Here are the first results of my Cycle #1 actions! Click on the hand-out to enlarge it to legible size. During a common planning meeting, teachers and I assessed the quality and context of this student writing work in order to see what we could learn from it. According to Garrison (2006), the most effective way to conduct formative assessment that impacts instructional practice is through the establishment of collaborative teams like ours.
We viewed this student's work via a projector and Smartboard, which allowed us to collaborate and mark up the text simultaneously. Portions of the student work that teachers discussed during our meeting are highlighted, with some comments alongside in word bubbles.
We used the Collaborative Assessment Conference protocol (McDonald et al, 2007) to examine this student's progress on her feature article writing. At this point, we were looking for a strong topic; a unique, focused angle; and a specific plan for research. Some things that the teachers noticed:
- K**** has an interesting topic that will probably be engaging to an audience of her peers.
- Although K**** does not have an angle listed, it appears that she might have an angle in mind. See the arrow indicating where this idea should go.
- K**** could benefit from some conferencing about what kinds of facts and statistics can strengthen a feature article.
- This student was successful in generating ideas for interviews and quotes. This could be used as a strength to 'teach into' when talking with K**** about other evidence to include.
- K**** might need some quiet writing time to reflect and expound upon her personal experiences with this topic.
After our collaborative meeting, I started an email list-serve with the teachers to reflect upon our discussion. In the email, I posed two questions based on the protocol: 1) What was particularly helpful or difficult for you in this collaboration? and 2) How will this experience impact your practice?
