54 En glish Journal 103.1 (2013): 54–59

ith all the talk and research in the past few years on classroom assess-ment, many of us in the En glish language arts classroom are left

wondering what shifts in practice we can make to better gauge our students’ progress and to keep track of how to help them become stronger at read-ing, writing, listening, and speaking.

At the classroom level, teachers receive en-couragement from administrators and scholars to use more formative assessment measures. In a busy school day, we begin to offer more quizzes and tests only to find that twice the amount of traditional tests and quizzes does not yield twice the insight into student learning. We just get exhausted. And so do our students.

In this context, I have begun to search for al-ternative formats to help me gain a stronger sense of what my students know and can do. I want to do this to become a better, more reflective teacher. I want to be sensitive to the nuances that my stu-dents’ learning presents. As a result, I have begun to shift my practice to include and track a much greater complement of informal communication in my mix of formative assessments. In this article, I will present specific instances in which informal communication can help teachers to formatively as-sess student progress both in skill development and conceptual understanding.

Informal communication, as described in the work of Jan Chappuis, Rick Stiggins, Steve Chap-puis, and Judith Arter (94), is an often- overlooked method of formative assessment and one that—if

Tim Pappageorge

Checking In: Using Informal Communication to Assess Learning in the En glish Language Arts Classroom

This article explores the use of informal communication as an assessment tool for En glish language arts teachers.

W documented and tracked by an observant and re-flective teacher—can be even more effective than the more- common selected response written test, especially for knowledge and reasoning targets that are so common in our discipline. In addressing in-formal communication as an assessment method, I will offer two cases in point, both of which will aim to meet the criteria of being comprehensive (all students) and insightful (valid assessment). First, I will offer a new interaction model for the classroom known as an anchor lesson, including examples of preparation for discussion activities; then, I will offer an expanded commentary on exit slips, with examples from a range of topics.

Anchor Lessons with an Informal Communication Group

I almost skipped this term when reading Rick Wormeli’s book Fair Isn’t Always Equal: Assessing and Grading in the Differentiated Classroom because the term seemed obvious at first glance. An anchor in his terminology, however, refers to a lesson in which students can be performing relatively au-tonomous practice at their desks that is grounded in previous instruction and student work (38). In implementing an anchor activity, I design a task that the bulk of my students can do independently, such as independent reading, writing in the com-puter lab, or some other familiar activity that they have been taught to be self- sufficient in doing. The object of this anchor activity is to keep the students engaged productively and free up a focus

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on the mastery level for every student against a ru-bric, which I can do fairly quickly. The challenge is to take a clinical approach with respect to each student’s progress but to host a warm and inviting experience at the focus group table. Above all, the tone must be respectful of each student’s contribu-tion and perspective. In this role, I have to be one part statistician, one part sports commentator, and one part talk- show host. But somehow it seems to work because I have noted many occasions in which students, who might oth-erwise be disengaged or lost in the material, become knowledgeable about the task and more willing to share with their classmates. I suspect that communication from students to me is improved in these instances because we sit close in proximity, creating a more intimate interaction, and because the group is small enough to allow students to talk spontaneously without having to raise hands. Afterwards, I will study my notes, which are really the evidence of student learning, to discern gaps among the students in the class, to identify students who might still have a weak understanding of the skill or the topic in question.

In such an approach, the curriculum becomes an intense exercise of inquiry for me as instructor. The curriculum is an experiment, really, something designed to address a question about learning in the context of literature, writing, speaking, or lis-tening, and I am privileged to see the results on a daily basis. This orientation (Hillocks, Teaching Writing, 202–09) toward teaching is exciting and energizing. The recent emphasis on assessment has guided me to continue to return to this orientation, but now I am even more keenly curious about the “data” that my students are giving back to me. And in collecting these data, informal communication provides a many- layered, thick, fine- grained ac-count of how my students are progressing—that is, if I take the time to capture the details in a system-atic way and to reflect on their significance.

