Evidence of Student Learning

This formative assessment was given as a comprehension question and as part of reinforcing the Claim, Evidence, Reasoning format that students needed to be able to use for an upcoming essay.

This was not part of the recorded learning segment I have included in this portfolio. The recording came after students finished their essays for the first section of the novel. These assessment tools took place in the week before.

PT - Progressing Toward Target

Reflection

As we were building towards an essay on character foils, an activity that specifically targeted comparing characters to identify the differences in their morals, beliefs, and overall characteristics while strengthening the composition format, would apply directly to their subsequent assessments.

If students included a clear claim, specific text evidence, and a detailed explanation to support the claim, I marked them as At Target. If students' explanations were confusing and lacked details that pointed out the specific differences between the characters, I marked them as Progressing. These responses were usually a little shorter because they lacked those details. Typically, the AT scores choose one characteristic to focus on and are able to provide the specific explanation while the PT scores attempt to point out several differences and are unable to provide a clear explanation.

(Section 1: 46% AT, 30% PT Section 2: 36% AT, 21% PT)

After reviewing the responses, I noticed that some students needed a more broken-down explanation of how to include each element in the CER format. We needed to hit on writing explanations most. For each subsequent exit ticket that required a Claim, Evidence, and Explanation, I retaught what it meant to include a specific quote or paraphrased evidence, and then explain what that evidence meant and how it connects to the claim through reasoning. The first time I provided sentence frames, I added them on-the-spot by writing them on the board. However, for following exit tickets, I made sure to make sentence frames easily visible in the slides, on the digital assignment, and also in a handout in case individual students needed them on paper next to them. Having multiple attempts to work on this skill before applying it in a summative assessment allowed students to make mistakes and learn from them.

The explanation part of CER format continued to be something students struggled to make clear, detailed, and specific.

This summative assessment came at the end of Section 1 of the novel as a diagnostic task. The purpose was partially to fulfill the writing topic, but also, to build students' writing skills because the culminating task for the entire novel is a longer character analysis. We spent several lessons prior to this assessment talking about what a character foil is, comparing specific characters, making lists of character traits, and summarizing the events in the novel. These resources were to be used as students planned the content of their essays.

Students first created an outline and then wrote a single draft of the essay. Outlines received feedback and if students turned in a draft of the essay before the final due date, they received feedback as well.

The final day to turn this essay in was the day class was recorded.

Student Samples

ET - Exceeding Target

AT - At Target

PT - Progressing Toward Target

At my first placement, we led students through a series of communication activities to teach skills for participating in discussion and collaborating with a group of peers. Each activity focused on 1-2 specific pieces of success criteria to meet the learning target. Prior to and even during each activity, we debriefed about specific communication choices that students were or should make in order to be more successful in the activity. After each activity, students then wrote a reflection describing specific communication choices they made in the activity and how it helped them accomplish the piece of success criteria.

Student Samples

Beyond Meeting

Meeting

Progressing

Reflection

Ultimately, we assessed the students' ability to include a specific example of something they said or a behavior they performed in the activity which demonstrated a particular communication skill. Because we couldn't individually observe each student while they did the activities, their reflections would tell us whether they were able to meet the communication standard. Then, we holistically looked at whether students were able to demonstrate a majority of the success criteria to determine the comprehensive grade for the assessment.

Since we provided a paragraph frame, individual sentence starters, and a list of specific skills that we debriefed about, if students utilized the supports given, they should easily have met the standard for each piece of success criteria. When we looked at the data with the Communications counterpart at the other WDM Middle School (which unfortunately, I do not have access to anymore), I believe the majority of our students met the standard.

After finishing the assessment, we discussed that some of the students' confusion could come from the set-up of the assessment tool, so the format of that was adjusted so that the next round of students in the class would know exactly which activity focused on each success criteria. We also changed some of the wording of the sentence frames so that students would more easily be able to fill in the blanks.