Jordan Yost

TE 408
Prof. Greenwalt

Formative Assessment Assignment

For my bell-to-bell teaching in Bens class, I chose to formally assess my students

interpretation of a propaganda poster during the Civil War. This propaganda poster was

depicting an eagle hovering over a nest of eggs, each with the name of a state within the United

States. However, some eggs were cracked with monstrous animals coming out of them, which

were labeled with names of the Confederate states. My goals for students looking at this poster

were one, to get their minds back in the frame of the Civil War in that they went two and a half

weeks away from the subject because of Spring Break and sex education, but also to help them

gain experience with deciphering images that have a bias and to determine meaning behind

obscure objects. In this case, I was not looking so much for a single outcome but for them to try

and grapple with the meaning behind this propaganda poster in terms of what certain aspects

meant, what this poster was created for, and how they could connect it to the larger event that

was the Civil War.

In order to accomplish this goal, I split my formative assessment into two parts. The first

was just to write down initial reactions to the propaganda poster in terms of what they noticed,

what they thought certain things represented, and any questions they had. The second was to

take this information they gathered themselves and from a class wide discussion and to create a

tweet from it that contained a hashtag. I believed that students would be able to connect well

with this form of formative assessment because of their interaction with social media and that it

would enhance their creativity with this subject as well. Instead of just answering a question on
a worksheet, I thought this assessment would allow them to be creative and challenge them to try

and relate this form of social media to an educational topic.

In terms of if I think my learner outcomes were met, I believe they were by about 75% of

the class. I was most happy with the initial assessment of how my students deciphered the

propaganda cartoon. Many students related the eagle and the nest to the United States and the

cracked eggs to the Confederate states. Furthermore, some students went as far as deciphering

the relationship between the eagles and the eggs to one in which the eagle was protecting the

eggs and keeping them all together, even the ones that were cracked, which were cracked

because they were trying to leave, so that the nest was full and complete. However, some

students took an opposite view in that it was the eagle that caused the eggs to crack because they

were trying to leave. Additionally, most students did understand that this was propaganda by the

North in support of keeping the Union together. Although many had more complete

representations, such as these, some only had shallow statements that did not reveal much

understanding of the task. Some said all eggs in the nest are American, or the eagle is our

natural bird. Even though these are essentially correct, they do not match the level of

understanding that I was hoping to achieve.

When it came to the tweets, these were much more difficult to judge if they matched up

with my learner outcomes because of the creativity that I allowed for. Most of my students did

take the side of the Union with tweets such as #dont stray from the nest, keep USA together.

Souths spirit killer # unite #south bad #merica, and #stay together under the eagle and in the

flag. Some connected this poster to current events by using the #make America great again.

Although they may not fully understand the connection by using this hashtag, it is very relatable

to the Civil War due to the election of Abraham Lincoln. However, some students did seem to
take this assessment very lightly and without much thought. A few tweets I received were

#about America, be free little birds, American eagle #cool, and #break away #stay alive.

As with the first part of this assessment, these tweets did not reveal the deeper level of thinking I

was looking for. I thought by having a unique task that students could connect to, they would

embrace it and try and relate it to the poster to the best of their abilities. Even though this was

fully not the case, with about 50% of my students expressing what I was looking for, which was

a connection to their meaning of the poster, I was happily surprised with the creativity and

connections that many students wrote.

By looking through the students work, I was able to see both strengths and

misconceptions that students held. In terms of strengths, I saw that students were able to take an

obscure propaganda poster and decipher it relatively successfully. Many students thought deeper

than just the image and gave meaning to different things within the picture, such as what the

eagle represented, why certain eggs were cracked and other were not, and what the nest as a

whole, symbolized. Going back to my learner outcomes, this is what I was hoping to achieve

and it turned out to be a strength of many students. When it came to the tweets, most students

were able to showcase their creativity by relating the poster to the Civil War and even to current

events. By making a tweet instead of a general sentence, the students showed that they could

describe an educational topic in a new writing style.

However, on the other side of this, students did have a few misconceptions that need to

be addressed in future lessons. Although it is very difficult to accomplish, students should have

an unbiased view towards history. It is entirely possible to argue a certain side of a conflict by

using evidence, but having a personal opinion clouds judgement. In a number of the responses I

received for deciphering the propaganda poster, a personal bias seemed to come into play. The
South eggs are bad eggs, the cracked one mean that they are bad ones/south, and the cracked

eggs represent broken societies and the full eggs would represent good ones, were all responses

that students came up with that had personal opinions within them and did not address the poster

in an educational way. In order to address these misconceptions, in future lessons I would be

sure to present both sides, the Union and Confederacy, in neutral terms and have students create

arguments for one side of the other through the use of evidence. This would allow students to

still have an opinion, but to back it up with evidence.

Overall, I believe the first aspect of my formal assessment represented what students can

do. Deciphering a propaganda poster has many levels of detail to it and in a classroom, this can

lead to many different types of answers. Those that understood it had detailed answers that were

reinforced through the poster. Others who had more trouble only saw the surface, but this was

also expected. In terms of the tweet, this was more difficult to judge if it painted a clear and

accurate picture of what students can do. By relating this to social media, some students got

carried away and did not relate it to the poster very well. Some answers such as US sucks @

the real Donald Trump #fight me and this poster is like totes the bomb #totally tubular, show

a lack of caring or understanding that I dont believe would have shown up if given a more

formal writing prompt. To improve this form of assessment in the future, I think I would give

more direction by giving an actual prompt with specific guidelines on how the tweet needed to

relate to the poster. This would limit some of the more outlandish responses and focus on the

educational aspect of using social media.

Finally, I do not believe I would assign a grade to the student work that I received. Like I

said earlier, deciphering propaganda posters is a detailed process with many layers and not all

people see the same things. There is no one concrete meaning behind sources, such as this,
which would make grading the responses very difficult. I would want to collect them in order to

see where they are at in this process but grading them would be unfair. The same can be said

with the tweets. By allowing for creativity and interpretation, it would be difficult and unfair to

assign a grade to these. This assessment was more for the students to write about an educational

topic in an informal way than for a specific response. Beyond this, if I was grading these, I

would not have known how to address the responses that surprised me. I anticipated that

students would try to write tweets specifically regarding the poster. However, I received quite a

few responses that brought up current events and this was something I did not expect. I was glad

that it did in that students were able to link the Civil War to current day situations, but it was

something I did not even think of when coming up with this form of assessment.