In another instance, my students and I were reading Gene L. Yang’s American Born Chinese, a graphic novel about a young man’s interaction between his Chinese cultural past and his American

The challenge is to take

a clinical approach with

respect to each student’s

progress but to host

a warm and inviting

experience at the focus

group table.

group of students to meet with me as an informal, midsize group.

To create an effective focus group, I set up a station in the front or back of the room and call up seven or eight students to meet with me informally. The purpose of this group is for me to hear from each student about a given skill or topic, and as I interact with each of them and with the group as a whole, I take specific notes on each student to track how he or she is progressing toward expertise with respect to the skill or topic in question. The goal of this informal communication group is to give stu-dents a chance to elaborate on their thoughts and to interact with a few classmates and with me, a practice that is uncommon in our classrooms (e.g., Applebee, Langer, Nystrand, and Gamoran 689).

Figure 1 is a diagram of an anchor lesson setup, with the students noted as “x” and the box in the foreground as a station setup with a conference table or bank of desks. The result of this setup is that seven or eight students can be at close proximity with me, and I can have quality interaction with them in a re-laxed setting. Such a dynamic is particularly help-ful for students who are unlikely to stay on task: our communicative connection is stronger and more fo-cused; also, more frequent interactions and greater elaborations are the norms in student speech.

If I am assessing issues in language mechan-ics and clarity, students might be asked to create a complex sentence that accurately represents their ideas to an imagined audience. If the focus of the informal assessment group is to check inferential reading, I will ask a series of questions about, for example, Arnold Spirit’s motives (Alexie 43). Alter-natively, I will have students create a question that shows their skill at inferring the character’s motives. Then, I document assessment data by taking notes

x x x x xx TEACHER x x

FIGURE 1. Classroom Diagram Indicating Focus Group

X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X

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Checking In: Using Informal Communication to Assess Learning in the En glish Language Arts Classroom

56 September 2013

cultural present. It’s a novel that promotes inferen-tial reading and questioning as well as application of these questions to the bicultural life that so many of my students experience richly on a daily basis.

In an ensuing hotseat (Beach et al. 76–77) discussion, I allow students a day to prepare their notes to be questioned, in role, by their classmates. The preparation day is vital to the success of the hotseat discussion and helps students have the con-fidence to be interviewed. I use an informal class-room assessment group to gauge student progress in preparation for the hotseat the following day.

On a day of preparation, the entire class is engaged in completing the preparation writings, which include a short character summary and sev-eral questions intended for the student- in- role to answer. While the students are responding to these preparation writings, I call a set of seven to eight students up to the informal communication table to interact with them about their selected character, their selected evidence, the thoughtful questions that they have written at each level, and even how to avoid being too nervous on the hot seat. By the end of the class period, I will have interacted with all students and assessed their mastery of the ques-tion types as well as summarizing skills.

I often begin class by soliciting input from students who I predict will have the largest chal-lenges. That way, they are ready to engage in the preparation time once they filter back to their seats to complete the work. And the next day, all have prepared written insights and questions to allow

them to engage in the discussion activity with en-thusiasm and confidence.

The total interaction may last only about five to ten minutes, depending on the skill in question. The focus is assessment, to see in an informal set-ting whether the students know and can do the skill. An important benefit of this type of interac-tion with students, though, is that it is informal by nature, so the teacher can take the time to do a little relationship- building with the students at the front table. It’s hard to imagine that a “test” can be-come a chance to build relationships with students, but it really does happen through informal interac-tions such as these. However, to be successful, two conditions absolutely must exist, or the whole dy-namic will not work at all: first, the rest of the class doing the anchor activity must stay on task; sec-ond, the informal communication group must work deftly so that the next set of students can come to the group. The whole dynamic works, as well, be-cause seven or eight of 28–30 students are involved in assessment at any one time. That is, roughly 25 percent of the students are directly in conversation with the teacher at any one time, while the rest are semi- autonomous.

