Re-Engagement Lesson
ED 311: Assessment in Today’s Schools
NC State University College of Education
Artifact
Context for learning form
A blank copy of the original
assessment
Evaluation criteria for the
original assessment
Lesson plan and materials for
re-engagement lesson
Video of teaching
Hyperlink Notes for Instructor
(optional)
https://drive.google.com/open?id= In this class, there are no
1JXjmxCyaLoZuUXL5PlUNFCc9 students with special
9wUgrigp learning needs, 504/IEP,
or any other kinds of
problems. They are the
“high flying” students
who are taking higher
level maths and
englishes in the seventh
grade.
https://drive.google.com/open?id= The students worked to
12SzVWZZ5_TPpTGqTVnj2k6Z7 answer the questions,
P6CL9Dlz then paired up to discuss
it.
There was no formal evaluation
criteria for the original assessment.
Mr. Bolchalk just walked around
the class and monitored his
students, looking to see which ones
were getting it and which ones
were distracted or lost. He knew
how his students usually engaged,
and those who weren’t were the
ones he decided would be good for
the re-engagement lesson.
https://drive.google.com/open?id= Materials for re-
1UhbFgfzEhuI29r7a8qkUBX9b87 engagement lesson are
LoTn2tOycNNFpgqOM linked at the bottom of
the lesson plan.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rX The video is also
QNDH4d- uploaded to GoReact,
FJZAVMgGgrreOlT4EHQfn4y/vie but this was this easiest
w?usp=sharing way to include a
shareable link.
 Student Work Sample and
Feedback #1
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1w *All of the student
TRAxBdIgUdl8XqY6oLSHFppIn notecards, included the
Ro8mQB/view?usp=sharing fourth student’s, are
included in the second
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hzl document.
3EU1StFPAuHPlWEAD-
RlBkFgEnXI6/view?usp=sharing
(student A’s notecard)

Student Work Sample and https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Hx *

Feedback #2 EnI7ntpoaWMIffaL7I5g93buPT_p
EI/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hzl
3EU1StFPAuHPlWEAD-
RlBkFgEnXI6/view?usp=sharing
(student B’s notecard)

Student Work Sample and https://drive.google.com/file/d/1e6 *

Feedback #3 b7JLMGscnFCYcju2nqtKwPDI4i
Kywt/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hzl
3EU1StFPAuHPlWEAD-
RlBkFgEnXI6/view?usp=sharing
(student D’s notecard)

Part Five: Reflection

Candidates will submit a commentary response. They will answer the following questions:
1. Analyzing Student Learning—Whole Class
a. Identify the specific learning objectives measured by the assessment you and your
clinical educator chose for analysis.
[The learning objectives measured were students’ abilities to understand and interpret the
Declaration of Independence as a primary source and historical document, as well as understand
its significance in U.S. history.]
b. Provide a graphic (chart or table) or narrative that summarizes student learning for the
whole class. Be sure to summarize student learning for all evaluation criteria.
I’m doing a narrative because there was no concrete criteria to summarize the student
learning in a pictorial form.
[There were varying levels of understanding in the class as a whole. Some students were zoned
out, not because they didn’t understand it, but because they were bored (the assignment was not
engaging or deep enough for their level of intelligence). Others focused on the task and worked
through the worksheet and came up with answers that showed that they mostly understood the
Declaration of Independence. The students that struggled to answer the questions became distant
and unfocused; they also did not participate much in the discussion with their classmates about
their answers because they either didn’t have the same answers or didn’t answer it at all.]
c. Using examples from the summary chart, discuss the patterns of learning across the
whole class.
Again, because I don’t have a pictorial representation of the data, I will give a narrative
summary of the patterns that we noted across the class.
[An example of a student who was zoned out because they were bored is one of the students that
my CT thought about assigning to my group. He didn’t because this student is really intelligent
and does well on everything, so he concluded that the assignment was probably just not enough
to keep his/her attention. Most of the students remained focused and were able to contribute to
the small group, and then larger group, discussions. For example, there is one student who was
eager to answer questions, especially about the grievances within the Declaration; he/she seemed
to enjoy the topic and understand what the colonists were saying within the document. Another
small group of students, like the ones who were assigned to the re-engagement lesson, worked on
the assignment, but came up blank on some of the answers. One student, for example,
understood the purpose of the Declaration, but was mixed up on the verbiage of it.]

d. Choose 3-5 students to teach in a re-engagement lesson. Explain why you chose these
three students and what their specific needs were as related to the learning objective.
[My cooperating teacher chose five students, although I only taught four (one’s parents did not
want him/her being filmed). The reason my CT gave me for selecting these students was that
they were students who are usually very engaged and focused on their work, but were some of
the students mentioned above that struggled to answer and zoned out on their work. He knew
that their lack of focus wasn’t a case of laziness but rather a case of uncertainty, so he chose
them to participate in the re-engagement lesson in order to broaden their understanding of the
Declaration of Independence and learn how to interpret it and other primary sources.]

