{"id":262,"date":"2024-10-16T21:37:57","date_gmt":"2024-10-16T21:37:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/center.antioch.edu\/csc\/?p=262"},"modified":"2025-12-17T12:20:26","modified_gmt":"2025-12-17T12:20:26","slug":"afraid-of-assessment-the-six-questions-you-need-to-be-asking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/center.antioch.edu\/csc\/2024\/10\/16\/afraid-of-assessment-the-six-questions-you-need-to-be-asking\/","title":{"rendered":"Afraid of Assessment? The Six Questions You Need to Be Asking."},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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I love The Haunting of Hill House<\/span><\/em><\/strong><\/a> by Shirley Jackson. I\u2019ve loved it since 10th grade when I read it in Mrs. Throckmorton\u2019s English class. It is a masterwork of suspense and, frankly, it gives me the heeby-est of jeebies. I always taught it in October because it\u2019s a good, scary read, it\u2019s thematic, and<\/strong> because I love it. When I last taught English and I filled out my plan book, I wrote \u201cHill House\u201d across the whole month of October. I have discussion questions about plot, symbolism, historical context, and theme. When my peers asked me what I was teaching, I answered \u201cHill House.\u201d Simple, right?<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Not so much. My love of the story blinded me to the reality that Hill House, wonderful as it is, is only a means to an end. While I would love to believe that my students are equally enamored of the work, in reality, they often don\u2019t get it. The final exams usually reflected a surface-level understanding of the plot (at best) and some superficial awareness of the themes that I told them existed in the book. The summative assessment reflected my own lack of clarity around what the content was that I was teaching through the medium<\/em><\/strong> of the Haunting of Hill House.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, when I asked myself a few simple questions, I found the clarity I lacked and moved toward better instruction and assessment. These questions, often referred to as Quinn\u2019s Six<\/span>, were created by Juli Pugh Quinn (Kelly, 2004) retired professor of Curriculum and Instruction at Cal State, LA. She wrote them as a tool to help her own sister in planning meaningful instruction in the early 1990\u2019s. They are now used by thousands of educators nationwide through the network of the School Reform Initiative through the Center for Leadership & Educational Equity<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Quinn\u2019s Six Questions<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. What am I teaching?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Why am I teaching it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. How am I teaching it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Why am I teaching it that way?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. How do I know my kids are getting it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

6. How do the kids know they are getting it?<\/p>\n<\/div>

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When I look at these six questions in alignment with the Critical Skills approach to instruction, I must change the answer to question #1 from \u201cThe Haunting of Hill House\u201d to \u201cLiterary Devices and Elements of Plot.\u201d This immediately points me towards the formative and summative assessments that I\u2019ll be working with (since I already have assessments that I use to measure understanding of these ideas in other contexts) as well as the methods that I\u2019ll need to use to scaffold instruction which will, in turn, drive my day-to-day planning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The answer to #2 must change from \u201cBecause I love it- it\u2019s a great book- and plus it\u2019s Halloween!\u201d to \u201cThese are the state-approved Grade Span Expectations for 10th grade English\u201d and \u201cMy peers expect 11th graders to know these two things.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

#3 is just plain embarrassing. How am I teaching it? \u201cWe read aloud in class because I don\u2019t believe anyone will read it for homework (ouch!), I ask questions which, after a long pause, I answer.\u201d This is obviously not an answer I can let stand. How will I teach it? I\u2019ll begin with a seminar on what scares us, exploring the concept of fear from a lot of different perspectives. I\u2019ll use a challenge in which I ask kids to write and\/or tell scary stories (urban legends or campfire ghost stories, maybe?) that we\u2019ll dissect for plot elements and maybe for literary devices. I\u2019ll do more with kinesthetic methods like plot mapping and character sketch carousels. I\u2019ll create challenges that ask them to evaluate characters in relation to one another and to decide whether the book is really as scary as I think it is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m teaching it that way (#4) because it\u2019s a better way to get my kids engaged in the story. I still believe that, if I can get them hooked, they\u2019ll like it. My job is to get them hooked on the story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The last two questions, \u201cHow do I know my kids are getting it?\u201d And \u201cHow do the kids know they are getting it?\u201d are where the assessments live.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ll know my kids are getting it when they can identify allusion, alliteration, simile, metaphor, and onomatopoeia in the context of the story and explain why they make the story more effective- or why they don\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The kids will know they\u2019re getting it by tracking the results of their formative assessments that ask them to identify examples of different literary devices from that day\u2019s reading and\/or discussion. They\u2019ll chart which devices they\u2019ve identified correctly, how many times, they\u2019ve identified them correctly, and which ones are still confusing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ll also use End of Day sheets asking students to reflect upon their process and understanding each day. The accumulated EOD sheets will give the kids evidence and examples for a final reflection paper on the process of reading the book and their understanding of the elements of plot and the literary devices that we\u2019ve studied. Even with this superficial examination of the Q6, my plan seems much clearer. I have a solid sense of where I\u2019m going with this unit and I also have some techniques in place to help me measure whether my kids understand- before we get to the summative assessment!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In looking at our own practice, we must begin by asking ourselves where we want to end up. Where do we want our students to be at the end of the lesson, the day, the week, or the year? What do we need them to know, do, and be like if they are to succeed both in and out of school? Answering these questions can be time-consuming, but the wise educator realizes that this time is well spent. It provides a roadmap for planning, helping us to sort the essential learnings (both content and process) from the flashy, fun, kid-friendly lessons that can become the focus. This is not to imply that good teaching is neither flashy nor fun nor kid-friendly- in many cases, it is all three. We must clarify, however, that the techniques we use to teach our lessons (the projects, activities, units, and challenges) are the means to learning the content and skills rather than an end unto themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Assessment can be either the bane of the classroom teacher\u2019s existence or a powerful tool for planning and instruction. We make choices every day that determine how we will approach assessment and whether it will be a help or a hindrance in our practice. If we remain mindful of the power of quality assessment, we will discover a powerful resource at our disposal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Curious about our approach to assessment? Check out Assessment in the Critical Skills Classroom<\/a>– now available on Kindle or hardcopy.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

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I love The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. I\u2019ve loved it since 10th grade when I read it in Mrs. Throckmorton\u2019s English class. It is a masterwork of suspense and, frankly, it gives me the heeby-est of jeebies. I always taught it in October because it\u2019s a good, scary read, it\u2019s thematic, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":263,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[13,25],"tags":[24,28],"class_list":["post-262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-blog","category-little-letters","tag-assessment","tag-little-letters-from-laura-newsletter","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/center.antioch.edu\/csc\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2024\/10\/HauntingOfHillHouse.jpeg","featured_image_src_square":"https:\/\/center.antioch.edu\/csc\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2024\/10\/HauntingOfHillHouse.jpeg","author_info":{"display_name":"lthomas","author_link":"https:\/\/center.antioch.edu\/csc\/author\/lthomas\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/center.antioch.edu\/csc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/center.antioch.edu\/csc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/center.antioch.edu\/csc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/center.antioch.edu\/csc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/center.antioch.edu\/csc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/center.antioch.edu\/csc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/center.antioch.edu\/csc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/center.antioch.edu\/csc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/center.antioch.edu\/csc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/center.antioch.edu\/csc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}