This unit is an introductory unit on grammar and basic parts of speech for third graders. Although they have had some exposure to grammar in the past, this unit asks them to take their knowledge further by digging deeper into grammar and asking students to apply what they have learned.
For a link to the pre-assessment for this unit, click here. I will use this pre-assessment to break students into groups based on their initial skill levels so that each student has a chance to grow as a learner.
For the purposes of this activity, I will break students into three groups based on hypothetical scores.
5 students who answered most, including the most difficult, of the pre-assessment questions correctly: These students exhibited knowledge beyond what was expected. In order to expand on their knowledge, they will be given a chance to play a computer game that gets progressively more difficult based on the questions the student answers correctly. This game is ever-expanding, so students will not run out of things to do. My school uses this game both as an assessment tool in and of itself and in the way that I plan to use it for this activity. In addition, at the end of this lesson, the students in this group will complete an exit slip detailing 3 things they learned, 2 things they want to know more about, and one big question they have.
12 students who have some knowledge about the topic as shown in their score, but need to develop higher order thinking skills: Although these students showed some knowledge of the topic, they missed some questions and therefore need more practice. To give them a chance to practice, the students were broken into small groups (2 students per group). Each group was given one to two topics to become experts on (nouns and plurals, verbs and adverbs, adjectives and superlatives/comparatives, conjunctions, subject-verb agreement, and pronouns). Once all of the groups had a chance to do research, students were slit into two groups, each of which had one member of each of the original pairs. The two new groups were each given 12 minutes to teach each other what they learned (2 minutes per person). When time elapsed, each group was given a passage and 10 minutes to correct as many mistakes as possible. When the time was up, whichever group had correctly fixed more mistakes got to have 15 minutes of computer time during quiet work time. In addition, at the end of this lesson, the students in this group will
complete an exit slip detailing 3 things they learned, 2 things they
want to know more about, and one big question they have.
5 students who appear to have limited knowledge about the topic: This group of students struggled with the pre-assessment. They came to the station at the back of the room to get additional instruction. Once students received the instruction, teacher gave students a preview of the next lesson (capitalization and punctuation, along with addressing envelopes and writing dates and times correctly) so that they could be the experts the next day in class. In addition, at the end of this lesson, the students in this group will
complete an exit slip detailing 3 things they learned, 2 things they
want to know more about, and one big question they have.
For a visual representation of this differentiation, please click here to see my MindMap.
Saturday, June 25, 2016
Saturday, June 18, 2016
High Stakes Assessments
Standardized testing is a topic that has been hotly debated, especially since No Child Left Behind and Common Core Standards have taken some heat for not living up to their expectations. For this particular assignment, I did my best to leave my personal feelings about testing at the door, but having just endured test week at the school at which I will be teaching in the fall, I was definitely less objective than I normally would have been. That being said, I did dive into a decent amount of research and spoke to my mother-in-law about the school in which she teaches in order to try to gain a more well-rounded perspective.
At only 22 years old, I had to take quite a few standardized tests myself throughout my K-12 career, so I am definitely able to sympathize with the kids. Oddly enough, I was that weird kid that always sort of enjoyed the standardized tests. Heck, I was excited to get to take my Praxis Core this spring! I am one of those students for whom standardized tests really capitalizes on my strengths. I know that sounds silly, but I think that is an important perspective that often gets overlooked in this debate. For some students, these tests really do a good job measuring what they set out to measure. Of course, it is just as important (if not more so) to discuss those students who fall through the cracks of standardized testing. My younger brother performs relatively poorly on his high stakes assessments, largely because they are just SO LONG. He had ADHD, and it is a struggle for him to focus. If something is difficult for him, he often freezes up. I once watched him stare at a single math problem for 20 minutes without writing a single thing down. When I asked him what he was doing, he said he was thinking. I told him he could always come back to the problem later, but he said he really thought he was close. Ten minutes later, he was still stuck and had made no progress. For students like my brother, standardized testing is an absolute nightmare. Sure, students like him can get extra time. But who really wants extra time added to a four hour test?
