Pre-Internship Assessment Techniques

Going into my three week pre-internship I had plans for several great assessment for learning techniques. I had an idea for a fun way to test theoretical knowledge in music, but because of the Optimist Band Festival there was no time to do any formal assessment with any of the four bands. This was unfortunate, but so is the timing of the pre-internship for music students. I also had plans to do listening journals that would require the students to call upon their knowledge of musical qualities, but this plan was thwarted for the same reason. Although I did teach in the music classes there was no real opportunity to concretely assess the students. I observed their success and improvement, but no formal assessment was given.

Instead I took advantage of two other classes I would be teaching: Drama 10 and English 9. Although I could not use my assessment strategies in music, I did alter the journaling article to make it suitable in the English class. The task was to listen to the song Lean On Me by Bill Withers and compare the friendship qualities demonstrated in the song to other activities in the class. But this assessment technique did not start there.

It was the first day of spring, so I asked the students for qualifiers to describe the weather or the idea of spring in general, and we put these words on the board. As expected they came up with the standard ideas: windy, sunny, dirty, muddy, cloudy, migration, bugs, etc. Then I told them they were to write a descriptive paragraph about spring without using any of the words on the board. The idea of this assignment was to push their minds further, to choose vocabulary that isn`t used in their daily conversations, and to enhance the level of their writing. I had hoped this would be a good exercise to help them continue to push themselves, an assessment for learning technique, but they only pushed against me. I told them these paragraphs would not be for marks and that they would not be handed in. This was not a good idea. This was used as an excuse for many students to not participate. After the students finished writing some of them read their paragraphs out loud.

The unit we were working on was friendship. After a quick set to get the students minds warmed up we then did the same spring activity except with qualifying words for friendship. The students seemed apprehensive. They didn`t want to give good words because they feared I would make them do the same assignment and they didn`t want to limit themselves.  This, however, was not my intention. Their doing this limited my lesson plan and was an unexpected road block that was fairly easy to maneuver. After this we read a poem which listen the qualities of friendship. Then I asked them to write a paragraph about what makes them a good friend or the characteristics that they look for in a friend. After sharing several of these we listened to Lean On Me, compared our paragraphs and the poem to the song lyrics and wrapped up the day.

The students were generally accepting of everything I did in this class, with a few exceptions. There were several students who consistently made complaints and misbehaved. At first I thought there was fault with my lessons and assessment techniques. But by the end of the three weeks I realized that those students were making trouble for the sake of trouble. Had I been in the class longer I think I would have been able to create lessons and assessment strategies that were better received by the whole class. As a whole the class produced good work and proved my technique to be a good one. I learned what level they were at while simultaneously pushing them to do better.

This lesson was being monitored by both my co-op teacher and my academic advisor. They both really liked the idea I used for my set, but thought it could be developed more when used in the general class. I think, and they agreed, that the strategy would have played out better with clearer instruction. Both co-op and advisor agreed that the strategy was great, but it needed to be adapted for better use in the future. When I shared this idea with my peers they all thought it was interesting. My teaching partner agreed with everything said by the co-op and the advisor.

The intentions of my lesson were to engage the students in a discussion and to enhance their vocabulary. Because this was my first lesson I chose both of these techniques to gage what level the students were at, and to push them a little further. This lesson and assessment strategy could be used in any English class and could be adapted to work in other subject areas. The assessment strategy is fairly one dimensional, but I think this is a fine way to start off a unit. One needs to gage where the students are at before proceeding, or the students are not being taught; only the subject is.

The assessment strategy was meant to gage where the students were at so there wasn`t a large need for adaptations. We discussed ahead of time that variations of words written on the board were not allowed (sun – sunny). However there were several EAL and modified students in the class. If they used the words in their paragraphs I didn`t reprimand them. As long as it was obvious that their intentions were good and they made effort elsewhere. One student mentioned the Egyptian Sun God Ra in place of the sun. Other students challenged this, but when I asked them if they knew who Ra was without “Sun God” around it they said yes. The student removed “Sun God” and things worked out.

My intention as for benefits to the students was that this assessment strategy would get them thinking about their word choice. So many of the students understood the words I used and gave, but didn`t choose to use them in their paragraphs. Words have such power, yet the students either chose to do as little work as possible or use completely ridiculous, out of context words in this assignment. This attempt at this assessment strategy was useful to me because it showed me what not to do. I actually borrowed this technique from an old English professor of mine. Even though we groaned at the assignment it worked really well in our class. I found this strategy to be fun and interesting when used in my university class. I`m not sure if it was this particular grade 9 class, the fact that it was right before lunch hour or the technique in general that caused this attempt to be somewhat unsuccessful. It was not a failed attempt though, which inspires me to continue to use and alter it in the future. I need to reflect upon when I did this assignment and when my students did it and find the differences. I think it might work better in a higher level class, a creative writing class, or if it were altered to be more of a group activity. The problem with this technique is that it utilizes the element of surprise, meaning I can only effectively use it once they way it was intended to be used. After that the students would catch on and the beginning processes would need to be changed slightly so the students didn`t sabotage the method.

The second strategy I used was in my Drama 10 class. The assignment was to narrate and act out children`s stories. Working in teams, each member chooses a story to narrate, using their teammates to act out the plot of the story. The narrator acts as a director during preparation stages; casting the characters, choosing blocking and script and manipulating and changing anything they see fit to make a better production. They were graded on how well they directed (this was observed in the preparation stage; notes were made) and their narration skills (projection and clarity). They were also graded on how well they worked for the director in the other plays; were they team players, were they audible and believable actors, did they negatively contribute, etc. They were also required to play at least one main character and one back ground character or prop.

