Miss. Burns' Assessment Project

For my practicum project I decided to focus on assessment. I feel like this is an area that I needed to gain more confidence in. In the past I have felt hesitant while marking student work so I wanted to take this time to focus on gaining more knowledge and strategies in summative assessment. I have focused on four of my major units that I had planned for my final practicum and created summative assessment tools for each one. Ideally I would like to involve the students in creating criteria for their projects, however I did not have the opportunity to do this. As I present my tools I will cite where I retrieved my information and a little about what I learned about the use of the assessment. 

Language Arts: Poetry Book

This project requires students to write 7 poems: Bio, Acrostic, Free Verse, Haiku, Quatrain, Concrete and Limerick. Each student will receive templates for their drafts, then, when they have all their drafts finished, they will receive a booklet to write their good copies in. I got this idea from Rockin' Resources on Teachers Pay Teachers. The final project will look something like this:

I have used a single point rubric in the past and found the students liked being able to view the criteria as they work, so I researched rubrics that would follow this requirement and found a video from the Teaching and Technology Center (TTC) at Bridgewater State University on YouTube that talks about different kinds of rubrics and their uses (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWWLb3hVYFszmI6Iz3KiN3Q). The TTC gives the following reasons for why single point rubrics are useful: 1. Allows students to self-assess, 2. Promotes self-regulated learning, 3. Useful for formative assessment, 4. Provides feedback to teacher and learner. I also referenced Cult of Pedagogy (https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/single-point-rubric/) to create the following single point rubric. This rubric clearly gives the criteria in the middle column, giving students goals to aim for, and to the left there is space for the teacher to write about areas for improvement, while to the right there is an area for the teacher to write about how the student exceeded standards:

Science: Pick a Planet Project

For this project, students are to pick a planet that they want to research. They will create a travel pamphlet using a file folder containing information about their planet and try to persuade others to visit their planet. I got this idea from a blog called A School Called Home (http://aschoolcalledhome.blogspot.com/2013/09/pick-planet.html?m=1). I purchased their project from Teachers Pay Teachers. The final project will look something like this:

 I created the following assessment tool based on Information from the Teaching and Technology Center YouTube video that encompasses the holistic rubric and the analytic rubric. This rubric includes the criteria that the students need to complete, a check list for students to keep track of what they've completed (which isn't commonly used in a rubric, but I added out of necessity), columns for grading, and a column for comments for me as the teacher to give feedback to the students. I think the great thing about these rubrics is that they can be used as formative or summative assessments.

PE: Track and Field

I had a hard time finding an assessment tool for track and field that encompassed all events on one page. I wanted to create something that was simple yet effective and covered all the events plus participation marks and comments. This rubric is meant for the teacher only. Students don't need to see this as each event will be taught individually, practiced, and then marked. Students will learn the criteria, in this case, proper movements and execution, and will be reminded of the criteria during practice. I created the following rubric to try to cover all the marking that will need to be done for summative assessment:

French: Colours and Families

I wanted to add an assessment that is different than rubrics, so I included an example of a Kahoot! quiz that I'd have my students complete. Kahoot! is an online quiz maker that teachers can use to create quizzes to assign their students either individually through Google Classroom or to the whole class in teams. If a quiz is assigned individually, each student will use their Chromebook to complete their quiz. If a quiz is assigned to the class, the teacher will project the quiz on the board and students will be in small groups with one Chromebook and they will have to decide on the answer together. I would give the quiz to the whole class as a review and as a collaboration opportunity, then I would give the quiz in a different order to the students individually as a summative assessment. I have included pictures of what a Kahoot! quiz looks like:

This will be displayed on the board

This is what the students will see

On the Board

What the students see

On the board

At the end of the quiz, the scoreboard will be displayed with the team names

I really like the use of single point rubrics for big projects for subjects like Science, Language Arts, and Social Studies because it gives a clear visual for students to follow. Of course I would be going over the criteria in detail when prepping the students for their projects and will continue to remind them of the criteria throughout their work time and show them examples of projects to show them what to aim for, but to have the visual to refer to is very helpful for them to be successful. Using different tools for assessment gives students a variety and keeps them, and the teacher, from getting bored, which is why I chose to include a Kahoot! game for their French assessment. I'm looking forward to getting back into the classroom so that I can utilize these tools and find what works best for me and my students.