This chapter in Curriculum Connections through the Library discusses assessment in the school library in a perfect world. The author of the chapter, Sharon Coatney, agrees with Richard Stiggins’ argument that library assessment should be “for” learning. There are many suggestions in the chapter as to how to do this, all of which require close collaboration with the classroom teacher. How many of us have had classroom teachers eager to come in after instruction to share the assessment? And if the teachers do this, and some are very good at sharing assessment data, how much time has passed between the library instruction and the student assessment?
The teacher librarian needs assessment “of” learning to determine what worked and what did not work. Chances are that there is another group coming in for similar instruction and there is no data to help the librarian determine if the instruction works.
I read the article “The One-Minute Paper and the One-Hour Class: Outcome Assessment for One-Shot Library Instruction” which offers a real solution to library assessment that will not overwhelm school librarians. While this is designed for secondary education and college students, it can be adapted for everyone and is straight forward. At the end of a library instruction give a half page assessment. Just have the students answer two or three specific questions relating to the library component and turn it in before leaving. Another suggestion is to have the questions as part of the overall project and part of the grade for the assignment. However, this does delay results for the librarian and requires cooperation from the classroom teacher.
Many overworked school librarians will resist this one minute assessment because it requires more work for them. Many will feel that walking the room and doing informal formative assessment on the spot is enough for them to determine what is working and what needs to be adjusted. While this is true, this type of formative assessment does not provide data. We are now in a data driven educational environment and we need assessment data. This is just another reason to consider grading papers in the library.
Bibliography
Choinski, Elizabeth and Emanuel, Michelle. "The One-Minute Paper and the One-hous Class: Outcomes Assessment for One-shot Library Instruction." Reference Services Review 34.1 (2006): 148-155.
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Teresa, I like the idea of a one minute assessment! I've never taught in a situation where I had to teach the same lesson more than once in a week. I am actually looking forward to improving a lesson each time I teach it - with less than a year between lessons! I am going to look up the article you mentioned and see how I can adapt it to the elementary level. Perhaps I can have a slip of paper that the kids bring up when they check out. Depending on the grade level, I could have different sorts of questions and expectations for a summary of class, or ask them to list one thing they learned or practiced.
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