1 / 25

Chapter 3 Teacher as Archeologist: Assessing Background Knowledge

Chapter 3 Teacher as Archeologist: Assessing Background Knowledge. Fisher, D. & Frey, N. (2009). Background Knowledge: The Missing Piece of the Comprehension Puzzle. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Today’s Purposes. Discuss the ways to determine the background knowledge a student might possess

kayla
Download Presentation

Chapter 3 Teacher as Archeologist: Assessing Background Knowledge

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Chapter 3Teacher as Archeologist: Assessing Background Knowledge Fisher, D. & Frey, N. (2009). Background Knowledge: The Missing Piece of the Comprehension Puzzle. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

  2. Today’s Purposes • Discuss the ways to determine the background knowledge a student might possess • Examine the role of misconceptions on learning • Review assessment tools to expose background knowledge

  3. Table Talk Discuss a time when you initially believed one thing about a student and then learned something unexpected. How did you learn this? What teacher skills helped you?

  4. Teacher As Archeologist • Surveying: Knowing where to look • Excavating: Bringing it to the surface • Examining: Using tools for analysis

  5. Surveying Knowledge • Requires knowing where to look • Incidental knowledge vs. core knowledge • This is the difference between what is interesting vs. what is essential • Wiggins & McTighe: enduring understandings

  6. Comparing Incidental and Core Knowledge

  7. The Cask of the Amontillado (Poe)

  8. Core Concept in Middle School Plane Geometry

  9. Excavating Knowledge • Bringing it to the surface so that students notice what they know and do not know • Focus is on anticipating misconceptions

  10. Misconceptions • Represent a fundamental flaw in knowledge and reasoning • Cascading effect • Building new knowledge on a shaky foundation results in selective learning to justify the misconception

  11. Resources for Misconceptions

  12. Anticipation Guide in Earth Science

  13. Opinionnaire in History

  14. Table Talk What are misconceptions common to your discipline? What instructional routines can you use to unearth these misconceptions?

  15. Examining Knowledge • Requires tools for analysis • Can include previous benchmark assessments • Informal reading inventories to determine reading levels • Metacomprehension Strategies Index • Cloze assessments • Interest surveys

  16. Metacomprehension • Metacomprehension Strategies Index (Schmitt, 1990) • 25-item assessment that can be administered in one session • Example item: While I am reading, it is a good idea to: A. Keep track of how long it is taking me to read the story B. Check to see if I can answer any of the questions I asked before I started reading C. Read the title to see what the story is going to be about D. Add the missing details to the pictures.

  17. Cloze Assessments • Originally developed for readability • Now used to assess content knowledge • Teacher-made • 250-word passage • Every fifth word deleted • Scoring • Independent level: 60% correct or above • Instructional level: 40–59% correct • Frustration level: 39% or below

  18. Constructing a Cloze • Locate a passage of about 250 words (a summary paragraph from the textbook is a good choice) • Leave first sentence intact so that the reader can understand the context • Remove every fifth word (even the little words): don’t change this! • No word bank

  19. Differentiation of Cloze • Can reduce overall length of passage (do not go below 150 words) • Can increase frequency of blanks to every seventh word

  20. Interest Surveys • Used in market research • Commonly used to determine reading interests • Rarely used for other purposes • Why?

  21. Interest Survey in Biology

  22. Table Talk What practices can you incorporate into your classroom in order to assess background knowledge?

  23. Assessing Your Practice Use the rubric to determine your goals for addressing misconceptions and assessing background knowledge.

  24. Building Your Own Background Knowledge • Visit the MOSART (Misconception Oriented Standards-based Assessment Resource for Teachers) at http://mosart.mspnet.org/. This center is developing misconceptions assessments in science and math. • Take a look at the Saskatoon (CN) Public School’s website support called Instructional Strategies Online. Their resource for the cloze procedure is at http://olc.spsd.sk.ca/DE/PD/Instr/strats/cloze/index.html • Subscribe to Voice of Literacy, a free podcast series available at http://www.voiceofliteracy.org/. These are short (15 minutes) and informative and address many aspects of children’s and adolescent’s literacy.

More Related