Tag Archives: In-Class Writing Assessment Task

LLED 320 – Nitobe Gardens Outing, Writing Task Details, and Haiku: Update for Thursday, 26 January 2012

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Nitobe Memorial Garden Field Trip

We had wonderful weather for our excursion to the Nitobe Memorial Garden this afternoon.  The goal of this outing to a traditional Japanese Tea and Stroll garden, was to gather 5-senses information for use in writing Haiku poetry, a Japanese poetic form.  Ahh, the synergy!  Here’s the note taking organizer:

Also, I wanted to model the value in getting your students out of the four walls of the school and into the “real world” for curricular purposes.

In-Class Writing Task Assessment Description

I took some time to describe the nature of this task and to outline the format I’d prefer.  You can find the task handout on the Assignements page of this blog.  Also, below you’ll see a photo of the layout and a model task from a previous year’s TC:

Here’s the generic, four-to-a-page rubrics for you to use if need be:

Please note that your completed task is due on Tuesday, 7 February 2012.  Please submit it all electronically or entirely on paper.

Energizer #1: Spelling Tag by Heather

The Writing Process: An Illustrative Example with Haiku

I struggled with the idea of how to present an interactive lesson on entire writing process in just an hour or two.  In the end, I settled on a lesson that involved the writing of haiku poetry, a form often used in elementary & middle school poetry classes.  We started to follow the Writing Process (as envisioned by writing teacher Diana Cruchley.  I took a workshop from her 2 years ago) –

A Writing Process

and, to that end, engaged in a variety of pre-writing activities.  The activities were:

Brainwarming

Just as athletes get warm up their bodies before game play or practice, writers need to warm up their brains.  To this end, we worked through a Brainwarming activity designed by Julie Ferguson of Beacon Literary Services.  As a part of the Hillcrest Middle School staff, I took a workshop with her last year, enjoyed it, and I thought I’d pass along what I’d learned about improving the quality and quantity of the writing students do.

Here’s are some of the key pieces in Brainwarming:

  • Your favourite word
  • Power Words
  • Power Triplets
  • A 5-Winute Write
  • Writing quickly
  • Harnessing the power of the creative right brain
  • Supporting the diversity of learners –  from Gifted to LD – in your classroom

The PowerPoint below is the one I used in class to guide you through the exercise.  You can find more info at Julie’s website, if you are interested:

Modeling

We looked over numerous haiku, determined our favourite, and developed a list of key features for haiku poetry.  Here’s the list of poems we looked at:

If you’re yearning for more haiku, check out these Zombie Haiku:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pd1Ws9QnmZY[/youtube]

or Biff from the Back to the Future trilogy with some funny haiku songs:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwnqUmmJ-zE[/youtube]

or these “classic” Redneck Haiku.

Here’s a wonderful visual representation of a traditional Japanese haiku:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ucc8l2Yg0qo&feature=related[/youtube]

Criteria Development

The haiku criteria we developed were almost bang on with the criteria outlined in the text I took this lesson from, Wordplaygrounds by John S. O’Connor.  His criteria are as follows:

Haiku poems…

  • Are short

Typically 3 short  lines with a maximum of 17 syllables.  They may follow a 5-7-5 pattern but need not.  Here’s a one line haiku by Lee Gurga:

trying the old pump a mouse pours out

  • Have a Twist (Juxtaposition of images)

Most haiku have two images, one on either side of a break in the poem.

  • Focus a “Haiku” moment in time

They capture moments of epiphany or discoveries about the world and our place in it.  To best capture the immediacy of the moment, haikus are generally written in the present tense and benefit from an economy of language.

  • Focus on nature, including human nature, shown concretely

Haiku avoid figurative language (similes, metaphors, personfication and the like) in favour of direct and specific descriptions of the world around us.

  • Are 5 senses specific

Powerful haikus are based on vivid imagery based on the five senses.

