ASSESSMENT

Co-constructing Success Criteria for Explanation Writing in Grade 3

March 19, 2018

Today in Mr.James’s classroom our Grade 3 students had an opportunity to collaboratively create criteria for writing a successful explanation.

Mr. James chose a “Gallery Walk” activity framework to carry out the task.

To begin with, various explanation samples written by elementary students were pasted onto big sheets of paper and placed in the middle of each table. Our students had to walk around, read the explanations and try to write about the features of the explanation that they noticed.

Next, Mr. James asked each group to discuss the poster at their table and share the three most important features that they noticed. Mr. James wrote these down in a list, while the children were adding their findings.

After that, our students had an opportunity to check this Bitesize BBC site in order to learn more about writing an explanation and see what they missed. As a results of this brief explicit teaching, several important features were added to the criteria list.

The fact that the students, while learning about written explanation structure, were actively involved in creating success criteria for writing their own explanation changed their attitude in a significant way.

Suddenly it became much easier as the children were guided in their thinking: first, during the discussion they had with peers, and then by the teacher who highlighted and confirmed the important components and dismissed the wrong inferences made by the students.

The benefits of criteria co-construction became obvious during the next session when our students had to to write an explanation using their own success criteria and a template provided by Mr. James.

"Research confirms the benefits of involving students in defining the success criteria for a goal or task. By collaborating with the teacher to define the criteria, students begin to develop an understanding of what quality means in the context of their own work. Wiliam (2007) emphasizes that simply sharing criteria with students is not enough because “the words do not have the meaning for the student that they have for the teacher”.

Out of 8 students, only two asked for additional support and modeling. The rest of the students were able to follow the template independently, reminded each other of success criteria and completed the task on time.

It seems the key to success was that students not only learned how to produce a quality explanation in theory but also had a chance to examine and annotate explanation samples. In other words, the children did not only listen to the teacher but also shared their thinking, discussed it with peers, distilled the important findings and finally presented a better product to the class.

Lucas is adding his ideas.

A group discussion took place before sharing findings with the class.

Grade 3 EFL Class

We have started to talk about living things, life cycles and genes with our Grade 3 students. To interest my language learners I chose to show them a video about Spider Goats. I also prepared an adapted text to read after watching the video. All the scaffolding helped and all my students understood the story and I decided to engage them in the thinking routine - I Learned I Think I Wonder.

First, my students had to think about the facts that they learned and write them down.  I also wrote challenging words and phrases on the board to provide additional support to my beginners. Next, to trigger their thinking and start our discussion I asked them what they thought about the whole experiment of the researchers. The genuine interest in the subject greased the wheels of the discussion and all the students became eager participants of the conversation. I also made some notes on the board to make sure we remember the most interesting opinions and unusual ideas. All the students had to justify their opinions and explain why they thought it was awesome and mindblowing or horrible and bizarre.

Finally, my students shared their wonderings and the discussion changed direction. My students started talking about nature and how we need to be responsible and caring towards the environment.

Shintaro was very interested in the matter.

I really enjoyed our class! The natural curiosity and thinking that it triggered were fascinating. I also noticed how my students displayed other attitudes such as responsibility, empathy, appreciation. They were definitely thinkers, they cared for Mother Nature and were able to communicate their ideas in a collaborative setting. 

Julia's ideas made our discussion even more engaging

G3 EAL  - Developing Writing Skills

Every Thursday I work with four students from Mr. James' classroom on developing their writing skills. Today we revised the narrative story structure and simple scaffolds for planning. I did a lot of modeling and demonstration during previous sessions.

Our learning intention was to complete the planning and the first draft of a story in 40 minutes. After revising the story structure and success criteria for our session in general, I offered each of my students a different picture story starter.  I pointed out that the picture shows the beginning of the story.

When my writers began to create their stories, I was closely monitoring them, providing indirect instruction and guiding their thinking. I had only four students in the group and that gave me a chance to confer briefly with each student, discussing ideas for writing, asking questions or highlighting potential challenges. 

Even such brief exchanges provide our students with opportunities to think about how they learn. Such conversations develop our students' metacognitive skills and language - they begin to reflect on their thinking process, choice of strategies and realize what they should do better next time. Meaningful teaching situations like this can help our students to become more independent, as they are not told explicitly what mistakes they made but are given a chance to make their own conclusions.

At the end of our session, one of my students was able to see her own flaws and gaps and hopefully will apply this new understanding.

Dailyn and Khameliya had a very productive writing session.

Indirect instruction in the form of questions triggered Raingsey's thinking.

EAL In Class Support

We had a busy week full of exciting learning engagements. In all Grade 3 classrooms lots of experiments were set and successfully carried out. Our students followed the scientific method while experimenting and writing up their experiments.
We watched several videos, observing experiments and discussing the purpose and the procedure. The students constructed their understanding of the scientific method and successfully wrote up their experiments, using the one-page template. It was a bit challenging for some students to come up with a question about forces and the collaborative nature of the activities helped these students to develop their understanding of forces further.

Miss Anita's students had fun experimenting with balloons.

In Miss Lisa's room, the students measured balloons with measuring tape.

All Mr. James students enjoyed assembling their own robots using the clues about the area and the perimeter of the body parts. 

It was a real challenge but a lot of fun too!

As usual, on Friday, we had a Comprehension Club session straight after lunch. Raingsey, Sovantey, Daylin and Khmeliya had a great discussion thinking about the feelings of the characters and reasons for those feelings. The girls practiced drawing conclusions, making connections and finding evidence for their inferences.

