As a Child Development major, I have a LOT of experience with Anecdotal Records. I have been using them for the past 2 years in all of my preschool lab experiences. I have had practice writing them, reading them, sorting them, and therefore have also had a lot of practice observing children before writing these records. I feel as if they are very resourceful and come in great hand when trying to assess children on what they know and what they are capable of doing, as well as to be able to plan lessons for all of the different individual children in class. Reading this article was a great refresher about anecdotal records and how we can use them as educators to examine and understand children's literacy learning experiences.
I found it interesting to understand the research behind using these and all of the information that supports this type of assessment. I enjoyed reading this article and I think and plan that in the future I will use this type of assessment to asses my students to see what tasks they are capable of doing and how they are keeping up in class. I thought it was interesting to include a table of helpful abreviations that one could use to help make these assessments and observations happen quicker since one of the things I have realized since being in the classroom the past few weeks is that time is precious and there never seems to be enough of it. I can see myself using these types of records this year to help me get to know my students on a personal level as well.
I thought the table of verbs on page 3 was a great contribution to this article to really help us understand how to write an anecdotal record and what type of vocabulary we should use when we are describing the children in our classes. I also thought the rest of the tables throughout were helpful tools for us to see what an anecdotal record should look like and what it should contain.
Alyssa, I agree with you that anecdotal records seem like a useful tool. In particular, I like that they provide a snapshot of a student’s experience, documenting something that actually happened rather than something that we presume a student is able to do. A collection of anecdotal records seems to present a complete picture of a student. While checklists or rating scales, which are the same for each student, anecdotal records provide a unique picture of a student’s achievements.
ReplyDeleteI think this article on anecdotal records connects directly to the chapters we read from Routman’s Writing Essentials, particularly Chapter 8 (Organize for Daily Writing) and Chapter 9 (Conference with Students). To organize for daily writing, Routman suggests writing workshop, with a flexible daily schedule of a mini-lesson or demonstration, then time to write, then a whole class share out. In chapter 9, Routman explains conferencing with students, which can be implementing during the writing time of Writer’s Workshop. Taking anecdotal records during these roving or one-to-one conferences seems manageable and useful. I suppose the same type of system would work during a Reader’s Workshop as well.
One potential issue I see for myself in using the anecdotal record assessment system is the organization of the anecdotal records themselves. In the Boyd-Batstone article, it recommends writing anecdotal records on small labels and then compiling each student’s labels on their own page. I have a few problems with this system. First, those labels could be quite the expense, especially if they are not provided by the school. Second, I think anecdotal records can be a useful assessment in each subject so one page on which to store the completed records per student would not work because all of the standards and subjects would be entangled. But one page of records per student per subject quadruples the volume of paper. Thirdly, I think an electronic record of anecdotal records might be useful for presentation to parents or for the use of the “find/ctrl+f” function. But that would involve a transcription of written records which would be too much work! Do you see similar or different problems in organizing anecdotal records? Or does this system seem manageable to you? Are there any ways that you would suggest to manage anecdotal records?
I also agree that anecdotal records serve an extremely useful purpose in a classroom observation. They eliminate assumptions about a student's performance and can set the foundation for adequate differentiation in regards to a particular subject. As I observe the instruction that is taking place in my classroom, I have not yet noticed my MT using anecdotal records for assessment. We have been completing DRAs in order to place the students in Guided Reading groups for Daily 5. Each student comes into the classroom with their own unique ability and interests and I believe anecdotal records honor this individuality.
ReplyDeleteI have found both of our classroom chapters in our school's professional library which I found to be very encouraging. It is great to see that our school courses are directly connecting to the classroom environment. As you stated Elizabeth, Routman believes in incorporating both Reader's and Writer's workshop in the daily classroom routine. We do both daily in my first grade classroom. Most of the students in my classroom are emerging readers and writers and the workshop model is a great way to observe the individual differences between the students. Right now we are starting with personal narratives, which seems to be a great way to begin with this age group. First graders are very "Me-Centered" and love to share their experiences with their classmates. We use the document camera to share student work with the class and promote expansion of stories.
The conferencing chapter is something we will be working on in the next week or so. Once we have a chance to observe each student, we will be able to place them in ability-based groups in order to work on differentiated conferencing. In Writer's Workshop we are working on the three rules of: Add to the words, Add to the pictures, and start a new piece. I hope to be able to take quality anecdotal notes, but I also can see a potential problem occurring with the organization and time it takes to write the notes. First graders are always moving and transitioning. When will I have the time to observe each one of the 24 students?
I like the idea as well that anecdotal records provide that quick snapshot of students abilities and in my classroom, we have them for IDR and math homework so far. Individual daily reading we record how well the students complete the reading time, any behavior problems they have during this time and we do this with a symbolic system of checks or check minus depending on how the students complete the task or if they need to repeat the task over.
ReplyDeleteIn my third grade classroom I am really excited to be seeing the readers workshop and writers workshop models Routman discusses in the readings. I notice a lot of times we talk about things in class or even last year in our 400s that we never saw or observed happening in our current classroom situations. This is both interesting and intimidating to live up to when completing our unit plans. I am curious how the readers workshop and writers workshops will be related or intertwined later in the year. I got the feeling my MT wanted me to do both the writers and readers workshops for my unit plan, but now I am seeing there is so much that goes into each topics separately, this would leave me with the work load of a mega literacy unit plan. The third graders are also starting with personal narratives as I believe this was the topic for the DWA assignment, but I am really enjoying the mini lessons my teacher uses to guide the students writing process.
I am curious how we will practice the readers workshop model, or what the next unit will encompass because we have been focusing a lot on picking just right books up until this point. We will also be working with conferencing groups during the readers and writers workshop times and will be pulling groups for individualized lessons or extra practices during these conferences, but I am surprised how long it takes to confidently place students into accurate reading groups.
Julie I would say hopefully by the end of November I am thinking I may have a better judgement of each of the students reading and writing patterns/levels. Just because we have meaps and Dras and Dwas and then guided lead teaching, I am feeling this won't happen till later into the semester!