Having had my first ever experience on the other side of the test this year as a proctor/administrator at the school where I will be teaching in the fall, I have definitely gained some perspective on the testing. To be completely honest, I had forgotten how interminable the tests were. Kids had to sit silently and test for three to four hours, only getting three minute breaks once an hour. That's an awfully tough environment to force on a third grader. I mean, these kids start taking these tests when they are eight or nine years old! In addition to being reminded how grueling the tests are, I got to hear from a few teachers about their perspective on testing. The sixth grade teacher felt really confident about her students' reading abilities. She said that she had spent some time teaching to the test, but she hadn't felt as boxed in as she thought she might. Math, however, was a different story. She was so nervous for her students about the math test. This year's sixth graders were just not as strong mathematically, and since this was the school's first year having middle school students, the scores really mattered. Of course, since this school is a charter school, things are a little different than they might be in a regular public school, but charter schools in North Carolina are still held to state testing standards. Another teacher at the school told me about her experience as a third grade teacher. She explained how hard it is to prepare students for their first ever high stakes test. At age eight, they don't understand why the test is important. They just hear that they have to take a four hour test, so they kind of shut down. She told me that she felt like she had to teach to the test in ELA more than in math, which I thought was pretty interesting. Overall, I am not really looking forward to having to prepare my students for high stakes tests, and I am hoping for some sort of reform to the testing requirements.
When I spoke with my mother-in-law, she largely echoed what other teachers had been telling me. She teaches at a different charter school in the area, and her school recently added a high school. She explained that it was really difficult to have both middle and high schoolers in the same building during testing because they actually test at different times, and high school students test longer because they have final exams in addition to high stakes exams. That is not something I ever would have thought about. She also told me that teaching to the test has never been her main goal. She finds that getting her students to read more is more helpful than traditional teaching to the test. As an ELA teacher, she has found that performance goes up when students are exposed to literature of multiple types, so she does something called a 40 Book Challenge with her students. Each of them has to read forty books from different genres over the course of the school year. She says it gives great results.
To be completely honest, based on the U.S.'s scores compared to the rest of the world, it really does not seem like all of this testing is paying off. We score at or below average in reading, science, and math, which, based on our expenditure per student (we did research on all of this back in, I think, Module 2), is ridiculous. Based on our spending, we should be scoring up there with the best of them. If anything, our standardized testing is telling us that things are just not working. These tests are stressful for the students, teachers, and school administrators, and they do not seem to be actively improving the state of education (Fast Facts).
At the end of the day, it is important that we send the message to our students that, although standardized tests may be important in our current system, they do not mean everything. My sister-in-law, a ninth grader at a public school in Charlotte, NC, recently took her end of grade assessments, and she felt really down when she saw how low her math score was when compared to her grades in her classes. She felt really disheartened, so I talked with her and reminded her that it was just one test. No matter how important the test, her score does not define her. She should in no way feel any less smart or capable because she did not do as well as she had hoped. It made me so sad that students as young as eight years old had to experience that feeling of disappointment. Schools put so much pressure on kids to succeed, and it really weighs on them (Kamenetz). I definitely can see why some parents opt out of having their kids take the tests. I don't know what I would do if I had kids and had to make that decision. On the one hand, I feel like standardized tests are anxiety-provoking and do not accurately measure ability, but on the other hand, it is kind of what I have always known. Until the system changes, what is a teacher, parent, or student to do?
References:
National Center for Education Statistics. (2015). Fast facts. Retrieved from https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=1
Kamenetz, Anya. (2015, January 22). The past, present and future of high-stakes testing. Retrieved from
http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/01/22/377438689/the-past-present-and-future-of-high-stakes-testing
At only 22 years old, I had to take quite a few standardized tests myself throughout my K-12 career, so I am definitely able to sympathize with the kids. Oddly enough, I was that weird kid that always sort of enjoyed the standardized tests. Heck, I was excited to get to take my Praxis Core this spring! I am one of those students for whom standardized tests really capitalizes on my strengths. I know that sounds silly, but I think that is an important perspective that often gets overlooked in this debate. For some students, these tests really do a good job measuring what they set out to measure. Of course, it is just as important (if not more so) to discuss those students who fall through the cracks of standardized testing. My younger brother performs relatively poorly on his high stakes assessments, largely because they are just SO LONG. He had ADHD, and it is a struggle for him to focus. If something is difficult for him, he often freezes up. I once watched him stare at a single math problem for 20 minutes without writing a single thing down. When I asked him what he was doing, he said he was thinking. I told him he could always come back to the problem later, but he said he really thought he was close. Ten minutes later, he was still stuck and had made no progress. For students like my brother, standardized testing is an absolute nightmare. Sure, students like him can get extra time. But who really wants extra time added to a four hour test?
