Assessing and Evaluating Students’ Learning

The article Assessing and Evaluating Students’ Learning:  How Do You Know What They Have Learned?  is basically about how a teacher of  literature can assess and know—know for sure—students are understanding what they are reading. I found it interesting how the article mentioned it all depends on what a teacher believes it means to “learn literature.” After all, every teacher has a slightly or even drastically different idea of what it means to learn literature. The article provided an example of what somebody could view as learning literature: acquiring facts, knowing the difference between a simile and a metaphor, etc. Thus, people who are teachers of literature can teach by what they think it means to learn literature. I found this to be an eye-opener because I always felt like there were teachers that I had who seemed to teach literature in different ways. Know I understand why this is the case. Teachers have different notions of learning literature.

In addition, the article did a great job of describing why focusing on “knowing that” aspect of learning literature has its downside. As teachers of literature, the article argued that what was more important than just “knowing that”, students need to know the “knowing how.” Knowing the how aspect of literature is critical for students because, as the article mentioned, “While a student can demonstrate that she has can define the difference between a metaphor and a simile doesn’t necessarily mean that she knows how to apply that knowledge to the texts.”  Therefore, as future teachers of literature, the article wanted the reader to understand this.

Something else that stood out to me in this article: teaching peers to give feedback. I found this interesting because I always thought teaching peers to give feedback to one another was a good idea. Now, this article reaffirmed my idea. I also liked how the article gave examples of what this approach to feedback should look like: provide descriptive comments, praise the writer, make positive comments, etc. All in all, I enjoyed reading this article because of its great insights and tips for teachers of literature.