TEACH NOW Module 5 Unit 2 Activity 2 - SMART Assessments

SMART Assessments

 With the Standard and objectives decided upon, it is time now determine the type of assessment I will be using to show that students have managed to achieve the skill indicated in the standard.

To recap, I teach 6th grade English Literature at an international school in Taiwan. The students are all of Taiwanese descent, and speak English as a second language. Their only English input comes from the classroom.

The standard I have chosen to focus on comes from Common Core Language Arts Grade 6:

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.6.1Cite textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text.

I had created a total of six objectives I wanted the students to be able to complete as a part of achieving this standard. These are:

  1. Define what textual evidence is.
  2. Identify lines of text that serves as textual evidence.
  3. Explain with detail why the textual evidence supports their answer.
  4. Refer to textual evidence to support their points during classroom discussions.
  5. Compare different lines of textual evidence and determine which is more appropriate.
  6. Critique the quality of textual evidence used in other people's arguments. 
These objectives are ranked from low to high on the Bloom's Taxonomy model, and the time spent for each objective matches with how high it ranks on the model as well. Accordingly, the first objective takes the least amount of time, perhaps one lesson, while the last objective will take the whole semester to build up to. Each objective was chosen to build up from the previous, so that taken in total, it meets the standard being taught. 

Assessment Types

Formative Assessment

The students all follow a model text that we use to practice the skills together. Our current text is The Giver, which we read during class. Each chapter has a question that the students must answer. 

As a part of teaching close reading strategies, the students have been practicing annotations(Porter-Odonnell, 2004). This close reading strategy has, for the purpose of teaching this standard, been expanded to now include looking for evidence of answers, in order to work on objective 2 (identify lines of text that serves as textual evidence).

Before students read, they are told to:
  1. Read the question.
  2. As they read the chapter, to underline/highlight any lines of text that they believe answers the question.
The first time they do this, we do this as a class. For the next chapter, the students do it either on their own or in pairs. As a formative assessment, I do several things.
  1. Informal observation of students during group work.
  2. Informal conferences with individual students as they work on highlighting their answer.
Additionally, students also keep a graphic organizer where they copy these lines of textual evidence into their journal. Next to each line, they are to explain why they believe it answers the question. This activity forces them to think critically and addresses objective 3 (explain with detail why the textual evidence supports their answer). This organizer is formatively assessed through a check-minus, check, check-plus system along with immediate verbal feedback so that students know which areas of their explanations they need to work on.

Summative

As students continue working on the graphic organizer, the formative assignment finishes as a formative assignment when the final chapter graphic organizer is assessed. Students are required to finish it independently and without assistance as a way to summatively assess whether or not they have accomplished both objective 2 and 3. 

For a final project, as an activity to assess objectives 2 and 3 (as well as the rest of the objectives, which I will not go into detail here), the students will engage in a debate.

Debates are a useful form of teaching students in higher level critical thinking (Brown, 2015), and due to the nature of a debate, it requires textual evidence and citations. Students need to support their statement through proof and evidence, and so this serves as a way to summatively assess students on how well they are able to do this in an oral medium. The question for the debate will be on an opinion question about The Giver, with each student assessed individually for their debate speech in front of the class.

The rubric will cover the following attributes:

1. existence of textual citation
2. how well the evidence related to the statement
3. how well the student explained why the evidence supports their statement

In this way, I will be using the book The Giver as a way to teach the Common Core standard I have chosen to focus on. 

References

Brown, Z. (2015). The use of in-class debates as a teaching strategy in increasing students’ critical thinking and collaborative learning skills in higher education. Educationalfutures,7(1). Retrieved January 10, 2017, from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/298410885_The_use_of_in-class_debates_as_a_teaching_strategy_in_increasing_students'_critical_thinking_and_collaborative_learning_skills_in_higher_education.

Porter-Odonnell, C. (2004). Beyond the Yellow Highlighter: Teaching Annotation Skills to Improve Reading Comprehension. The English Journal,93(5), 82. doi:10.2307/4128941

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