Having had my first ever experience on the other side of the test this year as a proctor/administrator at the school where I will be teaching in the fall, I have definitely gained some perspective on the testing. To be completely honest, I had forgotten how interminable the tests were. Kids had to sit silently and test for three to four hours, only getting three minute breaks once an hour. That's an awfully tough environment to force on a third grader. I mean, these kids start taking these tests when they are eight or nine years old! In addition to being reminded how grueling the tests are, I got to hear from a few teachers about their perspective on testing. The sixth grade teacher felt really confident about her students' reading abilities. She said that she had spent some time teaching to the test, but she hadn't felt as boxed in as she thought she might. Math, however, was a different story. She was so nervous for her students about the math test. This year's sixth graders were just not as strong mathematically, and since this was the school's first year having middle school students, the scores really mattered. Of course, since this school is a charter school, things are a little different than they might be in a regular public school, but charter schools in North Carolina are still held to state testing standards. Another teacher at the school told me about her experience as a third grade teacher. She explained how hard it is to prepare students for their first ever high stakes test. At age eight, they don't understand why the test is important. They just hear that they have to take a four hour test, so they kind of shut down. She told me that she felt like she had to teach to the test in ELA more than in math, which I thought was pretty interesting. Overall, I am not really looking forward to having to prepare my students for high stakes tests, and I am hoping for some sort of reform to the testing requirements.
When I spoke with my mother-in-law, she largely echoed what other teachers had been telling me. She teaches at a different charter school in the area, and her school recently added a high school. She explained that it was really difficult to have both middle and high schoolers in the same building during testing because they actually test at different times, and high school students test longer because they have final exams in addition to high stakes exams. That is not something I ever would have thought about. She also told me that teaching to the test has never been her main goal. She finds that getting her students to read more is more helpful than traditional teaching to the test. As an ELA teacher, she has found that performance goes up when students are exposed to literature of multiple types, so she does something called a 40 Book Challenge with her students. Each of them has to read forty books from different genres over the course of the school year. She says it gives great results.
To be completely honest, based on the U.S.'s scores compared to the rest of the world, it really does not seem like all of this testing is paying off. We score at or below average in reading, science, and math, which, based on our expenditure per student (we did research on all of this back in, I think, Module 2), is ridiculous. Based on our spending, we should be scoring up there with the best of them. If anything, our standardized testing is telling us that things are just not working. These tests are stressful for the students, teachers, and school administrators, and they do not seem to be actively improving the state of education (Fast Facts).
At the end of the day, it is important that we send the message to our students that, although standardized tests may be important in our current system, they do not mean everything. My sister-in-law, a ninth grader at a public school in Charlotte, NC, recently took her end of grade assessments, and she felt really down when she saw how low her math score was when compared to her grades in her classes. She felt really disheartened, so I talked with her and reminded her that it was just one test. No matter how important the test, her score does not define her. She should in no way feel any less smart or capable because she did not do as well as she had hoped. It made me so sad that students as young as eight years old had to experience that feeling of disappointment. Schools put so much pressure on kids to succeed, and it really weighs on them (Kamenetz). I definitely can see why some parents opt out of having their kids take the tests. I don't know what I would do if I had kids and had to make that decision. On the one hand, I feel like standardized tests are anxiety-provoking and do not accurately measure ability, but on the other hand, it is kind of what I have always known. Until the system changes, what is a teacher, parent, or student to do?
References:
National Center for Education Statistics. (2015). Fast facts. Retrieved from https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=1
Kamenetz, Anya. (2015, January 22). The past, present and future of high-stakes testing. Retrieved from
http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/01/22/377438689/the-past-present-and-future-of-high-stakes-testing
Saturday, June 11, 2016
Innovation in Unit Planning
The following is an update to the Livebinder that I posted last week to include Project Based Learning in my current unit. Click here to view the updates.
Planning a Unit
Unit Plan Template
Teacher
Candidate: Elisha Rearick
Unit Name: Identifying Point of View
Subject
and Grade Level: 7th Grade Social Studies
Standard:
RH.6-8.6: Identify
aspects of a text that reveal an author's point of view or purpose (e.g.,
loaded language, inclusion or avoidance of particular facts).
Vision for the Unit: What should learning look like? What would you expect for mastery? Will you develop the unit around goals, themes, or projects? Why have you selected this approach?
