Reflection for 11/29

Happy Belated Turkey Day!

I’m sorry this is being written post-Thursday, but I just could not find the time to get this done in the week leading up to Thanksgiving. Patrick, my husband, and I, in an effort to spend time with both of our families, typically celebrate each holiday for about 5 consecutive days. So, we are just beginning to come down from a Thanksgiving preparation-and-celebration bender. Not a good excuse for not having this done…but maybe better than “the dog ate my blog post”.

On the brighter side, our group did have a chance to meet this Tuesday afternoon and work on some objectives and other unit essentials. We looked at the objectives first. In particular, our aim was to use the class’ and Cynthia’s feedback to finalize (for now) the objective wording. We were able to do this with an amount of success. We had already implemented many of the suggestions given by the class, so that part was easy! Then, we looked at Cynthia’s feedback. I think we agreed with the valid and interesting points – well, all but two of them. It was actually kind of amusing, because the two pieces of advice we grappled with were about the two objectives that we had previously discussed at length within our own group.

One of the challenging objectives: “Learners will be able to distinguish between effective and detractive literary devices when used as components of a story”. Cynthia had asked whether we could do without this objective – or maybe more precisely, is it needed within the larger list of objectives. Nathan, Julie, Janet, and I discussed this and realized that we do feel there is a need for this particular objective. Our reasoning is that kids often will employ literary devices in their writing that do not properly fit into the work and/or are incorrectly used. We thought there would be value in showing our students different pieces of work – some with appropriately-used literary devices and other with overblown or incorrect or distractive literary devices. Our aim is for kids to understand that authors do not simply use literary devices randomly, but instead employ them to enrich their pieces and add meaning to their work.

Our other dispute centered on the idea of assessing “voice” in this unit. We have gone around and around about this one. I think, for me, the biggest issue I have with writing a voice objective is that there is (in my mind) no way to objectively score that component of students’ writing. I think voice is so individualized that it’s very hard to pinpoint exactly “what it is” and where it’s used. In the end, we decided that the unit is quite full as is – and since we would not be explicitly teaching voice in the unit, that we should not be assessing for it. (Note: I am not sure how to “teach voice” at all… maybe I need to write another whole unit on that one!) We compared assessing voice to assessing mechanics: we are not actively teaching mechanics in this unit, so we do not have an objective for it. However, we have taught mechanics in the past, so we feel the kids should employ the rules taught in past units. Our thinking came around to the idea that we should not try to assess too much the first time we teach this unit, as we need to try it first on a smaller scale – and then possibly add on while revising it for the following year.

So, finally, we decided upon 11 objectives that we think are doable and will teach kids the “meat and potatoes” of our unit. We then worked on enduring understandings. This may be unpopular, but I do not see the need for enduring understandings. I feel that if the kids are able to master the skills/knowledge in the objectives, then they will understand what I want them to “understand”. However, we worked some out – and the process did help us pinpoint what we want the kids to take away from the unit in a more specific way. We wrote these understandings around the idea that students need to learn what literary devices are, need to know where to find them, and then need to know why we use them. We also wanted the kids to use these devices to enhance their own writing. I hope this is the correct way to word the understandings. Is it ‘ok’ for them to be redundant when read in conjunction with the objectives. Are we on the right track with these?

After grappling with the enduring understandings, we worked on the “essential questions” of the unit. We had already written one:

“What makes a piece of writing worth reading?” I really like that question. I think kids will get that idea and be interested in the exploration of that question. Other questions we developed:

“What are literary devices?” (Simple and forthright)

“How are literary devices used?” (Stolen from the objectives)

“How can we enhance our own writing so that it is more descriptive, more accessible, and more interesting for our readers (aka worth reading)?” (Here, we were trying to list the reasons that literary devices are used by authors – and why readers prefer to read the work of those who are successful at utilizing literary devices. Not sure if we hit the mark here…)

All in all, we didn’t come up with too many essential questions, but we hoped to keep the list short and the wording simple. Since we will want to assess our students on these questions, they are very closely aligned with our objectives and mirror them in many ways. Is this acceptable? Should we design more questions – like one for each objective?

Finally, we talked about how to assess each individual objective. That process was tricky. We are on the right track here, I think, but have barely scratched the surface. A lot of work remains to design some assessments that hit all three corners of the assessment triangulation (student products and performances, teacher-directed evidence, and observations & conversations). We have much to do! I think we’ll have plenty to do when we get back to school on Monday!

I hope you had a great holiday! See you a week from Thursday (I will be at the conference in Boston this week). Cynthia, please let me know what I can do to make up the time I miss. Thanks!