl.com/QK-Kickstart

Patrick

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Assessing Reading Skills of Students with Special Needs @kmkenny89 #sped #spedchat

This is a guest post by Kaylyn Kenny (@kmkenny89). Kaylyn is a student at Illinois State University who is majoring in special education. I recently "met" Kaylyn on Twitter during this week's #spedchat, which was an open forum. You can view the transcript here. Kaylyn chimed right in asking, "learning about assessing students...any advice? I have to do a lot of assessing this semester." Her question generated several responses. I then asked if she would be interested in writing a guest post and she agreed.


Here at Illinois State University, as part of our courses on curriculum and instruction we have to assess and tutor students around the rural area. We first make an assessment toolkit. In the assessment toolkit, we need teacher materials, anecdotal notes, and data analysis forms.

One of the first assessments we use to assess to our students is the Burke Reading Interview, which helps us know what type of reader the student is along with how comfortable they are with reading. One of the main points of assessing is to make sure every student goes through the reading process while they are reading. First, they need to activate their schema. They can do that by sampling the text, anticipating or predicting, and monitoring their reading (Does it make sense? Does it sound right? Does it look right?). They can connect the sample to their own lives or background knowledge. Then they will either confirm or disconfirm what they have read. If they confirm, they will self correct right away. And if they disconfirm, they will search for the word or sentence then they will self correct or even skip the word.

We can also assess with the HT (hypothesis test) process. This is where teachers record and observe what the student does before, during and after a student is reading. Then we interpret why the student is doing the actions we observe and make an hypothesis with the observations and interpretations we have wrote down. The most important part is making a curricular decision for the student when we teach them. Reading is a complex process of solving and meaning.


- Kaylyn

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What can our kids do?

Assessing students with significant cognitive disabilities is not an exact science, it's a bit like driving a bus backwards with a blindfold on (not that I have any experience with that).  I know that seems like an out of the blue statement, but it should make sense soon.  I've been reading Embracing Chaos, by Stephanie Crist, recently and came across a great post - Proof: Ben can Read!.  The blog focuses on a mother's triumphs and struggles to raise 3 boys with autism, the post is a triumph - she was able prove her son could read!  I applaud her and think there is more to say about it.


Stephanie's point was that she was forced to "prove" this fact to the teachers, and that is where I find some issue.  Having been teaching for 10 years now, I know what some people think about "our" kids.  They can't, they won't, they will never do that...but I want to know - Why Not?  Who says that the child sitting in the wheelchair, unable to speak, listening to the same music after hitting a switch can't read those words too?  Who says the non-verbal child sitting in front of you staring isn't sounding out a word?  Why do we assume they can't?  Why don't we have high expectations and figure out a way to teach it to them.  One of my friends has this quote on her email:

‘If a child can't learn the way we teach, maybe we should teach the way they learn.’

~Ignacio Estrada

I think it sums up this issue entirely.  We need to find the way children learn and teach to them, not the other way around.  We need to assume they can do things and figure out a way for them to show us they can.  "Our" kids can do anything we believe they can do!

Photo Courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons:  Eileen Delhi

Patrick

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