First, I would like to say that standardized testing is stupid, but as future teachers, I believe that most of us agree with that. The student I worked with was really motivated to learn, but I found her only wanting to know if the answer she chose was right. I would try to work with her on how she got to the conclusions she made, but when I asked her, she would guess a different answer to see if I reacted differently to that one and if it was right. Most students are in school to get the right answers. They are not there to learn to think freely and come up with their own answers, but to pass the test, and get on with their life.Okay, now that that's out of the way....
My student (We'll call her Sarah) had quite a few strengths: She wanted to do well on her OGTs, she worked hard looking for the right answers, and she would stay as long as she could without taking breaks so she could get through as much material as possible. But, while she had these strengths, Sarah had a lot of weaknesses too. A big problem she had was that she lacked having developed critical thinking. When asked simple critical thinking questions, she often guessed on the answer. For example, during the fall semester she encountered a question asking what invention had led to the increased population in suburbs. Instead of choosing automobiles, she chose airplanes. During the fall semester, we went over the critical thinking involved with this question and she finally chose automobiles. When I met with her again during the spring semester, we encountered this question again, and she once again chose airplanes. This shows that Sarah still needed to work on her critical thinking skills. The biggest weakness I encountered with her was her reading comprehension. This really affected her test taking skills because she not only misunderstood the reading portions, but she had a really hard time comprehending what the questions were asking her. When I noticed this I would ask her, “What are they asking you?” before she went on to answer the questions. Most of the time, she would pick out the biggest words in the question, and string them together in a non-understandable sentence.
I thought of a couple ways to make studying for the OGTs more Multi-Modal friendly for Sarah. I think it would be really cool to send out a mass text message (Much like our FLASHalerts) with an OGT multiple choice question everyday. The students could reply with a simple "A,B,C, or D" and practice for the OGT. This, however, is a really passive way of preparing them because if the student get the answer right, they could just shrug it off instead of actively trying to figure out why they missed the question. I think that if students had an incentive to work towards, like the student with the most answers correct by the end of the year winning a prize, they would try harder to get their questions right. By answering these daily questions, I think they would also be developing their critical thinking skills and comprehension skills just through practice.
Another thing I saw in a lot of different blogs was the use of music in the classroom. I love this idea, but worry about copyright laws. If there were no issues with the laws, or with parents complaining about music being used, I think this would be a great way to introduce poetry to the classroom. There's a song by the Band Perry called "You Lie" that has a lot of good imagery and figurative language.
Even if students don't like country music, I could print the lyrics out and they could read it as they would a poem, but by pairing the song with the poem, it gives them a rhythm to show how poetry is in their everyday lives through the music they listen to.
I think the easiest way to integrate technology/ multi-modalness into the classroom is simply by watching a movie along with the book you're reading. I never quite understood Midnight Summer's Dream until I saw the movie, but after that I reread the play and completely understood it. I know a lot of people think that showing a movie is just an easy way out of planning an actual class, but I can see how it can help students learn too.
Even by using this blog, we're using different modes of learning. I love the idea of using a blog in the classroom if the teacher effectively tells the students how to blog. If you lay down specific instructions, yet still leave room for creativity, the students will start to use their blog to better their understanding of texts just through writing about them. This strategy would actually help Sarah a lot with her comprehension.
While all these strategies can help over time in the classroom, some won't work as well with test preparation. I really feel that schools need to do away with these tests because if anything, it is decreasing the amount of actual learning going on in schools. The more advanced students are wasting their time being taught how to take a test, and the students that need help are just being taught how to get through a test. I was one of the advanced students and I have always tested well. (In fact I sneaked into a class one time with my best friend and took an exam with her because I was bored. We found out that even though I wasn't in the class and hardly knew the subject, I still did pretty well!) My short high school career was spent preparing for the OGTs. I remember learning more how to take tests than learning about actual literature. Even our foreign language classes would lighten the load of work because they knew that OGTs were coming up and we needed time to "study." However, I feel that there is no way to study for the OGTs. Since these tests cover a huge array of material you never know what is going to be on them, and it usually covers things you've learned over your entire school career.
While standardized testing is a huge part of our school system, I think that it's hard to integrate multi-modal teaching into studying for them. However, Overall, I think it's important to integrate different modes of teaching into your classroom, either through movies, text messages, facebook groups, among other things.
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