In terms of formative assessment information, I am able to gain a pinpointed understanding of each student’s skill or understanding development. Over the day or two that I run this activity, I will have had a quality interaction with each student. I plan remediation for students who are still hav-ing trouble and extra challenges for students who are already getting it. That way, data taken from the informal communication group fuel differenti-ated learning. I use these data to create short lists of students: those who may need extra help; those who might need some reinforcement or extra practice; those who are ready for extending learning through enrichment activities. I then use those lists as I cre-ate group and individual tasks on lessons to follow.

Exit Slips

The best way for me to assess students’ progress— and to make certain that I have gath-ered input from each student—is to offer them a chance to write informally about their prog-ress. According to the work of assessment ex-perts Peter Afflerbach and Byeong- Young Cho

iStockphoto/Thinkstock

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(487–514), there are three types of classroom assess-ment that can inform our practice, and I have de-veloped exit slips on all three of these related areas: cognitive, affective, and epistemological. A balance of each of these targets is helpful for me in the En-glish language arts classroom, but the first two get more attention in general.

Cognitive- type prompts ask students to demonstrate their understanding of the material or thinking skills. The teacher can simply place a sample exercise or question on a piece of paper for each student to complete. By giving a short exit slip, teachers gain valuable formative information on how students are progressing. After class, then, the teacher can do a simple and quick check for un-derstanding, adopting a practical (+, ok, - ) grading method, making assessment of each student more feasible. After a quick review, the teacher can create structures for the next day in class, such as a study group for students who are having trouble with the material or, as is sometimes the case, a complete re-teach of a question or insight as a whole class.

The second type of target for informal class-room assessment, according to Afflerbach and Cho, is the affective domain. From research (Smith and Wilhelm) and from practice (Hillocks, Teaching Ar-gument), we have come to respect the importance of student impressions about their learning, and affec-tive understanding is repeatedly surfacing as key to student learning. What might seem trivial in other settings—How do you feel? Are you interested in what you are doing?—is central to the experience of adolescent learners.

In our classrooms, we are interested in issues of student affect. But how often do we inventory every student about these important questions? More often, one student gives us a “high five” and we assume that the lesson was a success—that the students were all positively inclined toward the material and our presentation of it. We operate far, far too often on these impressions without casting a broader net to include all of our students. It is vi-tally important that students understand that their motivation to learn is a key resource in their growth as self- directed learners.

Affective- domain exit slips can help us to identify the varieties of affective experience in our classroom, and they can help us to quickly identify students with whom we should follow up directly.

In addition, exit slips of this nature can help us to gauge student motivation along key psychological constructs such as attribution and learned help-lessness, and mindset (Dweck), which can be key elements for striving students. Specifically, “attri-bution” or the connection between a result on a quiz or test and what the student infers is the cause can reveal quite a lot about how the student is relating to the course material. We can be on the lookout for learned helplessness: I’m stupid, or I’m just good at math. In these instances, we can guide students toward developing the habits of mind that we think will make them successful, such as tenacity and sticking with the issues at hand (Duckworth).

In my classroom, I have found out important information about students’ relationship with the material and with me. I have been able to do some repair work when necessary and also to minimize nascent issues before they would inhibit learn-ing. Typically, I offer students the chance to write anonymously if they are offering criticism of the lesson or material, as this anonymity creates some safety for them to comment honestly. For affective questions that center on attribution, I typically ask students to turn in a named response so that I can follow up. These types of follow- up questions can address sensitive issues, so I try to respond to stu-dents privately or at a different time.

Epistemology, according to Afflerbach and Cho, is the third area for classroom assessment, and one that is often overlooked on such informal com-munication methods as a classroom exit slip. How is the student progressing as a reader? As a poet? As someone who can argue a case? These types of prompts gauge how well students understand the type of thinking that is required of them to do well in the activity as a student, as an amateur, and one day as a professional. For example, in doing re-search, students should question the Internet source that they are reading. These types of questions focus on the big picture, the continuum of mastery that goes beyond the specific problem or topic at hand, and connect it to the larger journey of learning and expertise—a journey that is linked to issues of cog-nition and affect mentioned above.

By giving a short exit

slip, teachers gain

valuable formative

information on how

students are progressing.

