Assessing and Evaluating Students' Learning Post

Learning literature is more than just being able to regurgitate information about the text, the author, or the literary elements that are being used. While knowing that information is helpful to comprehending texts, I think it is more important to be able to demonstrate your thinking about how you tried to understand a text. What were the questions that you asked about a complicated text? How did you think critically about the text to gain better understanding of the text? How did you demonstrate your thinking? Did you write down your thoughts on the text? Did you make comparisons between similar ideas or thoughts presented in other examples? How did you demonstrate that you knew what the text was trying to say?

I think it is important, when trying to learn literature, to put texts into context for students. If a student knows the period when the piece was written and the historical connections in a text, they are already one step further than students who just read the text and answer questions on a test. Students need to read texts slowly, pausing to think about the text and what it is trying to say and then express their ideas and interpretations on a text, and how they came to those conclusions. I really like informal writing when trying to understand a text; I ask questions when I am confused about an idea, and then look further in the text to see if I can find the answers. I also like class discussions because discussions are a great way to get other students input on texts, and see how they interpreted an idea presented in the text. Discussions can be insightful and add clarity to texts, and they can also present different interpretations that one might not have thought of themselves.

There are multiple ways to demonstrate ones understanding of literature, and so many different assessments that teachers can use to gauge student comprehension. I personally think that using a variety of assessments is better to gauge a student’s understanding and challenge their thinking than just sticking with the same routine of reading and taking a test. I want my students to be able to think critically, analyze texts, and demonstrate their ideas and interpretations in more than one medium because I think it will help make them better learners.