Lesson 5/Assessment - 3/21

We completed our unit on Wednesday with our fifth lesson and assessment. For the prior three lessons, I began the group part of the lesson with an oral formative assessment, asking students to tell me where the characters were, what the setting was, or the definition of the terms. I think this helped keep them thinking about the terms and the significance of including them. On the last day, we gave our summative assessment, and included both an oral and written part of the assessment.
We began in our groups, and Marianne and I switched our groups' stories. The students were very curious about the other story, so we decided to incorporate it into the day. In my group, I read the story to the students. They loved seeing what the other group had written, especially since the stories were so different. I then asked them questions about the new story. They picked apart the beginning, middle, and end, and were able to identify characters, settings, problems in the story, and the resolution to the problems. They have trouble with the term resolution, so we have been calling it 'solving the problem'. The students all seemed quick to respond and were able to answer these questions.
Marianne and I then became a center for center time in class. We gave students an organizer page to begin thinking about their own stories that they would write at a later time. They filled out a line telling us the beginning, middle, and end of the story with the terms characters, setting, initial problem under one, actions under another, and 'solve the problem' under the third. Students then brainstormed and wrote about the characters, setting, etc. of their own stories. I think that most of the students did well on this activity. As we expected, we gave much more support to the lower groups, while the highest group was able to complete this themselves.
We had a lot of trouble determining a good summative assessment for this unit. Since we changed gears after our pre-assessment, we wanted to ensure that we tested both parts of the unit.
I think that the oral part of the assessment in our writing groups was a good way to test the sequencing and the students' abilities to pick apart the pieces of a story. It was also motivating to use a story written by their friends. We then used the center time to have them apply this knowledge to their writing. We are reviewing these assessments to determine whether they tested properly. It is interesting that some of the students were able to do this very well orally, but have more trouble writing things down.