2. Planning the Re-engagement Lesson

a. Based on your analysis of the focus students’ work samples, write a targeted learning
objective/goal for the students related to the area of need.
[Students will be able to rewrite the Declaration of Independence in terms that other seventh
graders would understand.]

b. Describe the re-engagement lesson you designed to develop each focus students in
relation to the targeted learning objective/goal. Your description should include the
strategies and learning tasks used to re-engage the students as well as your justifications
for choosing those strategies and tasks.
[My first strategy was a little review session to begin the lesson. I wanted to gauge what they
remembered from their lesson about the Declaration of Independence the week prior, as well as
see what kind of critical thinking they could apply when thinking about it. I asked questions that
included:
- What events led up the Declaration of Independence?
- Why did they write it the way they did? Was it effective?
- What do you think other colonists thought about it? Was it something all the colonists
agreed with?

The next strategy included me scaffolding them through the first section of the Declaration of
Independence on the worksheet that I had planned to use for the day. The worksheet was entitled
“Rephrasing the Declaration of Independence,” and the goal was to rewrite the Declaration in a
way that other seventh grade students would understand it. I decided to take it a step further to
help them rewrite it. I had them circle words they were unfamiliar with, and then underline the
“key” points in the section -- this was basically what stood out to them as the main point of that
section. They used a dictionary to define the words they didn’t know, then worked to rephrase
those sections, including the key points they’d underlined, and create a “modern” Declaration
that made it easier for them to understand. After doing the first section together, I had them work
in pairs to complete the rest. I planned for them to get through the entire worksheet, but they
were only able to get through the first half.

Finally, before concluding the lesson, we went over their rephrasings and came up with “the
best” answer. The one section that they struggled on we talked through, and I made sure they
understood why the answer was what it was.

I initially planned for them to do an exit activity called Two Facts and a Fib, but, due to us
running short on time, I had them do an exit ticket with one thing they learned from the lesson
and one thing they were still confused about.]

Before responding to prompt 4, you will teach your re-engagement lesson.

4. Analyzing Teaching: Cite evidence from the 3 focus students’ work samples and from the
video clips.
a. Analyze the effectiveness of the strategies you used during the re-engagement lesson to
develop students’ in the identified area.
[My first strategy was the warm-up questions that they answered verbally. This helped them get
into the mindset to work on the Declaration of Independence, as well as encouraging them to
think deeper on the reasoning and effectiveness of the document. From the exit tickets, it seems
like this activity helped them to understand a bit more about the reasons the colonists wrote the
Declaration, although many of them expressed confusion as to why Britain didn’t simply let the
colonists leave. From the beginning of the video, the students are answering the question about
what other colonists may have thought of the Declaration; they recognized that there were a lot
of reasons for colonists to remain under the King’s control. They weren’t able to give as many
reasons for the colonists to want to leave, which told me that they didn’t understand the
grievances they had gone over in class as much as the things that led up to the Declaration. For
example, Student A understood that the Declaration was written because the government was
“going bad,” but didn’t understand why the King didn’t respect his people’s opinions since they
were his people. Student D wondered why the British thought the colonies should stay, and
Student B wondered why the British “gave up” so easily after the Declaration. The student
responses on this section of the lesson showed me that the students understood pretty well why
the Declaration was “necessary” to the colonists, but didn’t really understand the background of
British rule or how long the conflict over this document actually lasted. In a future lesson, I
would give them more information on the American Revolution to give them more insight into
the British actions and thoughts throughout the situation. I would also re-emphasize the
importance of the American colonies to the British economy with a review of mercantilism.

