For the assignment that this blog post completes, I will be designing 3 formative assessments for a learning objective I created from the standard CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.11-12.4.
The objective:
Students will be able to write an essay that makes an effective analytical claim, using the author's word choice as evidence, about the author's tone or purpose in a grade-level text.
This objective culminates in a summative assessment--an essay that will become part of the students' grades, but I will use various formative assessments to check in on their progress as they go.
Since this is early in the school year, all students will be writing on the same text, in this case, Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," and we will work together as a class to determine the author's tone and purpose, and to discuss anything that may be interesting about Frost's word choice. This gives me an opportunity to assess before assessing, and confirm that the students understand what is required of them in the essay.
The first formative assessment I will use is a Do Now prompt that reviews the information from the previous day's class. It asks the students to compare and contrast mood and tone in a brief paragraph. Since this essay deals with tone, it will be important that students understand that it is a separate concept from mood. Reading these paragraphs will give me a strong idea of what the students understand and don't understand about the concept of tone. There may also be some red flags in the organization or mechanics of the paragraph that I can point out.
The second formative assessment will be our class discussion, which will give me plenty of informal opportunities to check in on students who are not volunteering lots of information, or to lead those who are volunteering false information onto the right path. This is a very informal assessment, and requires lots of withitness from the teacher to get all the assessment information he needs. Nonetheless, it is time effective and requires little preparation.
The third formative assessment, or rather set of formative assessments will be the writing process. Students will turn in outlines and multiple drafts of the essay so that I can be sure they are on the right track throughout the process. By the time they get to the graded essay, students will have had many opportunities, with detailed feedback, to rework and revise their efforts.
Sunday, August 23, 2015
Sunday, August 16, 2015
Reflections on Standards Unpacking, Phase One.
Okay, so, the timing for this unit is either really good or really bad; I can't decide which.
Last week at school we did a PD on curriculum mapping, followed by a couple of days of applying that, and I can't help but think how useful this information would have been for me going in. Of course, I knew at the beginning of the week what this module would be on and what the PD would be on, and the PD didn't start until Wednesday, so, um...., the ball was really in my court for making a better choice. No?
Anyway...
The lesson on Unpacking a Standard was, I think, particularly useful in the scheme of things. The idea of big questions and how to break a standard into its skills, concepts, and questions is pretty fascinating to me. It makes me think about how we are trying to get students to a place of "literacy" which essentially means they can sit down and read anything they like and get themselves worked into a froth about purpose and audience and motivations and imagery and all that; yet, we still need this type of focused instruction just to read a sentence that tells us how to do our jobs. It's a little mind-blowing, but it's essentially true. The level of literacy that can be taught in a broad, public education system is simply the level that one needs to get through a regular day, make good decisions based on the information around one, and snuggle up with a worthwhile book at the end of it all. Everything beyond that is specialized, industry-specific literacy, which doesn't exist in any meaningful way outside of the industry we find ourselves slaves to. In many ways, what we're teaching is how to approach a difficult task without just throwing your hands up in the air and shaking your head, like high school students tend to do when they first sit down with Hamlet. We're teaching that skill of trusting that the thing we're looking at makes sense, and that the responsibility to make it comprehensible is on our shoulders. Each of these ELA standards, to some degree, says, "Look at something you don't know how to do, check in with the things you DO know how to do, and gain the skills to bridge that gap." But, I digress...
This simple activity of unpacking a standard is going to be incredibly useful in my teaching and curriculum-mapping life. And I'm pretty confident now that I know how it's done.
Backwards mapping makes perfect sense, when you think about it. When I first started teaching English (in the long, long ago of last year), my primary thought when I was determining what to teach was, "What do I want these students to experience?" I wrote lesson plans, and then almost made my brain explode trying to force standards in where they belong. Some of them were hit over and over again, while some were penciled in with targeted lessons at the end of the quarter that didn't connect to anything else we were doing. We covered some cool stuff, but students weren't getting out of that stuff what I anticipated they'd get out of it. They weren't meeting the standards because, while I expected the standards to be met, I wasn't teaching the standards. I could still apply this more consistently in my planning, and I will continue to improve, but in the meantime, I'll tweak it where I can to make it as much like Backwards Planning* as possible.
*I'd really prefer "Backward Planning" if anyone cares. Having grown up in a backwards little town in the foothills of the Ozarks, and struggling every day to be as little backwards as possible, the word has some connotations for me.
Writing SMART objectives is also something I'm sure I'll benefit from. Going back to that same distant last year (in the long, long ago), I often found that I really had no way to measure progress toward the goals I was setting. I guess starting with measurable goals would have gone a long way toward solving the problem. This is going to help me to build much better lessons.
Last week at school we did a PD on curriculum mapping, followed by a couple of days of applying that, and I can't help but think how useful this information would have been for me going in. Of course, I knew at the beginning of the week what this module would be on and what the PD would be on, and the PD didn't start until Wednesday, so, um...., the ball was really in my court for making a better choice. No?
Anyway...
The lesson on Unpacking a Standard was, I think, particularly useful in the scheme of things. The idea of big questions and how to break a standard into its skills, concepts, and questions is pretty fascinating to me. It makes me think about how we are trying to get students to a place of "literacy" which essentially means they can sit down and read anything they like and get themselves worked into a froth about purpose and audience and motivations and imagery and all that; yet, we still need this type of focused instruction just to read a sentence that tells us how to do our jobs. It's a little mind-blowing, but it's essentially true. The level of literacy that can be taught in a broad, public education system is simply the level that one needs to get through a regular day, make good decisions based on the information around one, and snuggle up with a worthwhile book at the end of it all. Everything beyond that is specialized, industry-specific literacy, which doesn't exist in any meaningful way outside of the industry we find ourselves slaves to. In many ways, what we're teaching is how to approach a difficult task without just throwing your hands up in the air and shaking your head, like high school students tend to do when they first sit down with Hamlet. We're teaching that skill of trusting that the thing we're looking at makes sense, and that the responsibility to make it comprehensible is on our shoulders. Each of these ELA standards, to some degree, says, "Look at something you don't know how to do, check in with the things you DO know how to do, and gain the skills to bridge that gap." But, I digress...
