Inventories/Pre-Assessments

Fulfilling the Promise pp. 100-103 & File of Inventories/Pre-Assessments
My hope is to be teaching the intermediate grades, 4th, 5th or 6th. Some of the inventories found on-line would make me seem out of touch with my older students. However, the two surveys found in the book seem to be very appropriate for older students.
I really like the two surveys found in the textbook. I also know exactly how I would incorporate both into my teaching. The second survey, the Student Interest Survey, would be fun to send out in the summer and ask my students to fill it out and return to me before school starts (some type of incentive would also be included.). I could send a self-addressed stamped envelope and hope that I would get maybe half of them back. Knowing 50% of my students before school starts would be very helpful. For those students who do not return the survey before school starts I will send another copy home with them the first day of school (include some sort of incentive for a quick return) and hope for the best. I love the questions asked in this survey. I think these questions would really help me get to know my students better and may even help my students know themselves better. The first survey, the Student Profile Survey, would be a great first day activity. I like how it is organized and very easy to read. The only thing I would change is in the directions. I would have my students place the words in the columns just like the directions explain, but for the words they don't put in either column I would ask them to circle. I think that would make it even easier for me to see and maybe allow me to encourage some students with a new way of learning.
Where do I even begin with the on-line inventories? I would like to focus on the reading inventories just because we are doing Literature this semester. The Attitudes and Interest Survey and the Thinking About My Reading, may be a bit to young for the age of students I hope to teach. But I must admit I liked some of the other inventories you included. The Monthly Reading Reflection would be a great way to help supplement my class SSR time if I am required by my school to use this program. This inventory could be kept in each student's reading folder and filled out monthly to show me and parents exactly what is being accomplished during SSR. The Thinking about My Reading survey would be great to use at the beginning of the year to help my students begin to understand what type of books they find interesting and the kind of reader they are. Some of the other reading surveys, for example, the Focus Questions for Ancedotal Notes:Reading, seem to be more questions which are answered by the teacher through her observations. I think in my classroom this type of teacher answered survey would be helpful and would give me another way to really get to know the students in my room. The Group Observation Chart is just my cup of tea, it may be geared more toward the primary grades. But, I love the organization and with just a quick glance I would be able to get all the information I need about a particular student. The Assessing Responses to Literature chart is probably a better way to assess older students and their reading. Rather than these charts being filled out by the students these are both done through and by observations made by the teacher.
The other Focus Questions for Ancedotal Notes, specifically for Math, and both Primary and Intermediate Science, I believe would be very beneficial to use for assessment in both of these subjects. I really like the Six-Trait Guide to Revision inventory. I would place this inventory in the front my student's writing journals and have my students use this as a way to self-evaluate. The cues are perfect and very easy for a student to follow and understand.
The first time I looked through all of these inventories I was not very impressed with the math pages. However, as I have spent some more time looking these two pages over I have thought about the possibility of using these as a pre-assessment. Both the What is Subtraction? and What is Multiplication? pages could be very useful in giving me some insight as to where each of my students are with these concepts. I think I would use both of these inventories no matter what grade I am hired to teach. I would start with the subtraction page. For two reasons; I would hope it would be easy for most of my students and would build their self-confidence, and that it would also make the directions easier to follow when we do the multiplication page.
If I teach a unit where differentiation will need to be based on my students’ learning profile needs, an inventory of multiple intelligences does makes sense. I do think the M.I. Inventory found on Blackboard may be to young for the intermediate grade levels. I would need to find a different inventory to use. However I will only pursue this if I have a strong need for differentiation according to my students learning profile.
I know I will use Content Specific Inventories in my classroom. It will make learning that much more fun if I allow my students to help decide what we are going to learn. Of course, this can not be done in every subject area, but when I can let my students have a say in what they are going to learn I want to give them that say.