Planning Assessments

Objective: Students will be able to identify an author's point of view.

Formative Assessment 1: New Clothes

Explanation: For this assessment, students will write a short response (1-3 sentences) explaining a context different than the one in which the material was taught. For this particular unit, students would be asked to explain when identifying point of view could be important outside of passages about the Civil War.

Why this assessment? Part of my reason for choosing this topic as one I wanted to plan for before I even start teaching is because it is so important to be able to identify point of view in everyday life. From the news we are given to the advertisements we see, being able to identify point of view makes us more critical consumers of information. This is something I want my students to recognize, and this assessment will help them think of areas outside of class that they can apply this skill. Additionally, if students are able to identify contexts outside of the initial context where they could conceivably use what they have learned, there is a good chance that they really understand the material. Being able to apply a skill to a different setting is a great marker of understanding.

Formative Assessment 2: Explain What Matters

Explanation: For this assessment, students will be asked to explain the most important part of the topic covered to any person they can think of in 1-2 sentences. This person could be anyone from their mom to a kindergartener to Maya Moore to Kanye West.

Why this assessment? Being able to explain material to someone else is a great check for understanding. I especially like this activity because it pushes students to consider their audience. If they are explaining a concept to their mother, they are going to use very different words than if they are explaining it to, say, Kanye. This assessment is especially good for the topic of point of view because they have to apply the idea of point of view to explain point of view. It functions as almost a double assessment. A successful completion of the assessment would show that the student is able to explain point of view while taking into account the point of view of his or her audience.

Formative Assessment 3: Think-Pair-Share

Explanation: For this assessment, a question is posed to students. Students then have 30 seconds to think on their own. When the 30 seconds are up, students talk to a neighbor for 60 seconds and come to a consensus. Then, students share their answers with the rest of the class. For this particular topic, students would be asked to, after reading a passage aloud as a class, identify the point of view from which the passage was written. Students would be asked to back up their answers using the text (loaded language, inclusion/exclusion of facts), which will be easy because students will have been marking up the text while reading it as a class.

Why this assessment? This puts the learning in context. Students need to be able to identify point of view in passages for this particular unit, and while the other two assessments do a great job making sure students understand the concept on a theoretical level, this assessment is the most straightforward when it comes to assessing the desired outcome. Additionally, this gets all students in the class talking. If the teacher were to cut out the “pair” portion of this activity, that would minimize the number of people who get the opportunity to explain the topic to another person. Think-Pair-Share is a great way of getting the entire class involved in a discussion that may otherwise only require 2-3 people to talk.

References:

Dyer, Kathy. (2013, July 12). 22 easy formative assessment techniques for measuring student learning. Retrieved from https://www.nwea.org/blog/2013/22-easy-formative-assessment-techniques-for-measuring-student-learning/

TeachThought Staff. (2013, March 14). 10 assessments you can perform in 90 seconds.  Retrieved from http://www.teachthought.com/pedagogy/assessment/10-assessments-you-can-perform-in-90-seconds/