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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This is a guest post by Cailey Richer (@CaileyRicher24). Cailey is a student at Illinois State University. She originally posted this on the Classroom 2.0: Help or Feedback Needed Forum.
Today, I attended a discussion in my SED 379 class. In the discussion we were supposed to talk about UDL. Here is what I said:
When I first learned about UDL freshman year of college in my SED 101 class, the first example of UDL that came to my mind was a ramp. A ramp is a great way to provide a different way of access to individuals with disabilities. But there is so much more to UDL. UDL gives all individuals equal opportunities to learn. It is not a single "one size fits all" solution. Because, realistically, one size never fits all. Everyone learns in a completely different way from everyone else and this is especially for children with disabilities.
On the CAST website, it explains that UDL can assist teachers in creating instructional goals, methods, materials and assessments that work for every student. There are 3 important concepts that UDL can provide. According to the CAST website, UDL can help teachers present information and content in different ways (multiple means of reprsentation), differentiate the ways that students can express what they know (multiple ways of expression), and stimulate interest and motivation for learning (multiple means of engagement). Besides the ones I listed, there are many more ways to provide multiple means of representation, expression, and engagement.
Source: CAST
UDL also plays a big part of being a 21st century learner. Being in the 21st century, technology is important. Since all students with disabilities learn differently and may need some source of technology to do so, this is where UDL and 21st century learning correlates. Multiple means of expression could be showing a student a video on a projector in order for them to understand a concept. Without UDL, learning efficiently would be almost impossible for students with disabilities.
READERS: What is your opinion on UDL and in your past experiences how have you met the needs of all students?
- Cailey
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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.
