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Steve Peha: The experience Julie relates
here, I'm sad to say, is all too common these
days. In the spirit of ed reform, a small number
of teachers like Julie have taken it upon
themselves to bring their teaching in line with
research-based "best practice." But in so doing,
they find that the abilities and attitudes their
students develop run counter to what they are
tested on. Ironically, the very skills that are so
highly valued in our universities, in the
workplace, and in our communities (individual
initiative, personal accountability, "outside the
box" thinking, real world creative problem
solving, emotional intelligence, team play,
constructive cooperation, etc.) often prove
detrimental to a student's success on tests.
What's even worse is that teaching these things
can actually hamper an educator's ability to rise
in his or her career.
Hey, Kids! Guess What Time it Is?
Julie Bumgardner: The time is upon us to
test, test, test: we have a packet of post tests
given to us by Title I and the district office for
tabulating data on student progress in reading and
writing; we have all the report card tests
including math and language; other grade levels
have state standardized tests. Some parts of the
building are so filled with test stress I'm
surprised the windows haven't blown. The
principals were chewed out and were told to chew
us out ("If you're not willing to do this, and if
you're not willing to do that..." We wouldn't even
be here, I replied under my breath). And so began
my Thursday with a sour feeling throughout.
The district wants the numbers, in each classroom,
of how many students are a year or more below
grade level in reading. Third grade wanted to meet
with us (2nd grade) to give us a list of
guidelines to follow and to try to squeeze into
our teaching in order to prepare next year's 3rd
graders for the MAP (the big state test), the
results of which can determine student placement,
district accreditation, and Title I funding. Some
of this test prep included responding to writing
prompts, answering two-part questions, how to
repeat back information read, etc.
I was not aware of the level of stress in the
building until I talked to some of the other
teachers about it (which made me feel a little
guilty for not being aware, yet glad that I wasn't
a part of it.) Whether I like it or not, tests
must be taken, scores recorded, and results sent
back to the district. It's just part of how things
are right now and there doesn't seem to be much
that anyone can do about it.
Steve: I know exactly how you feel, Julie,
and you're not alone. Just about everyone in all
the schools I work with seems to feel pretty much
the same way. It's a hard time to be a teacher
and, I suppose, a hard time to be a kid, too. As
for me, I try to take
a practical perspective
about testing. I think the tests
are not as hard as they seem. If everyone started
working together instead of complaining so much,
and if we all got clear on the kinds of effective
teaching practices teachers like you are pursuing,
scores would go up and we'd all be under a lot
less pressure. After all, people don't mind taking
tests so much when they think they're going to do
well on them. But, for the moment at least, you're
certainly accurate in your assessment of the
tension and the negative effect that tension is
having on teachers and kids.
The Problem is...
Julie: In our Writer's Workshop we don't
really do any prompted writing. Kids write better
when they pick their own topics, and since helping
them write better is the goal, this is what we do.
But all of a sudden it seemed that prompted
writing was the only thing that mattered: the
Title I test I had to give included a prompt, the
3rd grade teachers asked us to practice writing to
prompts; this is the only kind of writing the
district seems interested in, and it looks like
the kids are going to have to face them often
throughout their remaining years in school.
Even though I don't use prompts in my own
teaching, I figured my kids ought to know how to
deal with them. I also thought it was important
for them to learn how to answer test questions in
the contrived academic forms that would be
acceptable to those doing the scoring. Deciding to
do this was hard for me because I don't agree with
this type of assessment. Specifically, I don't
agree that these tests accurately measure student
writing ability because students are not going to
"really write" when forced to write about a
particular topic, especially if they have little
to say about it. This kind of testing only
assesses how well students respond to arbitrarily
selected test questions on a given day, a
situation that few of us ever face in our real
lives (unless we end up on some silly game show!),
and that I would never intentionally create in my
classroom. Still, this was something they had to
do, and I wanted them to do as well as they could,
so I introduced the idea to them in a mini-lesson
on writing to prompts.
Steve: The position you take here, of
deciding to prepare kids for tests even though the
preparation and testing run counter to your
instincts, is for me the appropriate position to
take. Teach in accordance with "best practice"
research throughout the year and spend a small
amount of time, right before testing begins, to
introduce students to the particulars of the test
format.