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58 September 2013

Figure 2 provides the classroom teacher with a menu of options. Varying the choice from column to column can be a convenient way to make sure that we are drawing a varied set of information from our students, and there is no need to do more than one type on any given day. I have observed teachers successfully use exit slips such as these frequently, ranging from a minimum of twice per week to a maximum of every day. I state twice per week as a minimum here because to truly shift practice to-ward incorporating informal communication as an assessment method, a consistent approach must be taken. It’s difficult to imagine teaching in the En-glish language arts disciplinary setting without doing some informal written communication, but doing it frequently takes commitment from the in-structor, as it will require setting up the exit slip at the end or beginning of class (in the case of an entrance slip) and then taking the five to ten min-utes after class to quickly review them. However, the potential benefits are tremendous.

In a classroom example, I asked my students to engage in discussions of issues related to current affairs and then reflect on their learning afterward using the following sets of prompts:

Reflect on this activity:

1. Reflect on your learning. How much did you learn from the printed sources? How much did you learn from your classmates? What do you learn about yourself and how you best learn?

2. Reflect on your performance. How well did you prepare and execute your speaking roles? What can you learn about informal, interaction- type speaking roles?

The first set of questions focuses on the students’ un-derstanding of their learning from an affective and an epistemological perspective. I included the “learning from your classmates” idea in the first prompt be-cause I wished for students to become more conscious of the community of practice that we were attempt-ing to establish in class. The second set of questions focuses on speaking skill and skill- in- context.

Using this type of informal assessment to guide instruction and to help prepare subsequent lessons as well as summative assessments can help the teacher be more targeted in his or her approach. Further, the benefits of this type of informal assessment extend into classroom discipline and also into setting a posi-tive classroom environment. Students often act out

FIGURE 2. Exit Slip Suggested Topics

Examples of Cognitive- Skills Type Exit Slips:

Task Analysis

What are the three most important details in this chapter, task, activity?

Predict

What do you predict will happen when we . . . mix the compounds together . . . find out about Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks . . . learn about carcinogens . . . ?

Ask!

Write a question about an aspect of the material that confuses you.

Write a question about the material that you think would be a good short answer/essay question on tomorrow’s test.

Write a question about the material/lab/activity in how it relates to your life.

Picture It!

Draw a diagram or picture of the main character or setting. Make the important aspects or details more prominent.

Examples of Affective- Type Exit Slips:

Enjoyment

How well did you enjoy the activity, reading, etc.?

What factors do you think influenced your enjoyment of the reading, writing, etc.?

Cooperative

How did you help another student become successful today? Did you enjoy working with your classmates today? Why, why not?

Rate your group’s teamwork today. What types of improvements could you make on teamwork, if any?

Attribution

What types of problems did you find to be most interesting or difficult in this activity?

Examples of Epistemology- Type Exit Slips:

Personal

What types of things does a real historian/scientist/poet/actor/nutritionist, etc. consider when doing today’s activity?

Study like a Historian!

It is often said, “Don’t believe everything you read” or “Don’t believe everything you hear.” In History/En glish why is it important to be critical of what we read/did/studied today?

Think Scientifically

Scientists are always creating guesses called hypotheses and then testing cause and effect. How did we show these ways of thinking in debate/reading today?

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Alexie, Sherman. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part- Time Indian. New York: Little, 2007. Print.

Anagnostopoulos, Dorothea. “Testing and Student Engage-ment with Literature in Urban Classrooms: A Multi- Layered Perspective.” Research in the Teaching of En glish 38.2 (2003): 177–212. Print.

Applebee, Arthur N., and Judith A. Langer. “A Snapshot of Writing Instruction in Middle Schools and High Schools.” En glish Journal 100.6 (2011): 14–27. Print.

Applebee, Arthur, Judith A. Langer, Martin Nystrand, and Adam Gamoran. “Discussion- Based Approaches to Developing Understanding: Classroom Instruction and Student Performance in Middle and High School En glish.” American Educational Research Journal 40.3 (2003): 685–730. Print.

