This assignment was designated towards the freshmen class to indicate at what level each students were at coming into high school. CommonLit.org is a website that provides assessment included articles that allow teachers to assess and determine a students' comprehension and application level. As a whole class, students read aloud the Conformity article, and then after reading a section, students were to answer a comprehension question about that section. This continued on until the end of the article. After reading, students independently completed a short quiz that graded them on comprehension and understanding of the article.

This is a new tool that was shown to me by my mentor teacher, and I intend on using it throughout the school year, mainly because it is a quick assessment that I can utilize for any grade range, and which can provide a quick summary that I can use for parent-teacher conferences. The articles are designed to provide whole-group participation and then individual assessment, which allows for adjustment for the below grade level students with guiding questions, but also encourages individual assessment afterwards. The assessment also caters to the high achieving students, encouraging them to expand their thought processing in a short answer question. 

Man, oh man, will I be using this resource. Not only are the articles engaging and are of a wide variety, but it caters to the below, above and in between students. It also models for students how to self assess while reading through an article, stopping throughout the sections to recap and ask the reader comprehension questions. Most of the articles are low-stakes so the stress of reading and writing is reduced so students can focus on what they are reading and writing about.

Read along in the "Conformity" article by Charlotte Harrison provided above.