Nicole_Journal+Five

On Friday March 6th I visited my cooperating teacher’s fourth grade classroom in the morning. During this visit I was able to observe the way she administered a spelling test. I was interested to observe this type of written assessment since I was able to observe a spelling test in a first grade classroom five weeks ago. The teacher started by telling the students to put everything away besides a piece of line paper and a pencil. She then asked the students to write their name, date, and number and number their paper one through ten. I noticed her instruction in preparing the students to take the test was much faster then the teacher in the first grade classroom. The teacher in the first grade class had given clearly stated instructions that were step by step when she implemented the test. In a first grade classroom where attention span can be limited, this was a really good tool to use, but in fourth grade and in the middle of the year the students in the class were well aware of what needed to be done. The class took the spelling test as a whole group. The teacher sat in the front of the class and read each word out loud. Though, unlike the first grade teacher who said each word about five times, the fourth grade teacher said the word once. Even after only saying the word once, no student ever needed a word repeated. What I also noticed about the spelling test in the fourth grade class was that students were also writing the definition of the word next to its spelling. I really liked the way the teacher used an ordinary spelling test to allow the students to enhance their vocabulary as well. Even though the students have a separate vocabulary list from their reading materials, the teacher explained to me that she thinks it is important that students also know what some of the complicated words they spell mean. This makes sense since there is really little value in knowing how to spell a word if you don’t know its definition and can therefore never use it in writing. I think this idea also makes the assessment more authentic since just knowing how to spell a word like “pneumonia” really has no true purpose until students can explain to you exactly how they could use this term in their writing. Overall, I think the oral and written assessment the teacher facilitated was the best way to assess what the students had to learn. In this case she pronounced each word out loud and the students had to write each word down. As explained in the first journal entry, I am sure a spelling bee-type test where each student is asked individually and one-at-a-time to spell specific words out loud would have been too time-consuming and perhaps a little intimidating for the students. I also don’t think a proofreading-style test would have been affective due to the words that were being assessed. Find incorrectly spelled words in a sentence and rewriting the correct spelling would have been too simple in the case where there is only one letter before an ‘at’ ending. For this same reason a multiple choice spelling test would have not been as effective and would have lowered the validity of the assessment.