My next strategy was to scaffold them through reading and interpreting the Declaration of
Independence by having them read through the excerpts, circle words they didn’t understand,
and underline the key parts of the excerpt. In the video around time 1:51, is where I explain the
idea to the students and begin to guide them through the first excerpt. They picked up on the
strategy quickly and were able to pick out the important information in the excerpt. Although all
the students wrote down something a little different, they were all able to tell me how to reword
it and included all the correct information. I then let them pair up and work on the rest of the
sheet together. The strategy they used seemed to help them interpret the document much easier,
especially by having them look up words they didn’t understand. However, there were some
problems defining those words. For example, there are many words that have multiple
definitions; there were a couple of times where I had to correct the definition they chose to use
because it would have meant an entirely different thing in the context it was used in. The
dictionary also made them jump around with some of the “older” words that aren’t used as often
today. Students A and B were able to get through the whole first side of the page together, and
they did well on the excerpts they got right. All three students, A, B, and D, had trouble
rephrasing the third excerpt; I think the word “deriving” threw them off. All three students, as
shown in their student work samples on the worksheet, answered something to the effect of
“governments are made by men and take power away or let it be taken away from the people.”
I’m not sure where they came up with that answer, but we worked through to recreate the answer
when we went over it as a large group. I told them that student D had the first part correct:
Governments are created by men. However, I told them that instead of taking away power, the
government is supposed to get power from the people it governs. I also wrote this on their
worksheets when I got home and “graded” them. Despite that hiccup, they seemed able to
rephrase the rest without as much issue. On his/her exit ticket, student D noted that one thing
he/she learned was that it is helpful to rephrase statements when you don’t understand
something. In that way, I think, even if they didn’t make it all the way through the document, the
students understood how they could make it easier to read, which will help them when
interpreting more primary sources in the future.

Finally, the exit tickets allowed me to see what the students had learned from the session, as well
as anything that still confused them. Student A mentioned things he/she learned from the warm-
up discussion, but student B mentioned things he/she learned from interpreting the document.
Student B’s exit ticket response referred to the 2nd and 4th excerpts he/she had interpreted. I
hope, since students A and B worked together, that student A was also able to understand more
of the Declaration; I was concerned that student A was still a little lost, especially after reviewing
his/her answers on the worksheet after the lesson. Student D told me that he/she found the
exercise useful to understanding primary sources, which reinforced that the lesson helped that
student, especially after reviewing his/her answers on the worksheet after the lesson. The student
annotated and underlined everything that was necessary and was able to rephrase them very well,
especially in excerpt 2.]

5. Feedback to Guide Further Learning: Refer to specific evidence of submitted feedback to

support your explanations.
a. Explain how feedback provided to the 3 focus students addresses their individual
strengths and needs relative to the learning objectives measured.
[Student A was really good at finding ways to rephrase the excerpt into something more
understandable. In the first excerpt, he/she mentioned that colonists wanted Britain’s respect
because the colonists had voices too. I thought that was really insightful and wished he/she had
shared it in class when we went over it. However, I noted on his/her worksheet that his/her
rephrasing was good and definitely made it easier to understand. The needs that his/her work
demonstrated was that he/she needed to elaborate more; his/her answers were short and
sometimes missing key parts of the excerpt. For example, in excerpt 2 he/she had circled and
underlined “unalienable,” but had not used it at all, even rephrased, in his/her version. I noted it
on his/her worksheet to add that the rights could not be taken away. Even on his/her exit ticket,
he/she made a claim that the government didn’t care about its people; I know the activity was
short, but I still prompted him/her for more evidence on why he/she didn’t think the government
cared about its people. Overall, I think the student was able to rephrase most of the document in
his/her own words, and, even though his/her rephrasings didn’t always include all the
information, the student was definitely on the right track. With more practice, I think this student
would be able to interpret any document he/she came across.

Out of the four students that participated in this lesson, I think student B picked it up the
quickest. He/she was very good at putting the document into his/her own words. There was one
place in the first excerpt where the student’s wording made it difficult to understand who the
subject of the phrase was, but that was grammatical error rather than an error in rephrasing. I
noted it on the worksheet so that he/she could make it more clear in the future and would know
to be on the lookout for other cases where he/she might make the same mistake. All the students
struggled on the third excerpt, as I mentioned above, but student B’s translation confused me a
bit, even when we discussed it as a big group. The student annotated the words that he/she did
not know, but still missed the point of the excerpt and did not even include one of the words,
even they he/she circled and underlined it. Because this student was able to understand all the
other parts of the document he/she completed, I’m confused as to what made this excerpt so
difficult for the whole group. I wonder if he/she, as well as the other students, assumed that the
government was bad in that it “allowed” the people to have their power taken away (instead of
the government deriving its power from the people). I tried to re-annotate the words and put
check marks to show where the student had correctly defined the words. I then rewrote the
statement for the student so he/she could see what it was supposed to say. Student B was also the
student who, on his/her exit ticket, listed things he/she had learned from the excerpts rather than
from the warm-up. However, this is one student I would work with on learning more about the
American Revolution, as he/she didn’t seem to understand that Britain put up an eight year fight
to keep the colonies. Overall, though, I was very impressed by this student’s ability to rephrase
documents, and it showed that he/she received a better understanding of it from his/her exit ticket
response.