Reading Dog's Diary

ASSESSMENT

Assessing Reading Comprehension in Grade 3

Formative assessment moves learning forward. Our Grade 3 teachers gather and reflect on information in order to adjust instructional pacing, content, and strategies. Our students also use assessment information to make adjustments in learning strategies and processes. In ISPP we believe that the following strategies are the most powerful when teachers use them to inform instruction:

■ clarifying and sharing learning intentions and criteria for success

■ guiding effective classroom discussions, questions, and learning tasks

■ providing feedback that moves learning forward

■ developing students’ responsibility for their own learning

■ supporting students in their ability to become instructional resources for one another

Our students are actively engaged in the activities and it makes a positive difference in the student learning. Our team believes that in order to become independent learners, our students need to know from the start about what is to be learned.

Therefore, our G3 teachers explain the learning goals and begin to involve the students in co-constructing success criteria and performance indicators. We encourage our students to obtain feedback from others (peers and teachers), ask questions and further clarify the criteria.

In order to enhance our teaching of inferring our Grade 3 Team planned various activities for the students. We began with clarifying the learning intention and modeling the outcomes that would meet the success criteria. The question that we wanted our students to answer was “How to make inferences?” It was modeled during the activity with mystery objects when the students had to use an item as a piece of evidence and infer some information about the owner of the item. It was modeled when the children were engaged in picture reading and inferring stories from the pictures. Finally, it was modeled when the students had to analyze the characters in the story, naming certain traits and providing evidence from the text of the story.

Mr.James scribed the evidence and inferences provided by students.

The children worked in collaborative groups and fed each other’s thinking while sharing their background knowledge, etc.

Alex's group put their heads together and came up with very interesting inferences.

At the end of each activity, our students had a chance to share their learning and reflect on their guesses. The discussions and sharing sessions were always guided by the teacher. The students had a chance to practice giving and receiving feedback in order to move their learning forward.

Miss Lisa guided the sharing sessions, making sure all her students had a chance to speak.

Teachers model assessment of a performance against the established criteria for quality work. Students begin comparing their work and the established criteria by providing themselves and others with feedback as they reflect on their own work and the work of their peers. With some support from the teachers, our students revised their work and some of them moved it closer to the established criteria. Students accomplished this by using their own personal feedback, as well as feedback from their peers and teachers.

Through this modeling of practice, and using feedback to adjust understanding and performance, students can learn not only to self-assess but also to understand the criteria better, manage their learning and consider their next steps.

Fun Ways to Start Writing Stories
Scaffolding

In the first semester, we were developing our G3 students' literacy skills with the help of the Daily 5 routines. Our students were very enthusiastic when it came to reading, but often the drive faded when it was time to switch to writing activities. We discussed this situation during our planning meetings and came to the conclusion that our students need more structure to be successful in their writing tasks. We also tried to select a variety of simple yet powerful fun writing activities that could be completed in a short period of time to not interrupt the order of our Daily 5 routines. 

Here are some ideas for novice story writers.

Four Corners Activity

Students used this graphic organizer. 

www.thisreadingmama.com

Four students modeled the whole procedure in front of the class. Each student had to think of a character, setting, problem and solution. Then one of the students volunteered to retell the whole story to the class.

After that, the students worked in 5 groups of four people. The timer was set and they had only 10 minutes to create their stories. All 5 groups successfully completed the collaborative task and one of the group members retold the story to the class.

When reflecting on the activity, we said that it was just a framework for a story and adding description and details will make the story much better.

The grafic organizer could also be used as a plan for the retellling of read stories and also as a plan for writing stories.

Five Columns Activity

Here is one more graphic organizer that will help your students create a fun story in 7 minutes. If you model it with a group, you will see the fireworks of ideas and hear even more suggestions and solutions than you need to fill the five columns with. The graphic organizer can be downloaded from www.thecorriculuncorner.com  .

Yannis had great ideas and I can't wait to read his full story.

Recording Special Memories

Here is yet another way to interest your students in writing. We all have special memories, we are fond of them and we like to share them. This grafic organizer can be used as a planner for a story or a story telling session.

www.thecorriculumcorner.com

All three activities can be completed in 10 minutes and can be followed by a sharing session. In 10 minutes the students enthusiastically create a solid story plan and are ready to move on and turn it into a short but remarkable story independently or in collaboration with each other.

End of the Term Reflections

The last week of school before the winter break is usually a busy time full of finishing up tasks, festive activities, saying good-byes, planning for the second semester, etc, etc. However, as professionals, we all have to take a moment and reflect on our teaching and building rapport with our students, collaboration with colleagues, communicating with parents and many other important components that make us EDUCATORS.

As the dictionary says: Criticism doesn't necessarily mean negative judgments, although it is commonly understood to be so. The word has a negative connotation and traditionally creates tension and stress. The connection between criticism and critical is obvious and yet professional discussions of critical thinking among educators are usually very productive, exciting and provide an opportunity for professional growth. To change the perspective and possibly to avoid stress, we as teachers should remind ourselves that critical thinking results in constructive criticism.

If you want to change the world, start with changing yourself. In order to practice critical thinking skills and reflect on the past term or semester use self-criticism.

It is crucial to practice self-criticism consistently as only the continuity will provide the broad vision and awareness of how you are doing and what kind of corrections your ability as an educator requires. Often this much-needed broad vision is replaced by following trends, fake enthusiasm, and adopting modern strategies for a brief period of time. Without a reflection routine and logical and persistent self-criticism professional development is like a bouncing ball that eventually stops by itself if no force is applied to it.

Following these four steps will provide a framework for self-criticism and personal and professional growth:

·      Be honest with yourself and state the facts clearly;

·      Focus on your emotions and thoughts about your professional performance;

·      Make conclusions and become aware of the problems and successes;

·      Take action to eliminate the problems and celebrate successes.

Tatiana Stadnitski