Books by Cole; Gere, Christenbury, and Sassi; Stiggins; and Walker and Schmidt

by Sheila Cantlebary

Better Answers: Written Performance That Looks Good and Sounds Smart by Ardith Davis Cole (Portland, ME: Stenhouse, 2002)

In Better Answers, Ardith Davis Cole presents a five-step protocol for producing effective written-response answers that can be used across the curriculum. Through vignettes and suggested activities, Cole shows how to use a scaffolded instructional framework to help students "look good and sound smart." Topics include recognizing thick questions, which call for an in-depth response, and thin questions, which elicit a brief response. Cole also suggests that students make an "answer sandwich"―a graphic tool that helps students remember to restate the question, provide a gist answer, give evidence for the answer, and refer to the question again for a concluding statement. Extensive appendices offer additional lesson plans, sample responses, assessment tools, and resources for high-interest stories, essays, and articles. Although her examples are taken primarily from grades 3 through 8 classrooms, Cole notes that her better-answer protocol has even worked for adults to raise performance on brief or extended essay responses.

Writing on Demand: Best Practices and Strategies for Success by Anne Ruggles Gere, Leila Christenbury, and Kelly Sassi (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2005)

Teachers preparing students for AP, SAT, ACT, and state assessments will find Writing on Demand to be a valuable resource. Authors Gere, Christenbury, and Sassi offer a practical guide for helping secondary students succeed when faced with high-stakes, timed, on-demand writing situations. The authors demonstrate how to teach students to think backward to the finished piece by first considering a range of models, using a rubric to assess the models, and then speculating on the prompt that elicited the writing. Arguing that preparing students for on-demand writing tests need not conflict with best practices in the teaching of writing, the authors provide an integrated approach that results in good writing instruction. The book is chock-full of fresh ideas for teaching students how to develop fluency and use the writing process strategically during timed writing assessments. A companion website features ready-to-use rubrics, prompts, and mini-lessons.

Student-Involved Assessment FOR Learning, 4th ed., by Richard J. Stiggins (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson, 2005)

Richard Stiggins's Student-Involved Assessment FOR Learning provides a comprehensive text on the principles of sound assessment. While acknowledging the value of standardized tests to policy makers, he argues that the tests have less impact on student learning than classroom assessments. For educators who believe that assessment should inform instruction and who take their responsibility seriously, this book delivers solid guidance. Stiggins discusses translating state standards into appropriate achievement targets, developing aligned assessments that encourage student involvement, and effectively communicating the results to students and parents. Time-saving tips and suggestions for overcoming potential problems, such as what to do when students cannot read well enough to respond, are also included. Online resources are provided for students and instructor using Stiggins's work as a textbook.

Smart Tests by Catherine Walker and Edgar Schmidt (Portland, ME: Stenhouse, 2004)

What are smart tests? According to Walker and Schmidt, they are teacher-made tests that provide rich assessment data for making sound judgments about learning. The authors show how to make these tests an engaging, motivating, and integral part of the learning environment. The book provides guidelines for developing good test questions along with useful examples of questions written in various formats. Rubrics are offered for assessing questions that involve various visual organizers. There are tools for teachers, students, and parents. These include a map-your-point organizer, a parent reflection guide, advice on what to do when you're stuck or stressed, and instructions for doing a splashdown or brain drain before answering a constructed-response question. Finally, there are tips for what teachers can do on test day to enhance student performance, as well as guidelines for reporting and using test results. Although the examples are drawn from grades 2-6 classrooms, teachers of older students will find useful ideas for reflecting upon their own assessment practices and for teaching students test smarts that can be applied to tests of all kinds.

Sheila Cantlebary is a reading content specialist at the Ohio Resource Center. As a former teacher in Columbus Public Schools, she taught English, language arts, and reading (7-12), served as a K-12 English language arts coordinator, and was a teacher in the Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow program. Her teaching experience also includes facilitating State Institute for Reading Instruction and English Language Arts Academy sessions. She is currently co-facilitator of the High School Language Arts Network sponsored by the Central Ohio Regional School Improvement Team.

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