Post Assessment:

     Originally, I had planned to teach the five paragraph essay format, but after giving the pre-assessment, and talking with the 9th grade PLC, we decided that the students were not quite ready. We decided that they needed to master paragraph writing first. I had a lot of plans for teaching the five paragraph format, but this did make sense. They would be much more successful in future writing if they first knew how to write a well developed detailed paragraph. So, we gave the students a graphic organizer with just two body paragraph outlines and directions for an introductory paragraph and a concluding one (you can see the example above to the right). Because of a surprise Shakespeare festival, we missed a full day of class. This was also given the week before an entire week off of school; because of these events, this turned out to be too much for the short time we had. To adjust, I created a sheet for my students (refer to the above picture to the right titled "Field Trip Assessment"). As I mentioned before, I changed my requirements as follows: ignore the introductory paragraph and concluding paragraph and just write a thesis statement and a concluding statement in their place. I thought this was more fair since I didn't get a chance to teach them either paragraph. I wanted to give my students a post-assessment that would show direct improvement from their pre-assessment. To make it more difficult with still answering the same questions, I had them write their own essays. I also used their graphic organizers to see if they could transfer their ideas correctly into sentence form and to see if they could keep the correct organization. Having their information labeled on their graphic organizers (topics, main ideas, details, conclusions) and seeing if they kept the correct organization in their essay showed me if they truly understood how to organizes an essay. Since they had practice with this same sort of activity, I believe it was an accurate assessment.

Implementation

I handed out their graphic organizers on Tuesday and we worked on filling them out on Thursday. I gave the graphic organizers as homework to be done by Friday before class and fifteen students had them completed. On Friday, I took the first ten minutes of class time to remind them what a thesis statement and a concluding statement were. I then reminded them little things such as "don't' forget to punctuate correctly". After I answered a few more questions, I gave them the rest of the period to write their essays--my post-assessment. I had my students turn in what they had at the end of class. Ten students completed it. My supervising teacher had a lack of finished essays for his classes as well. We decided it would be a good idea to correct the essays as is, and on the Monday hand them back and give them a chance to complete them by the next class period. This ended up being a good idea. Giving the students a big assignment the week before Thanksgiving and also the week they had their state reading tests, wasn't the best idea. That is when my practicum fell, so I had no choice. This taught me to think about what is going on in the students lives outside of the classroom. When I give assignments and have my own class, I will certainly put this into consideration. When Tuesday came, I had 23 finished essays. Not the whole 30 I was hoping for, but this was a comparable outcome to the rest of the ninth grade English classes.

Outcome

The average for the pre-assessment was an 81%. So, as a class, they went from a 47% (minus the students who didn't do the post-assessment) to an 81%. Compared to their practice formative assessment essays, the students had much more developed paragraphs. In the above image, there is a small picture that is titled "Post-Assessment" that shows how many points I gave for each element. I also attached the little "Post-Assessment" sheet with the students scores on their essays before I handed them back. This way they could clearly see how I gave them their points. If they wrote and placed the element (i.e. topics, main ideas, details, conclusions) in the correct order and they were good representations of what they each are, they would get the full point. For transitions, I gave them a possible two points. One reason is because we spent a lot of time on transitions and another is that I was really assessing them in two different ways--were they used correctly, punctuation and placement; and, were they used effectively, did the transitions help with the flow and readability of the essay as a whole? Because I took the introductory paragraph requirement out after they already saw it, I gave 2 possible extra credit points for the students who wanted the challenge. Three students took the challenge and got the extra two points, only one of those students got all possible points which was a score of 12. I also gave 2 points for the concluding statement and the thesis statement because that is what they struggled with the most in the pre-assessment, and we covered it a lot in class. For the thesis statement, they got the full 2 points if they wrote a clear sentence about how their experience and the experiences in "Field Trip" related. For the conclusion, they got the full 2 points if they restated the thesis statement using different words. Some students just copied their thesis statements in which case they got 1 point. You can find examples of individual results under the student work section.

Overall, I was proud of my students gains. Only one student had a decreased score--from a 60% to a 40%. This particular student also had a bad attitude toward me. I figured out quickly that his problem with me was that I moved him away from his friend. He did all his work, and did it pretty well, but slowly, he decreased in effort and tried a little harder every day to disrupt the other students. To handle this, I made it a point everyday to say hi to him ask him how he's doing or about the book he was reading. I knew he was a Lakers fan so I tried to talk with him about the NBA lock down as well. When it came to class time thought, I wouldn't let him get away with things. I kept him in the seat he didn't like and told him if he could prove to me that he can pay attention and not disrupt the people around him, I would move him back to where he was. Sticking to this was a good idea, even if it was difficult to do. The majority of the students, who actually did the test, had improvements. Three students stayed within one point of their pre-assessment score. I had seven students who I did not get post assessments from. Four were gone, and one of the four was excused. The other three just didn't do the essay. I left them out of the data because it was inaccurate with their scores. I also had to remove them from the pre-assessment data so the overall class gains would be accurate.