KVS: Keeping Track Moving FOrward Ethnographic Approach to Assessment

Definitions of Ethnographic Study on the Web:

• The systematic collection of data derived from direct observation of the everyday life of a particular society, group or subculture. ...
  www.arroweducation.org/Glossary.htm



CH 8 - pp 116-134


1. use a number of data sources to safeguard against simplistic thinking/conclusions

2. Fieldwork= collecting data but also knowing how to access it, revisit, analyze, and use it

HOW?

• Taking notes - use notebooks or observation sheets to focus you on what you are looking for - learner characteristics or group process or observations of minipresentations
• Replaying activities - videotape or record interactions so you can look at them later
• Surveying students - when we have direct questions on our minds - or want input about what is working or not...
• Tracking activity - what ideas have students been interested in over time, or how have certain students' social interactions changed over time, or how have reflections of each changed over time -describing growth articulating goals

Evaluating Growth, Determining goals - not a linear process - converging, expanding never-ending paths...as students learn from and about...

• working with others
• learning how to develop and pursue agendas
• learn to research multiple viewpoints
• learn to listen to others
• learn to re-think their previous positions
• learn to envision different futures, etc.

1. Revisiting Data - put it in your schedule so you do it - make it part of a regular routine
2. Choosing a Focus - create an observation sheet to guide our inquiry
3. Using FLexible Systems: Narratives, Observation sheets, and Locally Generated Criteria - list descriptors aligned with what you hope they are learning how to do - from these, create the obs sheets, surveys, checklists, etc.. that let you record activity and see growth over time
4. Gather many perspectives - more than one observer - staff, students themselves
5. Set goals - students should be able to set concrete goals for their learning and moving forward

CONCLUSION - Literacy is more than mastering a list of sequenced skills, it is becoming a certain sort of person (pg133)

Invitations get students to become not just readers/writers... but THINKERS:

• becoming literate includes...
• asking questions
• developing agendas
• exploring perspectives
• going public with their thinking
• generating new questions and
• working to challenge a simple understanding of the world
  

Invitations get students to use language as they were learning language!!!!! This has always been my underlying philosophy about language teaching and learning...

KVS: Teaching in the Moment

Observing students in process is important - identify what they need in the moment - and decide how to teach it - teach students by:

• naming what they are doing
• offering advice to help move the group or individuals forward by - asking critical questions,using multiple ways of knowing, talking with or back to texts
  
• demonstrating new inquiry (CL) practices - reading critically,engaging in democratic dialogs,choosing language that supports collaborative Inquiry, introducing other CLs
  

Introducing other CLs

• counternarratives to stories told - in newspapers, magazines, essays, books, etc...
  
• Talking POints (organize your thoughts before speaking)
• Note taking -what's important?
  
• Committees - we don't get stuff done alone - form a committee to take it forward to action
  

KVS: Teaching Inquiry through Strategy Lessons

Becoming a critical inquirer (pg. 82)

Help students move beyond fact finding, retelling, and making personal connections - to - issues they explore as a means to create a more just world.

Shifting kids awareness from finding out what to becoming aware of the practices and processes they use as critical inquirers... like shifting focus from listening to a teacher teach content (the "what") to watching "how" she is teaching...

How do you get them to see the processes they are using?

Mapping paths of inquiry - sketch a kind of storyboard of the actual group process - they can then share and discuss with other groups the different processed used.

Sorting Questions and Responses - Data-gathering questions vs process-questions vs critical questions

Imagining Alternative Scenarios - highlight productive invitation processes, but be open to new and different ways to approach things

Learning from Experience - build skills over time

KVS: Selecting Supportive Materials

Chapter 5

Invite students to use their:

• social
• cultural
• linguistic resources to...

1. construct
2. negotiate
3. interrogate meaning

Select texts that:

• reflect cultural and linguistic diversity
• represent diverse perspectives, purposes, authorial positions in a range of genres
• encourage students to become readers of visual images, music, intonation, etc...

also consider CL approach - texts that encourage

• disrupt the commonplace
• consider multiple viewpoints
• focus on sociopolitical
• Take Action

See the checklist on page 80 for selecting diverse texts

KVS: Identifying Issues, Themes, & Possibilitites

Start with the known.... what do we know about our students and what they are interested in -
aiming curricular design at who our students are - things that provide insight into their lives and thinking.. not just about what they do and like...

During activities look at student work, listen to their conversations, take note of their questions and ideas.

Move beyond the known...look at the social issues that surround student interests - draw them deeper - give them new perspectives, point out anomalies, - ponder how the world is and how it could be

Connect what you find out about students (casual conversations, student writing, lit discussions, student art, music, or dramatizations etc.) to new invitations

Student	Language(s) spoken	What I know about their cultural lives, experiences, and resources they bring to the classroom
What I’ve noticed you’re interested in and thinking about
What have I missed? What are other issues and interests on your mind?

Reflect on what you know about your student and write invitations to take them deeper/beyond - or suggest invitations that might be of interest to them.

KVS: Invitations

From:

Van Sluys, K. (2005). What If and Why? Literacy Invitations for Multilingual
Classrooms. Portsmouth: Heinemann.

Properties of Critical Invitations (pg. 5-6)

1. Occur in social learning environments
2. Focus on making meaning around one experience
3. Welcome varied experiences, languages, and resources
4. Represent our best current understandings
5. Embrace opportunities to use multiple ways of knowing to construct and contest meaning
6. Value alternative responses
7. Promote the social aspects of learning by taking up issues in students' lives and placing inquiries within social contexts
8. Encourage practices that reach across all dimensions of critical literacy
9. Invite further inquiry
   

KVS: 4 Elements of Critical Literacy

pg 20-21

Elements of CL that should be considered...

1. Disrupting the Commonplace
2. Considering Multiple Viewpoints
3. Focusing on the Sociopolitical
4. Taking Action
   

KVS: Invitations - 4 Common Features

Invitations usually have 4 common features... (pg 30)

1. An initiating experience - position the invitations in relation to participants' current understanding and within their social contexts. Definitions, perrspectives, quotations, histories, sample scenarios, and/or questions may frame this element of the written invitation

2. A formally presented invitation: "You are invited to..." - these 4 words signal to participants that they are the decision-makers, able to chart their own course

3. Possible questions to pursue. Since all teaching, learning, and human interactions are political, suggested questions often encourage participants to place their personal experiences w/in social contexts and/or approach issues from critical perspectives

4. Related resources - Assemble diverse resourcves related to invitation issues to facilitate rich inquiries. Allow for a variety of ways in which to construct meaning - language, art, drama, math, etc...