I chose this assignment because it fit into the unit that my co-op was currently working on which was voice. My original plan was to have them narrate the books alone, but after working with the group for a week I thought that an assignment that needed them to develop team building skills would be useful as there was an obvious divide amongst the students. This assignment was given at the end of the first week and they had one week to prepare and present their plays. After the first week I saw that there were obvious leaders in the group, and that many of the others not only knew this but were perfectly content in following what the leaders did. I developed the strategy this way because I wanted the “followers” to develop their leadership skills and I wanted the “leaders” to develop the ability to step down and work well for other people.

Because of an organization issue, the groups were not created the way I had hoped. We were in a different room and several students were absent. I accidentally numbered them differently than I had originally intended. Because it was my first time teaching the students I didn’t have a command over them that I needed. When I tried to regroup them they refused and said that they were fine with those groups. I knew this would be a problem, but I thought I would let it play out, hoping they would realize it was their mistake if the large groups were an issue (they never did).

As a result of this mix up there were two unequal groups, one having 3 more students and the modified student who was difficult to work with. This group floundered the entire time, even though they had the top student in their group (she was the lead in all the plays, important member of the improve team and the entire class recognized her talent and wanted to be in her group). They could have done well, using the extra bodies to their advantage. But instead they needed to be watch continuously. I constantly had to keep them on task and break up fights.

The other group worked exactly as I had hoped. They all performed well as leaders and followed direction well. The lowest mark in that group was 13.5/15 (the other group had marks ranging from 7.5-15/15). This group truly made the assignment come alive and made it work as assessment for learning and assessment of learning. They demonstrated what they learned in the previous classes about projection and blocking. They also showed that the assignment was useful in developing team building and leadership skills. It was interesting to see the same assignment go so well and so poorly in the same class in the span of a little over a week. The only changes I would make to this assignment would be to create the groups ahead of time so there was no confusion and so I could keep certain people away from each other (there was a lot of fighting amongst the students in this class), and I would create a reference list of short children’s books that were available to the students.

A majority of the students enjoyed the assignment. The complaint made about it was that they all had to do individual stories. They complained that this would take forever. I reassured them that they could change stories if they wanted to, but they continued to complain. I’m not sure why, I suppose just for the sake of complaining (the group as a whole complained a lot). As far as their thoughts on the assignment as an assessment strategy, I don’t think many of them thought about this. Many of them saw it as just another drama activity, and others saw it as another annoying assignment (the words of several of the angrier students). This was a little discouraging. I had worked hard developing the assignment and creating the hand-out and rubric, but many of them threw it out, left it behind, or lost it within the first two days. Because of this I was not really surprised that none of the students really cared what their grades were or why they received them. Most of them just wanted to know if they passed which was surprising as the class did very well as a whole.

This was an in class activity that was graded so there is no physical evidence to analyze (the score sheets were kept by the co-op teacher for records). As I previously explained I think the assignment went well with most of the students and had the potential to go well on the whole. The assignment and its resulting plays indicate that I should spend more time on theatre, projection, blocking, directing, and team work before giving this assignment. This assignment was not difficult for team leaders (as demonstrated by the smaller group). It was made difficult by lack of organization and disciplinary action on my part. On the whole I am happy with the results because they not only proved this to be a good assignment but also gave me specific things to work out in the future.

When I went to my co-op with the two assignments for drama (this one and the individuals reading stories) she told me to go for the bigger assignment. I was worried about time and classroom management, but she said to go for it and work on these things as they came up. She thought that the assignment was interesting, that it would work well with our class, and that the students would enjoy it. She found it to be an interesting idea. As the students worked on the assignment she sat on the sidelines in case she was needed, but she didn’t interfere. But when they were actually presenting them she was engaged and laughing. I think she really enjoyed the assignment. Further, when I told my peers about the assignment they seemed genuinely interested and several of them said they would like to use it in the future.

This assignment was the final thing I did with the class, so there was no next step taken. I think that in the future I would make this a final assignment, or use it at the end of a unit. This would make it more of an assessment of learning technique. I do believe it could be used as either assessment for or of learning. It would just depend on the situation: how the teacher and the students use it.

The adaptations I made for this assignment were minimal. One student had her locker bolted closed, with her book inside. I allowed her to share stories with a team member who had a very long story to do. The only other adaptation was for a student who had severe mental and physical disabilities. His range of motion was limited, but the biggest disadvantage was his speech. He spoke very quietly, slowly and was hard to understand. He was also at a lower reading level than the rest of the group. To do a full length story would not only be difficult for him but it would take up a lot more time than everyone else’s, leaving little time to work on the many stories in the large group. With the advice of my co-op I decided that this student should do a nursery rhyme. To keep him involved he still chose his own nursery rhyme, casted, blocked, and chose lines (with little help and a lot of cooperation from his teammates).

This assignment is my favorite of any I’ve ever come up with or worked with as a teacher. I am incredibly proud that I came up with it and that it worked out so well. I hoped that the students would receive it well and they did. I knew that there would also be issues and I’m happy with the resulting issues because they are all things that can be easily fixed or altered. Although I really like the assignment I believe it needs more time to be executed properly. In the future I would be sure to spend time on all the aspects of this assignment ahead of time, including scripting, casting, directing, blocking, projection, and team work.