To Assess or Not To Assess...So Many Questions!

I am grasping for straws of inspiration about the inquiry idea.  I am feeling more unmotivated and lost than I did before last week.  It's funny because I think my sentiment was shared yesterday during my group's talk about our culminating project with our writing group.  Tiffany also echoed this sentiment as we discussed ideas during this work time.  I've really got to work through this idea of memoir and where I will go next with this topic.  Lil was concerned for me and my thoughts of reaching a dead end with topic and gave me a little nugget to chew on and investigate. 

In the meantime, Lil's lunch session about assessment was a great distraction from my inquiry woes.  We discussed issues that really hit home with me in the classroom with my students and the difficulties we all seem to have when it comes to assessing our children in writing.  I love the ideas she has about assessing their editing, ideas, and then have the students write a narrative about their writing process in which they can discuss their journey of learning.  I also had a great time chewing on the idea of creating individualized editing checklists for students which can be created during the conference time.  The students would get the responsibility of finding their own mistakes instead of us.  This is way more meaningful as they will tend to learn and grow from this process much more than us identifying them for them.  It also gave me hope and understanding that although students may be ready to talk about them and identify these common mistakes they make in grammar and spelling, it is very possible that they will continue to make these mistakes until they are ready to process them and accept them. so to speak.  I am wondering if my inquiry question is taking on a new life.

What is ironic is that this may have been one of my original questions of inquiry to begin with.  When  Steve had us looking back in our daybooks for traces of proof of our inquiry, I noticed that this was one of my possible ideas as well as the meaningful teaching of grammar in the elementary classroom.  I feel more alive when talking about this subject and I mentioned to Lacy about how I have so many more questions after discussing these new ways of looking at assessment.  I think I will have to revisit these articles Lil gave us and really peruse them this time instead of skimming them.  There may be some hidden nuggets of personal inquiry waiting to be discovered by a weary traveler in this process.  Thanks for this session, Lil!