Module 1: Activity 2

Module 1: Activity 2

Exercise #5 on p. 39

a.  What is a corandic?  Corandic is an emurient grof with many fribs.

b.  What does a corandic grank from?  From corite

c.  How do garkers excarp the tarances from the corite?  Garkers excarp by glarcking the corite and starping it in tranker-clarped storbs.

d.  What does the slorp finally frast?  A pragety, blickant crankle: coranda

e.  What is coranda?  A cargurt, grinkling corandic and borigen

f.  How is the corandic nacerated from the borigen?  By means of loracity

g.  What do the garkers finally thrap?  A glick, bracht, glupous grapant, corandic, which granks in many starps. 

How is it that you are able to answer such questions?

I was able to answer these questions because it didn’t require much thought, and I didn’t have to prove how I knew any of the answers.  It was simple because all I had to do was pick out key words in the questions and then find the same key words in the passage and copy down the other words that directly followed.  Another thing that made answering these questions easy is the fact that the questions were listed in the same order as the story.  Even though I think I answered these questions correctly, I’ve gathered no true meaning from the passage.  I couldn’t tell or teach someone else about what I just read.  I do know that the main idea is information about corandic, and I believe this would be a non-fiction passage, but I haven’t learned anything significant from the passage. 

What does this experience suggest about the kinds of “comprehension” questions found in workbooks and on standardized tests?

This activity clearly shows how a struggling reader could perform well on a test, especially if he/she had been taught test taking skills.  The questions didn’t require you to actually understand what you read.  I know I’ve seen and given reading assignments such as these.  However, it’s more obvious to me now, after completing the assignment myself with non-sense words, that this isn’t a true or ideal assessment.  This is why performance-based activities and assessments are considered to be a more accurate view of what children truly know.