The main goal of this unit is to
give students the tools they need to accurately assess point of view in not
only written work, but also in the media. Because this topic is so broad, for
the purposes of this unit, it will be applied as a sort of unit within a larger
unit on the Civil War. At the end of the unit, students should be critical
consumers of information with the ability to identify use of loaded language
and inclusion or avoidance of facts. Despite this unit focusing on the Civil
War, students will have opportunities to practice applying this skill to more
current topics.
Summative Assessment: What evidence or project will students submit to demonstrate that they have met the standard and objectives? How will you assess these products?
.
The summative assessment for this unit will be a test
in which students are asked to identify in a text written from one of four
perspectives on the Civil War loaded language usage and inclusion or avoidance
of key facts. Students will use what they find to determine the point of view
of the author. Finally, students will write a short one- to two-paragraph
response explaining whose point of view the piece is written from and how they
know that using textual evidence. I will assess the assessments for
understanding of each of the four objectives below, giving credit for each
(i.e. if the perspective is incorrectly identified but the student uses
evidence to back up their claim, they will receive credit for using evidence,
but will lose points under the category of identifying point of view).
Objectives: Identify the objectives for the unit and a table that
shows where they fall on Bloom’s taxonomy. You may refine and extend the
objectives that you created in Unit 1.
|
Objective
|
Level of Bloom’s
Taxonomy
|
|
Students will be able
to identify instances of loaded language use.
|
Understanding
|
|
Students will be able
to explain why an author included or avoided certain facts.
|
Analysing
|
|
Students will be able to
identify an author’s point of view.
|
Applying
|
|
Students will be able
to support their claim about an author’s point of view using textual
evidence.
|
Analysing
|
Sequencing
and Scaffolding: How will you sequence
and scaffold the lessons that you will teach for this unit? In what order will
you teach the lessons you developed in Units 2-4? What additional lessons will
you need to develop to complete the unit?
Lesson 1: Loaded Language
Students will be able to identify instances of loaded
language, both in texts on the topic and in a more general sense. This will be
accomplished by using an “I do, we do, you do” approach.
Lesson 2: Inclusion/Avoidance of Facts
Students will be able to 1) identify important facts about
a given topic and 2) evaluate the author’s choice to include or avoid those
facts. To begin class, a culturally relevant example will be shown (videos
about Kanye West) to illustrate how inclusion and avoidance of facts can
completely change the perspective. Following that, despite students already
having a background on the Civil War, a review of this topic and the most
important facts will take place before diving into applying this skill to the
Civil War. Then, students will practice this skill in an “I do, we do, you do”
set up to help keep continuity in the unit.
Lesson 3: Identifying Point of View
Students will spend the day applying the skills they
learned in Lessons 1 and 2 in order to determine point of view. This will allow
students a chance to practice drawing their own conclusions based on the
evidence that is presented to them. Students will start out by individually
identifying loaded language and inclusion/avoidance of facts, after which they
will work with a small group to determine the most important instances of
loaded language and fact inclusion/avoidance. The groups will then each decide
whose point of view the passage is written from. The class will then discuss
and come to a conclusion.
Lesson 4: Backing Up Claim (Additional Lesson to be
Planned)
Students will learn to back up their claims about point of
view using textual evidence. Because this topic is relatively new to students,
the lesson may need to be broken up into two days, but because this lesson is
not yet planned, that is yet to be determined. Students will learn to
appropriately cite texts and use the evidence they find to prove their point to
the reader. This will all culminate in the summative assessment detailed above.
Saturday, June 4, 2016
High Impact Teaching Strategies
Lesson Plan
Teacher
Candidate: Elisha McLaughlin
Lesson Title: Identifying Point of View: Identifying Point of View
Grade
Level and Course: 7th Grade Social Studies
Time
Segment of Lesson:
_90_ minutes
Standard(s)
Addressed in Lesson:
RH.6-8.6: Identify
aspects of a text that reveal an author's point of view or purpose (e.g.,
loaded language, inclusion or avoidance of particular facts).
Student Diversity and Differentiation of Instruction
|
Student Diversity
|
Differentiation of Instruction
|
|
Give text with
simplified language; Chunk text to aid in comprehension.
|
|
Allow students to
dictate answers using Google Voice or another recording tool. If this
technology is unavailable, have a TA record dictated answers on paper.
|
|
Students will be given
a more difficult passage to determine point of view. The use of loaded
language and inclusion/avoidance of facts in their passage will be subtler
than in the passage for the rest of the class.
|
|
Chunk assignments to
help lower distractibility; provide cues to students to help keep them on
task.
|
Objectives with Formative and Summative Assessments
|
Measurable Objectives to be Addressed
|
Formative and Summative Assessment
|
|
Formative 1: Students
will work independently to find evidence of an author’s point of view.