Pre-Writing

In an effort to make those criteria as clear as possible, we engaged in a variety of short writing tasks:

Word Seasons (handout: Word Seasons Word List)

I showed a list of words and asked you to associate each one with a season.

Sandwich Poems (handout: Sandwich Poems Examples)

These are three-line poems in which the first two lines and the second two lines form a different compound word.  Here’s an example:

fire

alarm

clock

Energizer #2: Who Am I? by Amanda

Drafting Based on an Image Pool

I gave out the first line of a haiku:

Halloween night —

then asked you to visualize your most memorable Halloween night and share a few images to create a class image pool.  After that, you generated a haiku of your own and many examples were shared with the class.  Here are a few of the poems written on the board (Thanks to Tim for today’s photos – LH):

Homework for Next Class Session

 

Haiku Writing

  1. Write 3 haikus that fit with the key features of haiku that we explored in class.  I suggest you use the info gathered from your Nitobe experience as a stimulus but this isn’t necessary.  Your poems can be on any topic.
  2. Bring your 3 haikus to class on Tuesday, 31 January 2012

Student Diversity Reading

Please read your assigned chapter in Student Diversity and summarize its main ideas in a graphic organizer of your choosing.  Bring your completed G.O. (and your S. D. text) to class on Tuesday, 31 January 2012. The readings are assigned by surname as follows:

  • Atsma t0 Jones = Chapter 4: Writers’ Workshop
  • Kent t0 Wright = Chapter 5: Introducing Narrative Writing

My goal with these readings is to deepen your understanding of the writing process in general and, specifically, how that process might play out in an elementary/middle school classroom.  My goal with having you use a graphic organizer is to play with ways that information can be summarized.  Graphic organizers are incredibly useful tools to support the learning of all students.

The interwebs are full of many sites with information on graphic organizers.  Here’s a few:

– Lawrence

LLED 320 – Group Presentation Organization & Writing Assessment Task, Part 2: Update for Tuesday, 24 January 2012

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After I asked you to prepare for a trip to Nitobe Gardens at the start of Thursday’s class – be sure to bring your UBC student card – and our Daily Write, we got down to the meat of the matter

Group Presentation Organization

We developed the following schedule for the 20-minute presentations:

and you can find the task handout and rubric on the Assignments page of this blog.  For all you visual learners, here’s the schedule at a glance compliments of EM:

Engergizer #1: Hum That Tune by Amy V.

Student Diversity Readings (Intro, Chapter 1, & Chapter 3) Discussion

We took some time to process this lesson’s readings.  I asked you to use your Sticky Notes and structure the conversation in any way you saw fit.  Below is an image that summarizes our conversation regarding the form and content of these conversations:

 

Writing Assessment Task, Part 2

As an intro, I mentioned that some goals for this task were to:

  • Introduce you to the Performance Standards
  • Encourage you to engage in professional conversations about assessment
  • Increase the reliability (repeatability of your measurement) and validity (were you right?) of your writing assessment
  • Examine how to determine weaknesses in writing and consider strategies to address these areas of need

Next, we did a Carousel Brainstorming / Graffiti activity aimed at listing strategies to address weaknesses in student writing.  Here’s how I structured the activity:

  • Each TC received a bullet point from the Not Yet Meeting column of theGrade 8 Writing Personal Essays and Opinions Quick Scale Here’s the list of all 10 bullet points: Gr 8 Writing PE & O QS NYM Bullet Points
  • Find others with your bullet point and get a piece of chart paper and a pen
  • Write your bullet point as the title on your paper
  • Brainstorm a list of ideas you could use in classroom instruction to address bullet point – the weakness in the student’s writing – for 2 minutes.
  • Move to a different paper when given the signal.
  • Add your ideas to the paper you’ve arrived at.
  • Repeat the “move and add” process.
  • When asked to stop moving, highlight the 2 or 3 best ideas on the page you have in front of you.
  • Report those ideas out to the class.

