Paperman and Assessment FOR Learning

One of my favourite things about the new Australian curriculum is the clarification of assessment into the categories 'as', 'of', and 'for'. It takes the summative/formative dichotomy that extra step further and puts the emphasis back onto the process of learning rather than just the end point.

I know, right, I'm an exciting guy. 

For each of my classes I try to build in some informal diagnostic assessment (assessment for learning) that lets me know where each of my students are at. There are a few reasons for doing this:

1. Know Your Students. It helps me get to know my students - if I can't see how they respond to certain kinds of activities then I won't be of much help to them as the topic progresses.    
2. Structured Teaching. As an individual, I respond well to structure, so having a process that puts students through a standardised task appeals to me.
3. Teaching and Learning Cycle. Pre-test, diagnostic task, or assessment for learning - whatever you want to call it - this stage of the Teaching and Learning Cycle allows me to collect data that can be used as a starting point for each term. It also informs my reporting; writing reports is always easier when I have a bunch of figures in front of me that I can line up against my personal impression of each student. The more figures I have, the closer I'll get to accurately representing their true ability.
4. Differentiation. The push at most schools right now is for differentiated curriculum, something that has grown as a response to the mixed ability classroom and as a way to support teachers in catering for the widest possible array of learners. A great way to establish loose streams of 'Adjusted', 'Core' and 'Extension' students within the classroom is to use a diagnostic test at the start of a unit. 
5. Student Response. Presenting work as an informal assessment seems to make the kids sit up a little straighter in class. What I mean is, students take this work a little more seriously than most student-centered work I put down in front of them. In addition, I always try to make it clear why they're doing each informal assessment by linking it to skills that they will need for upcoming formal assessment tasks.

An effective assessment for learning should connect to what I'm looking to assess towards the end of the same unit. What I plan to assess should inform every part of the unit (backwards mapping yo!), so this is always my starting point. In this case the plan is to have students write an exposition piece in which they persuade their audience. The argument they have to make is: why Tim Winton's Blueback should win the 'Novel of the Year' award.

I actually jumped into this blog post with a specific activity and resource in mind, so now that I've gotten all the context out of the way I can do what I came here to do: talk about Paperman.

Paperman is a fantastic and dialogue-free award-winning animated film by Disney. I use it as a diagnostic text that can help me quickly check on the students' analytical and persuasive writing skills before we do Blueback for the rest of the term.

First, we watch the film. As there's no dialogue and it only goes for five minutes, I think you'll be hard-pressed to find many kids who can't get into it. While watching, the students can start collecting some ideas about their impressions of the film by filling in this sheet: Thinking About Paperman. Have them watch the film at least twice and model at least one idea on the board so they can see the sort of things they can write. You can even got a step further and have the whole class contribute opinions and make a big class example on the board so students can fill their sheets up nice and full.

The next step is, in the next lesson, have your students sit the diagnostic test. This should roughly take half a lesson. Give your students as long as they want though, if a Year 7 student has it in them to spend the whole lesson writing their responses up, then give them that time. This is their chance to show what they're capable of. I even let some students take the sheet home and complete it there if they're that way inclined - I know I can't always focus in a noisy room of about 30 people, so if a student wants to do well by completing the task in a quieter environment then who am I to stand in their way?

Here's the diagnostic test: "Here I am!" It breaks down as follows.

Section 1 is a series of True or False questions that test general comprehension. It's important to allow a section that doesn't require much in the way of writing because if we want to assess comprehension then we shouldn't let a student's inability to write get in the way of that. Writing and comprehending are two completely separate skills. Sometimes we have to make sure that we're assessing one thing at a time. Plus it never hurts to let students succeed in English without having to be great writers, especially at a Year 7 level when we want to encourage engagement with English as much as possible and set them up for a long-term journey.

Section 2 tests vocabulary through the use of a 'best fit' cloze passage. The word bank includes more than one correct answer for each missing word, however, students are asked to pick the best word to complete each statement. This lets the teacher see how far the students' vocabulary extends.

Section 3 is where the actual mechanics of writing are looked at. This means articulating ideas, showing an ability to elaborate on ideas, structuring writing into paragraphs, writing for an audience, and showing an ability to evaluate. Very few students will be able to achieve full marks in this section, and the criteria has been intentionally 'amped' up so that we can avoid the students 'topping out'*. It needs to be difficult because if we're not looking for that tiny percentage of students who can do these really sophisticated and unexpected things, then we're never going to find those students in the first place.

Here's the marking criteria/answers: "Hello there!"

