danielles_journal6_2009

Danielle Sutton 4/5/09

The assessment for this journal entry was creating a PowerPoint presentation about an author and it culminated in a performance assessment and used short answer responses throughout.

__General Outline of Assessment:__ For this assessment, students spent the prior month reading at least two books by the same author. After reading, the class began working on an outline packet in class that included information about the author and his/her books. As a class they would frequently visit the library and print out information from the computer about their author. Then each student organized the information from the online sources into an outlined packet and later transferred this information to a PowerPoint slideshow.

__Assessment Structure:__ The structure of this assignment had many stages. First, students had to begin reading books by one author. At the very least, some students only finished two books by one author, and at the most two students completed six books by one author. After reading, students worked in the library to find information on the computer about their authors. Once information was printed out, they highlighted what they found was interesting and made sure the information was accountable for two different sources (for example, if the author’s birth date on one website said March 30 and another website said May 30, the student would have to find an additional source to cross reference the true date). When the highlighting was completed, students transferred information onto an outline. The outline had key headings like “Childhood” which had bullets including siblings, birth date, birth place; “Work” which had bullets including jobs before he/she became an author; and more complex headings like “Similarities in Work” which had bullets including techniques I notice the author uses in his/her books, similarities between the main characters in two different books, etc. While completing the outline, students worked in groups and partners on different days. Their partner or group members were responsible for proof reading the outline and giving advice. There was one heading entitled “Five Interesting Facts”, and students were to write down 8 interesting facts than narrow it down to 5 with the help of group members/partners. Group members/partners would make suggestions like “Well instead of saying it is interesting that he/she has 4 sisters, you can erase that one and leave that he/she has a horse and a pig farm because the 4 sisters are already mentioned in the family section.” As such, a lot of discussing and suggesting took place between groups/partners. After group/partner editing, students handed in their outlines and later met with the teacher about the information put down. She made suggestions and they discussed and edited together. Then, as a class, they returned to the library to transfer their information onto a PowerPoint. After the completion of the PowerPoint, the slideshows were presented in class using the teacher’s laptop and a projector. The teacher printed out the individual slideshows and placed them in a “Author Study” folder in the library section of their classroom for students to look at when they are interested in reading a book by a new author and want to gain more information about him/her.

__Assessment Results:__ Every did a fantastic job on this assignment, and I think a lot of that has to do with the revisions, editing, and stages that took place. While I was not there to see them present, the teacher said that some students became nervous when presenting, however her main concern was whether or not they had completed all the stages, edited individually and with other students, and learned how to transfer the information into a visually pleasing PowerPoint presentation. As such, the grading on this assignment took place within each stage. There were points for printing out at least 3 sources of information, cross referencing when needed, transferring information onto the outline, working with others on editing, editing with the teacher, transferring information onto the PowerPoint, and presenting. As such, out of the 4 point rubric for the assignment, no student got lower than a 3. And for those who earned a 3, it was generally because key information was missing.

__Reflection of Assessment:__ I thought this was a very well thought out and interesting assessment. The teacher’s main reason for giving this assignment she said was to introduce and teach the students how to use PowerPoint, to teach students to research, and to create a way for students to be able to find out more about authors other classmates enjoy so they can read suggested books by them as well. I think that she incorporated a lot of useful stages and editing processes to make sure that the finished product was the best it could be. The students really enjoyed learning how to use a PowerPoint and really wanted to make one. They seemed to work really hard on gathering information and writing down interesting and appropriate facts because they wanted their PowerPoint to be great. It was also nice to see that students were working at different stages. Some students were still editing information in groups while others were working on slides in the PowerPoint. I think that it was important to allow students to revise alone, with classmates, and with the teacher because they saw that the editing process takes a while and that more opinions can lead to more concise and accurate work. They also were fine with working at different stages, and those who finished early were eager to help other classmates work on their PowerPoint and give them tips. All in all, it was great to see such hard work and collaboration from all the students and see that the culminating assignment was very useful and interesting. <<<Danielle's Journals