The photos below show the ideas generated for each of the bullet points…except #7 (We missed that one for a bizarre reason that I won’t go into here – LH):

Energizer #2: People Machine by Liz W.

Assessing Your Writing Samples

After I presented a think aloud on how I’d assess and evaluate the speech from last day’s session, we got down to the assessment of the writing samples you’d brought to class.  Here’s the process we followed:

NOTE:  The document below is recycled from last year’s post and, as such, has an inaccurate due date.  The due date for this year’s In-Class Writing Assessment Task is Tuesday, 7 February 2012.

I will take some time in Thursday’s class to review the key components of this task and to outline the format I’d like you to use as you complete it.

Energizer #3: Make Them Laugh by Amy S.

BLOG ONLY BONUS CONTENT: Assessment and Reporting Resources

While the assessment process is a complex one, there are many resources available to help you out.  One excellent source of information is the BC Ministry of Education website’s page on Classroom Assessment and Student Reporting.  On this page, you will find the following info:

Key Links and Resources

Other Related Resources

I reckon that’s enough for today.

Cheers,

– Lawrence

LLED 320 – The Students We Teach, Organizing Group Presentations, & Intro to the Writing Assessment Task: Update for Thursday, 19 January 2012

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Daily Write

With the words assessment, marking, and evaluation as our focus, we wrote for 5 minutes… and then talked for 25 more, mostly on the nature of subjectivity and objectivity when assessing Ss work.

Will’s Energizer – Bob the Weasel

Please see the Energizers page on this blog for all the details on this and every other energizer activity presented in class.

The Students We Teach


After responding to some “Stand Up If…” sentence stems, I asked you to walk, talk, and categorize yourselves based on characteristics the Ss you sketched and analyzed had in common.  T’hen, you thought of actions you could take to meet the needs of that “type” of student in the classroom.  This photo (Thanks, Jerin) captures the essence of our discussion (Thanks for scribing, Andrea):

Introduction to the Group Presentation Assignment

To start I showed you a sample handout and video prepared as part of a presentation on the Containers for Characters strategy that was delivered last year.  Here’s the handout:

To follow that up, we took time to:

  • Go over the task
  • Find groups
  • Make a tentative choice of a strategy or graphic organizer to use as a presentation topic

Here’s the task sheet and the assignment rubric:

In Tuesday’s class, we will randomly choose the speaking order and formally assign topics.  Please make sure you have a back up topic in case your first choice is scooped up by another group.

Julie’s Energizer – Screamer

Student Writing Assessment Task

The goal of this task and the work around it is to improve your assessment skills and to develop strategies for using assessment to inform instruction.

After looking at the task itself – here’s the handout: LLED 320 Writing Sample Assessment Handout – we did the following:

We’ll follow up this class by looking in more detail at the connection between the Performance Standard Quick Scales and letter grades and by having you assess samples of the student writing you gathered on practicum.

As an extension to this assessment activity, you might be interested in checking out this short video that raises some interesting questions about the role of rubrics in writing assessment:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kH3PSjh2G20[/youtube]

Eric’s Energizer – Traffic Jam

For Next Class…

For LLED class on Tuesday, 24 Janurary 2012, please bring:

  • 4 to 6 student writing samples
  • A fully charged laptop (I’ve booked a laptop cart for those without)

Assigned Readings

To add richness to our classroom community building activities this week and to set the stage for our further exploration of writing assessment next week, please do the following readings from the Student Diversity text:

  1. Introduction
  2. Chapter 1: The Classroom as a Learning Community
  3. Chapter 3: Getting Strategic With Strategies

As you read, please use the Sticky Notes strategy and place a minimum of 3 stickies in your book at places of your choosing.  The image below sums up the SN strategy (it’s from p. 75 in Student Diversity):

That’s all for today.  See you on Tuesday, 24 Jan.

– Lawrence