Pre-Assessments

This post is regarding my field test of one of my pre-assessments from assignment 2B. For this field test I had a group of 5 students that ranged from the age of 13-17 that included my younger sibling and her friends from school and another pair of their friends from down the street from my family's house. I explained to the group that I was using them for a little while as a way of testing my lesson design and that they were going to function somewhat like a secret shopper for me in telling me what worked, what didn't and what they as students would like to see me change for future uses.


For the purposes of the field test I sat them at a large table and passed out photocopies of an article that I had used in designing the lesson plan leading up to having an evidence-based debate. As the group looked over the article I introduced my normal approach to this part of the lesson by asking them what they would be interested in highlighting or underlining from the article if they were looking to support something. This instruction didn’t come across too clearly, as one of the students asked immediately what I meant by support something. I elaborated that I was meaning how they would go about locating information to use in an argument. I used the example: “If you were reading someone’s journal entry about how they had a bad day, how would you find the parts that told you that the day was bad? How would you mark that information so you could find it later?” This seemed to provide a little more clarification and as I provided more information on what the larger picture of the lesson was intended to do, the intended meaning was clear for all 5.


I asked each one around the table what they would do to gather evidence to support a point while going through the article and I received several similar answers. Students answered that they would highlight or circle the important points. I followed up to this point by asking how they would know that the point was important. This gave the group a pause before one of them answered that they would be looking for “stuff” that addressed the point they were trying to make. I asked the student to elaborate on how they would know what point they were trying to make if it wasn’t given to them. For example, I said, if you were trying to decide whether this article was for or against something, how would you know what evidence went in each column? A different student answered that they would look for trigger words that show which side the article is for. When I asked what she meant by that, she explained that you can often find which side the author supports by the tone of the language they use. A con article might use words with dramatic terms like disaster or something like that.


From here I asked the group to go through the first two paragraphs of the sample article and mark up the parts they felt were important. I gave them five minutes to do so and when I came back I asked them what they had highlighted. We reviewed the parts that they had marked and I had them explain why they had chosen those segments. The more vocal students of the group remarked that the parts they had highlighted were the ones that were the strongest lines for the purpose of the article. As the pre-assessment was essentially complete, I asked the group for feedback. The most consistent response was that the language that I used to explain what I was looking for was vague and that they weren’t very sure what I was looking for. At some points, they explained, it seemed like I was testing with my questions while at others it seemed like I was unsure myself.


In terms of evaluating the validity of my pre-assessment, I tend to agree with the group that worked with me. This stage in my lesson plan is loosely formed and needs a rewrite to be effective. I realized in reflecting on my results that I didn’t have any rubric in place for this assessment at all, only marks to observe the student’s behavior and their responses. It would be difficult to expect much of a positive result in a full classroom of 30 students when getting the results from a group of 5 was nebulous at best.


In order to better accomplish my goals that accompany my pre-assessment I would change future attempts to include a worksheet that students can fill out as part of the pre-assessment. Beyond the discussion on highlighting important elements, I need to have a way of gathering evidence for myself to see where students are in understanding. The worksheet would have a short clip from an article as well as several lines to respond to the questions I previously only asked as part of the discussion. I would have the students mark the reading and then write out why they marked what they did and what it says about the article. This would give me a way of reviewing the data and informing my instruction for the rest of the lesson. The rubric would look something like this:

4	3	2	1
Found sufficient evidence, clear explanation	Found some evidence, clear explanation	Found some evidence, unclear explanation	Did not find evidence, no or unclear explanation