For me, it's easiest to think of writing for a
test as just another genre of writing. We do genre
studies all the time. We teach kids about fiction,
about poetry, about journalism, and many other
kinds of writing. Why not treat test writing this
way, too? Whether we like it or not, it is a kind
of writing kids will encounter. And even if its
only purpose is to sort people into categories, we
can still teach kids about this so they can have
some control over the categories into which they
are sorted. Most of the time, when we do a genre
study in reading or writing, we take 2-4 weeks of
class time at the most. So it seems to me that we
need not take any more time than this to prepare
kids for testing. We certainly don't need to
"teach to the test" all year long.
Boy, Was I Surprised When...
Julie: I started out by explaining to the
kids what a "prompt" was and did an example of one
on chart paper. I prepared them with the knowledge
that this wasn't "really writing" like we'd
learned it, but it was something they needed to
know how to do. The kids were taken aback at the
idea of not choosing their own topics, confused
looks were popping up on faces all over the room.
To make them feel more comfortable, I explained
that they could use everything we had learned
about writing, all the pre-writing strategies to
focus their ideas, think of more details, etc.
They seemed to be able to accept this. Then the
bomb dropped.
I explained that on these tests they would have to
write their whole piece at once and would not be
able to discuss it out loud; they would have to do
all the steps in the writing process by themselves
at a single sitting. "What?!" the kids exclaimed.
I was bombarded with questions: "How are we going
to see what the audience thinks?" "How are we
going to ask questions to get more details?" "How
are we going to make it better?" "What if we feel
stuck and we need to share to get more ideas?"
Etc.
Steve: This has happened to me, too. In
fact, it has happened so many times that it was
starting to bother me. For a few years I wasn't
sure what to do about it. But this year, working
with a 3rd grade teacher, something different
happened. When the class got to spring testing
time, the kids actually wanted to take the tests.
And when the tests were over, the feedback we got
was that the testing was "easy" and "fun". There
were certainly kids who asked when we were going
to get back to real writing, real reading, and
real math, but aside from being a bit bored, they
weren't unhappy about the testing in any way.
What was different this time? It certainly wasn't
more test prep. In fact, the teacher did very
little. But she didn't ignore the test either. She
told them about it long before it came up and
referred to it throughout the year even though she
we wasn't doing "test prep." She was excited, too.
She wanted to do well and she communicated that to
her students without making them feel pressured in
any way. Without changing the way she taught, she
tried to make the kids feel comfortable and
confident about the testing that was to come. In
the end, this seems to have been successful. In
addition to enjoying the testing, the students
received the highest scores in the school, scoring
10%-15% better in all subjects relative to the
average scores of the five other 3rd grade classes
in their school.
The conclusion I draw is that while we certainly
shouldn't teach to the test, we shouldn't ignore
it either. These tests are just another learning
challenge like a new form of writing, a new kind
of reading, or a new unit in math. If we approach
the testing with confidence and composure, our
kids will, too. Far from being afraid of tests,
the 3rd graders I followed this year were eager to
be tested, to show others what they had learned,
to make themselves, their parents, and their
teacher proud. It is experiences like this that
make me think hard about whether "test anxiety"
comes from the test or from us.
Every Cloud Has a Silver Lining
Julie: For the first time I can remember, I
felt success from my students' confusion. They
really do get it, I thought. They understand what
it takes to be real writers. Granted, they will
have to develop the habit of re-reading and asking
themselves the questions that their readers reader
would, but clearly they learned some of the most
important things about what writing is and how to
do it well.
To help them with the requirements of the testing
situation, I talked to them about "writing like a
reader", that they would not only have to know
what they wanted to say but would also need to
think about how a reader would respond without
actually having a reader there to tell them. I
told them that I knew this was a hard and
unnatural thing to do, but that it was just
another part of writing, just like all the other
parts we had learned. I gave them some tips on how
to develop their story without sharing it or
having a conference. We talked about re-reading it
and pretending you are the audience, then asking
yourself a question that you think someone else
might, trying to find parts that someone might
have a question about to add more detail, and so
on.
Steve: I suspect that one of the reasons
kids have problems in testing situations is simply
that writing for tests isn't very interesting. In
Writer's Workshop classrooms, the kids get
interested in writing. They also enjoy the social
interaction that comes from listening to the
writing of others, from conferences, small group
sharing, etc. When they get to the tests, some of
which go on for several days, they get bored, and
their boredom translates into lackluster
performance.
In my experience, working with kids at all grade
levels all across the country, I find that in
those classrooms where Writer's Workshop is
practiced, writing is the kids' favorite subject.
