Life as an English Teacher in Taiwan

Unit Introduction and Pre-assessment For this unit the students will be reading The Giver  by Lois Lowry as a mentor text. They will be practicing the following standard while doing so: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.6.1 Cite textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text. In order to determine the level of the students, I made a simple pre-assessment that checks for both reading comprehension and their ability to properly practice the above standard. The questions, only four, are multiple choice, but leveled so that each question addresses the student's ability to infer. They are then required to choose the appropriate evidence from the text, and try to explain as best they can. For more details you can view the pre-assessment here . Unfortunately, through a testing app, I am unable to truly test for the objective stated above, as quiz apps generally address content instead of skills, and for one that requires read...

High Stakes Testing and Me Being born and raised in the United States, one would think that I would be well familiar with high stakes testing. But I am not, at least, not in the form they are today. During my childhood, I had multiple encounters with standardized tests, which under Bush's much beloved No Child Left Behind (NCLB), would morph into the high stakes testing children all over the United States know today. I took my first test in third grade, called the Iowa Test, and then the following year, took the MEAP (Michigan something or other), and then those two tests came and went irregularly throughout the rest of my school career. I did not know when they came, I did not know why they were given to me, nor did I care, and it seemed, neither did my teachers (this attitude must be baffling to teachers in the US today). I tested well, my parents took a look at it then shoved it into a dark corner, and that was it. In high school, I was told that my decent performance on the...