{"id":629,"date":"2015-05-24T15:58:05","date_gmt":"2015-05-24T19:58:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/madameshepard.com\/?p=629"},"modified":"2015-05-24T16:00:02","modified_gmt":"2015-05-24T20:00:02","slug":"musings-on-assessing-interpretive-reading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/madameshepard.com\/?p=629","title":{"rendered":"Musings on assessing Interpretive Reading"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"reading\"<\/a>Although I still have a four days left in my current school year, my thoughts are already turning to the changes that I plan on making to improve my teaching for next year.\u00a0 This great article in a current teen magazine (matin p. 1<\/a>,\u00a0matin p. 2<\/a>,\u00a0matin p. 3<\/a>,\u00a0\u00a0matin p. 4<\/a>\u00a0) prompted me to write this interpretive task<\/a>\u00a0for my first French 2 IPA in the fall, as well as to reflect on what has worked and not worked in assessing my students\u2019 proficiency in the interpretive mode.\u00a0 I have learned a lot after writing 30+ IPA\u2019s this year!<\/p>\n

As my readers will have noticed, I create all of my interpretive assessments based on the template provided by ACTFL<\/a>.\u00a0 For the most part, I love using this template for assessing reading comprehension.\u00a0 The tasks on the template encourage my students to use both top-down and bottom-up processes to comprehend what they are reading and in most cases the descriptors in the rubric enable the teacher to pinpoint the students\u2019 level of comprehension based on their responses in each section. \u00a0I do, however, have a few suggestions about using this template in the classroom and modifying the rubric in a way that will streamline the assessment process and increase student success. Below, I\u2019ve addressed each section of the template, as well as the corresponding section of the ACTFL rubric<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Key Word Recognition<\/strong>: In this section, the students are given a list of English words or phrases and asked to find the corresponding French words\/phrases in the text.\u00a0 Because I don\u2019t give many vocabulary quizzes, this section helps me identify whether the students have retained the vocabulary they have used in the unit. In the lower levels I also add cognates to this section, so that the students will become accustomed to identifying these words in the text.\u00a0 I also include some previously-learned words here, to assess the students\u2019 ability to access this vocabulary.\u00a0 This section of the ACTFL rubric works well, as it objectively assesses the students on how many of these words the students are able to identify.\u00a0 I have found it helpful to identify in advance what range of correct answers will be considered all, the majority, half <\/em>and few<\/em>, as these are the terms used to define the various levels of comprehension on the rubric.\u00a0 The IPA that I\u2019ve included here there are 14 key words, so I\u2019ve set the following range for each level: Accomplished (13-14 correct responses), Strong Comprehension (9-12 correct responses), Minimal Comprehension (6-8 correct responses) and Limited Comprehension (5 or fewer correct responses). Establishing these numerical references helps streamline the process of evaluating the students on this section of the interpretive task and ensures that I am assessing the students as objectively as possible.<\/p>\n

Main Idea: <\/strong>While this is a very important task, I have found that it is rather difficult to assess individual student responses, due the variety of ways that the students interpret the directions in this section. In the sample IPA, I would consider main idea of the text to be \u201cto present the responses of a group of teenagers who were questioned about what gets them up in the morning.\u201d\u00a0 However, upon examining the rubric, it is clear that a more detailed main idea is required.\u00a0 According to the rubric, to demonstrate an Accomplished level of comprehension, a student must identify \u201cthe complete main idea of the text;\u201d a student who \u201cmisses some elements\u201d will be evaluated as having Strong Comprehension and if she identifies \u201csome part of the main idea,\u201d she falls to the Minimal Comprehension category. Clearly, a strong response to the main idea task must include more than a simple statement.\u00a0 In this example, a better main idea might be \u201cto present a group of students\u2019 responses when interviewed about how they wake up, why they get up at a certain time, and how their morning habits reflect their goals for the future.\u201d\u00a0 Clearly, my students need more direction in identifying a main idea in order to demonstrate Accomplished Comprehension in this section.\u00a0 I think a simple change to the directions might improve their performance here. Here\u2019s my suggestion:<\/p>\n