Au, Kathryn H. “Multicultural Factors and the Effective Instruction of Students of Diverse Backgrounds.” What Research Has to Say about Reading Instruction. Ed. Alan E. Farstrup and S. Jay Samuels. Newark: IRA, 2002. 392–413. Print.

Beach, Richard, Deborah Appleman, Susan Hynds, and Jef-frey Wilhelm. Teaching Literature to Adolescents. 2nd ed. Mahwah: Erlbaum, 2006. Print.

Chappuis, Jan, Rick Stiggins, Steve Chappuis, and Judith Arter. Classroom Assessment for Student Learning: Doing It Right—Using It Well. 2nd ed. Upper Saddle River: Pearson, 2011. Print.

Duckworth, Angela Lee, et al. “Self- Regulation Strategies Improve Self- Discipline in Adolescents: Benefits of Mental Contrasting and Implementation Inten-tions.” Educational Psychology 31.1 (2011): 17–26. Print.

Dweck, Carol S. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. New York: Random, 2006. Print.

Hillocks, George, Jr. Teaching Argument Writing, Grades 6–12: Supporting Claims with Relevant Evidence and Clear Reasoning. Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2011. Print.

———. Teaching Writing as Reflective Practice. New York: Teachers College, 1995. Print.

———. The Testing Trap. New York: Teachers College, 2002. Print.

Smith, Michael W., and Jeffrey D. Wilhelm. “Reading Don’t Fix No Chevys”: Literacy in the Lives of Young Men. Portsmouth: Heinemann, 2002. Print.

Wormeli, Rick. Fair Isn’t Always Equal: Assessing and Grad-ing in the Differentiated Classroom. Portland: Sten-house, 2006. Print.

Yang, Gene L. American Born Chinese. New York: First Sec-ond, 2006. Print.

when they can’t access the material or feel unsuccess-ful. At these times, barriers can exist between teach-ers who have succeeded in mainstream settings and students who come from social backgrounds that are non- mainstream (Au). Thus, informal communi-cation can help teachers reach out to students who come from non- mainstream or at- risk groups.

If informal communication as assessment makes such sense, why are teachers not using it more consistently in the En glish language arts classroom? Perhaps the pressure to perform on ex-trinsic tests (Hillocks, Testing) contributes to a cul-ture of preparing only for that “game day” once a year instead of focusing on deliberate practice every day. Perhaps, too, the time it takes to grade tests and papers dissuades teachers from using assess-ment more frequently or from using alternative forms of grading, leaving common practice to focus often on worksheet- type assessments (Anagnosto-poulos; Applebee and Langer) rather than more in-volved writing.

At the end of the day, I am arguing that we shift our instructional focus toward teaching as an inquiry. Doing so creates the need for constant as-sessment information on each student, and informal communication can play a vital role in this kind of authentic learning. The stakes are high: if we successfully make this shift, then we set the stage for engagement in deep learning, not the kind that snappy activities and clever handouts can often pro-duce in the short run; instead, we chart the course for sustained mastery learning of significant con-cepts and skills over the long haul.

Works CitedAfflerbach, Peter, and Byeong- Young Cho. “The Classroom

Assessment of Reading.” Handbook of Reading Research, Vol. IV. Ed. Michael L. Kamil, P. David Pearson, Elizabeth Birr Moje, and Peter P. Afflerbach. New York: Routledge, 2011. 487–514. Print.

READWRITETHINK CONNECTION Lisa Storm Fink, RWT

The Exit Slip strategy is used to help students process new concepts, reflect on information learned, and express their thoughts about new information. This requires students to respond to a prompt given by the teacher, and it is an easy way to incorporate writing into many different content areas. Furthermore, the Exit Slip strategy is an informal assessment that will allow educators to adapt and differentiate their planning and instruction. http://www.readwritethink.org/professional- development/strategy- guides/exit- slips- 30760.html

Tim Pappageorge teaches at Maine East High School in Park Ridge, Illinois. He is completing his doctorate this fall at the University of Illinois at Chicago with a research emphasis on argument writing and student interaction. Email him at tpappa-george@maine207.org.

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