One more thing before I finish up; if you do decide to use this diagnostic assessment and collect some data it's worth keeping in mind that this information is just for you, the teacher, rather than for the students and their parents. I don't hand the papers back with the results because I don't think it's particularly useful for the students. It's not the sort of assessment that students have a chance to study for so it wouldn't be fair to give marks back to them. Plus it could be potentially demoralising to give students access to marks accrued in a test that has been deliberately 'stretched out' to accommodate the largest possible range of student ability. If any students ask for their marks (and very few do, because I don't use the word 'assessment' when I talk to them about this task) then I would simply tell them that the information was just for me and that the marks don't count towards their reports.

*By 'topping out' I mean that I don't want every student meeting the criteria too easily and getting full marks. If this happened then it would mean that I'm not extending my measurements far enough to see where their abilities end. This is another good reason why the students shouldn't be given their marks back: only the most gifted will achieve 'A-range' results.

Extending Stage 4 Students in English

Blueback, a novel that I highly recommend for Year 7 students - it's both easy to read and possesses depth of language/ideas.

In addition to my role as classroom teacher, I also work at my school as the Gifted and Talented Co-ordinator. This has predominantly meant the implementation of a class-sized pull-out program for identified gifted students (more on this at a future date), however, before I got to that point I piloted an experimental phase in which individual students with potential giftedness were targeted. At the time (2 years ago), I was teaching a mixed-ability Year 7 English class. There were two students in particular in this class who showed classic signs of advanced ability and I wanted to give them a meaningful opportunity to use and stretch this ability. 

It's worth noting that these were the sort of students who would not initially present as gifted upon first impression but, after extensive diagnostic testing, I felt that I had confirmed that their potential had gone unrecognised. Before I could create a larger program that would cater to students such as these and, indeed, develop a system of testing that would establish levels of giftedness amongst their entire cohort, it would be necessary to pilot a smaller program of increased support that would prove the validity of specifically catering for gifted students. 

So now we get to the real point of this blog entry, extending these two Year 7 students with activities based on the current topic that was running during class-time. In line with the requisite academic research, I decided that the work had to be:

• Relevant to what was being studied. 
• Not a simple case of 'extra' work.
• The kind of work that would challenge these students enough to allow them to devote the same amount of quality time that any other student would spend on core activities back in the mixed classroom. 

Anything less would risk student disengagement, the same sort of thing that led to these kids 'flying under the radar' in the first place.   

The topic in question back in 2014 was a novel study of Tim Winton's beautiful ecological story Blueback. The resource I've attached below was designed to be used by tutors who had been assigned to the targeted students, but, really, it can be used in any context.

In Stage 4, annotating texts is probably something that most students would not be completely comfortable with. I usually introduce it to Year 9 students, which put me in mind of using it with gifted Year 7s as it would be a step-up for them. The style of annotation featured in the resource makes use of a few higher order skills:

• The annotating of techniques is a form of attribute-listing that requires students to taxonomise information in their heads.
• The second part of the activity, in which students identify their own techniques, contains elements of backwards-engineering. 
• Explicitly teaching the skill of annotating equips gifted students with a method that they can use to design their own systems for note-taking.

I've resisted explaining the actual mechanics of the resource in any great detail because it's all on the sheet below. If you have any specific activities that you like to use to extend junior students, please feel free to drop me a comment below - I'm always on the look-out for more ideas!

Resource: Extending Stage 4 Students in English

Beautiful Blueback Bunting!

Buntmania!

For the last couple of years I've been wanting to get some bunting happening in my class room. Secondary to this was finding something to feature on said bunting, and I guess the two finally clicked together this year whilst I was teaching Tim Winton's Blueback to my Year 7 class. 

Last year I did an activity with a Year 7 class where each student created a single card that visually represented one of Blueback's chapters. Prior to this, I had taught them how to summarise chapters and had them colour these summaries with a highlighter so that we would be able to easily find them in their books afterwards. This way, the students could combine their own summary with an image that represents the chapter. It worked well, and the final product looked good - a complete pictorial guide to Blueback, courtesy of the students.

Last year's group

This year I repeated the activity but instead changed the format to large triangles rather than rectangles. Huzzah - bunting!

Putting it in order

Getting there

Putting it all together on a piece of string was a little challenging for me, especially in the 35 degree afternoon heat that had swelled up in my room after a long school day, but I eventually managed to get it all hung up on the wall. 

Done!

I'm pretty happy with it, and the kids were chuffed to see it too.