They really enjoy it and come to look forward to
it each day, so much so that they become upset
when for any reason they aren't able to write.
It's another of the unfortunate ironies of testing
(which is now dominated by writing) that kids who
love to write should be the most negatively
impacted.
The standard rationale for prohibiting sharing,
conferencing, and using the writing process over
several days is that there is no way to know for
sure how much of the writing is actually done by
the writer. But it occurs to me that never in
nearly 20 years of professional writing have I had
to produce something of any importance without
being able to share it with others, get feedback,
use writing reference materials, and receive
assistance of all kinds. In fact, one of the
things that makes me a successful professional
writer is that I have a talent for seeking out
feedback and using it to improve my work. The
first time I got paid for a magazine article, my
editor said, "Great story! Can you knock it down
to 750 words and get it to me by Tuesday?" He
didn't say, "Did you get any help with this?"
Good Prompt, Bad Prompt
Julie: We finished the example prompt and I
gave them the post test. They had answered it
before, during the pre-test at the beginning of
the year. I felt that we were lucky because the
prompt was based on a personal experience but
unlucky because the type of experience was not
something all of my students could relate to:
"Write a story about an experience you've had with
an animal." A few kids did not have experiences to
choose from, and I talked with them until we found
a time they went to a friend's house where a pet
lived, or a time they went to a pet store, or
something they might have seen in their backyard,
etc. Then they wrote.
I couldn't conference, they couldn't share, we all
got frustrated. The pieces turned out to be flops
(as did the kids' pieces in the other 2nd grade
classrooms). But I knew they would.
Although I know I will have to work more on
teaching my students how to answer prompts
successfully, and to write without authentic
interaction, the fact my kids' pieces were so bad
doesn't really bother me. I know that they have
become good writers, that they are learning how to
express themselves through written language, and
that they understand what real writing is.
Granted, some are still struggling and are not as
good at this as others, but they all have the
essential knowledge and solid strategies they need
to develop into talented and passionate writers —
real writers writing about real things that really
matter.
Steve: This has happened to me, too. Two
years ago, I had a group of kids answer a prompt.
The pieces were short and uninspired. They were so
different from their normal Writer's Workshop
writing that I had everyone take out their last
published piece and compare it with the piece they
had written to the prompt. They noticed the
difference immediately but they didn't care. I was
confused. "Why are your prompted pieces so bad
compared to your Writer's Workshop pieces?" I
asked. They laughed. "Mr. Peha, this is school
writing," one kid said. "So what?" I responded. To
which he replied: "In Writer's Workshop we don't
do this kind of writing, we do the good kind." At
times like this, I feel like the kids should be
teaching me!
Another interesting test anecdote came to me this
spring from Rosemary Leifer, a 4th grade teacher
in Renton, WA with whom I have worked for several
years now. Rosemary is one of the finest teachers
I have ever met and she is particularly good with
writing. Normally, she runs a typical Writer's
Workshop for about an hour each day, but recently
she's been focusing on writing for our state test.
Here's what she had to say:
Dear Steve,
You will appreciate this. For the last three weeks of school we
have been spending at least two hours a day on
writing. They write to prompts, we write to
prompts together, we share samples of the best
of the responses and ones that need to be
improved and we discuss what should be done.
We have been writing, writing, writing.
So Tyler says to me last Friday, "Mrs. Leifer, when are we going to
start writing again?" I said, "Tyler, what do
you mean? We have been writing and writing and
writing." He said, "But that's writing to
prompts, not real writing. Real writing is
when you have your own ideas and you think
about them and share them with other people to
get more ideas. Real writing is much more
interesting. I am a much better real writer
than I am a prompt writer."
When I told him as soon as we finished testing we would be back to
real writing, he was much relieved. "Real
writing is my favorite thing to do."
Sincerely,
Rosemary
Clearly, this student is a writer, or as he might
put it a "real writer." And real writers (even
very young ones) know that what they are being
asked to do on these tests is not real writing. I
think it's also interesting that this student
realizes, as many of us have been saying for
years, that he writes much better in "real life"
than he does on tests.
So why does it take a 9-year old kid to say the
things that need to be said? If we're not testing
"real writing" what are we testing? Is it smart to
base decisions about teaching and learning on
tests that do not accurately reflect the teaching
and learning that has occurred? And if a 4th
grader can figure this out, why can't pundits,
politicians, and policy makers understand it, too? |