Formative 2: Students
will discuss with a small group and determine the author’s point of view
using evidence they found in formative assessment 1
Formative 3: As
homework, students will identify point of view in four passages.
|
Big
Ideas to be Addressed in the Lesson:
1. By identifying use of loaded language and inclusion or
avoidance of facts, one can determine the point of view of an author.
Teaching Strategies and Related
Student Activities (Include Web 2.0 activities as appropriate):
Teaching Strategies and Activities, Teacher/Student Input, and Review
· Because this is not
the first lesson in the unit on the civil war, students will already have a
background on the content area to which they will be applying the skill of
identifying an author’s point of view.
· To start the lesson,
the teacher ask students for their point of view on an issue that is important
to them. For this class, the issue is where to eat lunch: at the hallway tables
or in the classroom. Before students answer, teacher will ask students to come
up with either a use of loaded language or a fact that supports their position
without saying what their position is. Students will have four minutes to
discuss with their neighbours.
· When four minutes
have elapsed, teacher will start discussion by giving an example (When students
eat lunch in the classroom, their teacher allows them to watch a movie).
Teacher will then ask for three student volunteers to share what they came up
with on the board. The class will then discuss each answer and try to determine
if the point of view (pro-hallway or pro-classroom) of the student.
· This will be the
jumping off point for the introduction to identifying an author’s point of
view. Because students have already been introduced to this through their work
with loaded language and inclusion/avoidance of facts, this will be a short
introduction.
· Teacher will then
introduce an example from the current topic (the Civil War) using a passage
that the students have previously read.
· *Teacher will start
by identifying facts and loaded language in the first paragraph of the passage.
When she gets to the second paragraph, teacher will ask for student input. **For
the final paragraph, students will identify facts on their own.
· **Teacher will then
place students in groups of 4-5 students for collaborative learning. Students will work through the final
paragraph again, making sure they did not miss any important indicators of
point of view.
· Students will discuss
similarities and differences between
what they found when working alone and what the other students found in order
to deepen their understanding of determining point of view.
· Students will discuss
their evidence that they have found and will begin thinking about the point of
view of the author.
· After fifteen
minutes, teacher will bring all students back together and the class will
decide as a whole whose point of view the passage was written from.
· **After a five minute
discussion, teacher will hand out additional
practice and assign it as homework.
The students will be allowed to work on their practice for the rest of class,
either independently or with a partner of their choosing. The practice will be
four short paragraphs written from different perspectives on the same topic
(the Civil War). Students will be asked to identify loaded language by circling
it and important facts by underlining them. At the end of each paragraph,
students will be asked to identify the author’s point of view. Any work that is
not completed at the end of class will be homework.
*This activity is an
“I do it,” “We do it,” “You do it” type of activity.
**Formative
Assessment
***Summative
Assessment
Discussion Topics
Write out topics that
you would like students to discuss in class, before class or after class
because they are interesting, difficult to grasp or for any other reason that
would make for a lively and engaging discussion. If discussions must happen
outside class, what tool will you use to facilitate the discussion (e.g.
Twitter)?
1) As a Class: How
can we use loaded language/inclusion avoidance of facts to determine point of
view?
2) Small Group: Which
facts/loaded language instances are important in this case? How do we know
that?
Materials
and Resources for Lesson
|
Materials, Technology, and
Websites
|
Required Preparation
|
|
1. Copy of Articles
|
Print 26 copies of
each
|
|
2. Copy of Homework
|
Print 26 copies
|
|
3. Whiteboard/Markers
|
Check to be sure the
markers are working
|
Subject Specific Strategies
For this activity, we created a Livebinder on strategies specific to our subject, including:
- Types of Assessments
- Misconceptions
- New/Current ideas in the field
- Academic language
- Using technology
- Cultural context of your students
- Ethics in the classroom
Planning for Learning
For this activity, we were asked to explore scaffolding strategies for our unit we were planning. My unit is for a 7th grade social studies class and is on CCSS RH.6-8.6. Click here to view my MindMap.
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