This simple activity of unpacking a standard is going to be incredibly useful in my teaching and curriculum-mapping life. And I'm pretty confident now that I know how it's done.
Backwards mapping makes perfect sense, when you think about it. When I first started teaching English (in the long, long ago of last year), my primary thought when I was determining what to teach was, "What do I want these students to experience?" I wrote lesson plans, and then almost made my brain explode trying to force standards in where they belong. Some of them were hit over and over again, while some were penciled in with targeted lessons at the end of the quarter that didn't connect to anything else we were doing. We covered some cool stuff, but students weren't getting out of that stuff what I anticipated they'd get out of it. They weren't meeting the standards because, while I expected the standards to be met, I wasn't teaching the standards. I could still apply this more consistently in my planning, and I will continue to improve, but in the meantime, I'll tweak it where I can to make it as much like Backwards Planning* as possible.
*I'd really prefer "Backward Planning" if anyone cares. Having grown up in a backwards little town in the foothills of the Ozarks, and struggling every day to be as little backwards as possible, the word has some connotations for me.
Writing SMART objectives is also something I'm sure I'll benefit from. Going back to that same distant last year (in the long, long ago), I often found that I really had no way to measure progress toward the goals I was setting. I guess starting with measurable goals would have gone a long way toward solving the problem. This is going to help me to build much better lessons.
Backwards Planning
This post is a backwards planning exercise built around Common Core Standard CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.11-12.4, for an 11th grade English class. I chose this standard because I'm going to be spending a lot of time on poetry this semester, and this particular standard is pretty key to that whole experience.
The Text of the standard is as follows:
PROFICIENCIES:
At the end of this unit, students will be able to...
The students will demonstrate these proficiencies through...
The Text of the standard is as follows:
Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in the text, including figurative and connotative meanings; analyze the impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone, including words with multiple meanings or language that is particularly fresh, engaging, or beautiful. (Include Shakespeare as well as other authors.) (corestandards.org)In my last exercise (not on this blog), I unpacked the standard to figure out what it was all about, and I'll be using that information as a starting point for what I'm doing here. The link to that presentation is https://www.emaze.com/@ALTTWWFZ/unpacking-a-standard.
PROFICIENCIES:
At the end of this unit, students will be able to...
- DETERMINE the denotation and connotation of a given word or phrase.
- ANALYZE the effect of an author's word choice on a text.
- USE word choice to adapt a text to communicate different moods and purposes.
The students will demonstrate these proficiencies through...
- Group discussion.
- Poetry re-purposing -- students revise word choice in a Shakespeare sonnet for a number of different purposes.
- Dictionary test -- students choose the correct dictionary definition to match a word as it's used in context.
- Human Glossary -- students act as a human glossary for a text they have prepared in order to help another student read it.
LEARNING EXPERIENCES
The students will learn these skills while engaged in...
- Teacher modeling. The teacher will model reading a Shakespeare sonnet, pointing out words that are unfamiliar or used in unfamiliar ways, using reference works and context to determine the appropriate meanings, pointing out words that have strong connotations and particularly beautiful rhetorical effect.
- Poetry re-purposing. Students will examine another Shakespeare sonnet and in pairs, use SIM and a glossary to determine its meaning. They will then rewrite it to be as boring as possible. They will then identify the differences between the mood achieved in the two versions of the sonnet, and discuss ways that word choice can make texts exciting. Students will then be given a dried out version of some piece of poetry and asked to make it more fresh, engaging, or beautiful by improving the word choice.
- Poetry re-purposing, part 2. Students will be given (appropriate) lyrics by a popular rap artist and in pairs, use SIM and a glossary to determine its meaning. They will then rewrite it to be as boring as possible. Students will once again discuss the difference between them. Next, students will rewrite the Shakespeare sonnet from part 1 in the style of the rap artist from part 2.
- Students will use reference works to gloss a contemporary poem, noting understandings about how the denotations of the words differ from their connotations. They will then act as a human glossary for a partner as she explicates the poem on the board. Students will switch places and the glossary will be the explicator of a different poem, while the former explicator glosses.
Sunday, August 2, 2015
Classroom management techniques
Robert Marzano writes about using "graduated action steps" to deal with behaviors in the classroom. The process begins by silently alerting the student that you are aware of his or her behavior. He or she then has the choice to correct his or her behavior. [At this point in the writing of this blog post, Clay suddenly remembers that he works at an all girls school, and he doesn't have to play these silly pronoun games.] If the student chooses not to correct her behavior, the teacher walks toward her, closing the physical distance between the two of them. If the behavior continues, the teacher quietly reminds the student that she is being a jerk, while interrupting the class as little as possible. If there is a physical distraction involved, the teacher might take this opportunity to remove it. If the distraction continues further, the teacher can interrupt the class to apply a consequence, separate difficult students, or send the student to have a chat with a person of higher authority (Marzano, 2007). See the chart for an idea of what this process looks like with a pair of chatters.
Positive reinforcement is important, too. In our school, the general process is to let the student know that we like and appreciate what she's doing, and then report it forward to other people who can praise her for the same behavior. This process, in conjunction with the process outlined above, seems to work very well.
Cited:
Marzano, R. (2007). The art and science of teaching. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
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