My final unit plan will assess students in various ways. I have not had the opportunity to consider in-depth the types and number of assessments I will utilize but the subsequent paragraphs will explain, in general terms, what I had in mind concerning this important portion of the unit plan.
My summative assessment will require students to write a short story of their own. In my unit plan, the last week and a half to two weeks will be devoted to students' writing. They will have time to handwrite, confer with the instructor and peers, type their story on the computers in the computer lab, and celebrate their writing by sharing it with an audience. They will utilize the knowledge and skills that they have gained through the previous two to three weeks in order to write an effective short story using the literary elements of plot, setting, and conflict.
Formative, or daily, assessment is a little more challenging for me to explain right now as I have not had the opportunity to flesh out any of the specific details of my daily lessons. In general, however, I plan to utilize the effective pre, during, and post reading strategies that we have learned about throughout the semester in order to assess students' prior knowledge as well as their understanding during and after the reading of various short stories. I envision using some graphic organizers, some interactive activities, multimedia, and daily free-writing exercises that will allow students to demonstrate their knowledge and skills and prepare them for the summative assessment described in the previous paragraph.
I apologize for the lack of detail in this post. If you happen to have any specific assessment ideas, methods, strategies, or activities that deal with short stories and/or plot/setting/conflict, I would absolutely love to hear them! Thank you!
I look forward to reading your blogs and learning about the assessments that you all came up with!
Courtney B.
I'm so excited for your summative assessment, which includes having students write their own short stories! I think you're on the right "thinking" track for your formative assessments. Because you mention plot, conflict, and setting as elements of a story that will be included in students' final stories, you can definitely include formative assessments that deal with understanding each of those literary elements. Setting would be particularly fun: students could bring in visuals of places that have rich sensory details or they could draw pictures.
ReplyDeleteI hope this was a bit helpful, and good luck, Courtney!
I'd love to be in your class, Courtney, I love writing short stories :) I think you'll be able to think of good formative assessments once you break up the main elements of a story like Amy mentioned (it depends on how long your unit is, too. You certainly could stretch it out, you have a LOT of material to work with!) Have you considered sharing short stories that previous students have written? I've always found old examples to be helpful when starting an assignment.
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ReplyDeleteAgain, thank you for such a thoughtful blog post! I feel like I am in the same boat with a lot of your comments. I am also unsure of some of my formative assessment. I love the idea of writing short stories! What independence! You should be sure to not give TOO much independence though. I can only imagine some of the things the children would write if you simply said, "Okay, write anything and everything." I particularly love your phrasing "celebrate their writing by sharing it with an audience." I believe children should have the opportunity to show their work. Also, I think pre, during, and post activities are also beneficial!
Short Stories sounds like an awesoem idea Courtney. i think you students will have a lot of fun working within this unit. One thing to keep in mind, you want to give them a little direction with short stories. Maybe you can do an author study. With this, you can choose an author, who is good at writing short stories and have students try to write similiar to the author. That is just an idea. But, I would provide a lot of examples.
ReplyDeleteYour blog group has given excellent feedback, I just want to re-emphasize that it will be really important not only to have read professional short stories, but might be more important to share student models. It also is not necessary for students to write fiction--they might find it easier to get start with memoir. See Atwell's advice on both of these genres.
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