Tina M. Manus
Student assessment will be both formative and summative. Students will have multiple opportunities to show mastery of the skills and each lesson allows opportunities for educators to "cycle back" or further scaffold learning when necessary. In addition to brief journal responses, students will be formally assessed on four different 250-word response essays which will be written from each of the four identified analytical strategies we apply in classroom activities. Students will then write a 500-word essay that defines and reflects upon their personal aesthetic and epistemology. In this culminating activity, students will be asked to synthesize the four different perspectives and cite which combinations of approaches they tend to be most inclined to when examining a text.
Rubrics
Students will be assessed holistically using teacher developed rubrics. The rubrics will serve as a guide to students as they write and peer-review other classmates' work. Rubrics also serve a way to grade classroom participation and performance during group activities and class discussions. The rubrics are written in student-friendly language and include clear performance expectations for specific skills in each learning task. Rubrics are most often provided to students before formal tasks are initiated; however, sometimes the rubric is used as a catalyst to adjust a completed response and help it fit into the established criteria of a given analytical lens.
Triangulating Assessment Data
Final drafts of responses and culminating essays will be assessed by the teacher, peers, and the student in order to build a collective and accurate assessment of individual student performance. The purpose of this exercise is to eliminate bias and examine students' strengths when reflecting on a piece of writing critically. By critically examining another student's work, students gain practice for "Question Four" on the CAPT which specifically asks students to examine a literary work. In this question students must decide if it has merit or not and explicate their viewpoint.
Teacher-Assessment
This form of assessment will allow the teacher to give individual feedback throughout the writing process. The culminating assignment and responses will also be formally evaluated by the instructor utilizing a performance rubric.
Peer-Assessment
This model of assessment allows students to critique and assess one another according to the provided rubric. This is different from the "peer-review" activity during "Writers' Workshop" because students are not given the opportunity to revise and edit their own work after completing a peer-assessment.
Self-Assessment
Students will have the opportunity to reflect on and assess their own performance after each task is completed. While the culminating activity is essentially a self-reflection, the self-assessment allows students to be critical and objective of their own work in relation to the provided rubric and assignment expectations. In many lessons, the self-assessment serves to engage students within the process of revision, through using a completed response and adjusting the stylistic choices to make it appropriate for a given analytical lens.