Student D had good annotations and was good at including every part of the excerpt that was
important. He/she had a little bit of an issue with writing in first person during the first excerpt,
but improved throughout the rest of the exercise. I noted it for him/her so he/she could improve it
in the future. Although the part of the video where this is shown is not included, I helped this
student choose the correct definition of a word. The word was “instituted,” and the definition that
he/she was going to use had to do with an educational building. I explained to the student why
the word meant something different in the context of this document and gave him/her a synonym
he/she could use; the student said “ah, that makes more sense” and was able to finish interpreting
the rest of the passage after that (he/she had been struggling because the passage didn’t make
sense with the other definition). That being said, this student still needs to work on using context
clues when defining words in order to make he/she uses the correct definition for way the word
is being used. Again, excerpt 3 was tricky for this student, although he/she did get the part about
governments being made by man (after defining “instituted”). I corrected the one part of his/her
rephrasing that would have fixed the entire thing and explained the correct answer underneath it.
This student was the student who found the activity useful for understanding things that he/she
didn’t understand before. The student didn’t understand why the British wanted to keep the
colonies, so I prompted him/her to think about why the colonies were important to the British to
help him/her discover the answer for himself/herself. This student showed thoughtfulness
through his/her answers on both the worksheet and the exit ticket and gave good insight while
speaking up in the discussions as well; these signs tell me that the student was able to better
understand the document after the lesson.]
 b. Describe how you would support each focus student to understand and use this feedback
to further their learning related to learning objectives, either within the learning segment
or at a later time. Respond as if this were your class and you were able to complete the
activity.
[For student A, I would make sure that the student was clear on what points in the excerpts are
most important. To do this, I would make sure that the student understood what he/she was
looking for by working one-on-one with student picking out key points in the excerpt. Not only
would this help the student finish this assignment, it would help him/her on future assignments as
well. I would also work with him/her to elaborate more on his/her work, both with the rest of this
assignment, as well as on future assignments.

For student B, I would work to make sure that the student understood why he/she got the third
excerpt wrong, especially since he/she correctly defined the words in the passage. The next steps
would be making sure that the student understood how to read the excerpt with the newly defined
words in context and work on interpreting based on the context clues surrounding the words.
Beyond that, I would make sure that the student understood how to make sure his/her meaning
was clear in his/her writing, in order to make sure that the meaning is not misconstrued to the
reader. Although this is more of a grammatical thing, it would help for the student to see that it is
an important concept outside of language arts class.

For Student D, I would work to make sure that the student could decide on the definition of a
word based on its context clues, to help the student eliminate further confusion when trying to
figure out what something means. I’d make sure that he/she knew why using the correct
definition is important to understanding the sentence, using the example above as an example for
the student. I would also encourage this student to look more into the American Revolution and
the history behind other historical documents to discover the answer to the questions he/she asks
about circumstances surrounding it. To help him/her with this, they student would first need to
know what kinds of questions to ask in order to find the answer to his/her original question.]

6. Using Assessment to Inform Instruction

a. Based on your analysis of student learning, describe next steps for instruction to impact
student learning. Describe these next steps as if this were your class and you were able
to complete the next steps.
i. For the whole class
ii. For the 3 focus students and other individuals/groups with specific needs
[For the entire class, I think it would be beneficial to teach them all how to annotate the primary
sources; this would help them with their end-of-unit exams because most of them require the
students to read and interpret the primary sources, as well as for their North Carolina Final
Exam. From analyzing the student learning, it also appeared to help the students in the focus
group to have that teacher-guided example before they set to work on it for themselves, so I
would work on implementing that more into the class as well. To continue the student learning, I
would do exit tickets more frequently to see what the students got from the lesson and what
things they are confused about. It would also be a good way to catch any misconceptions the
students developed from your lesson. Just from the four exit tickets I collected, I could see that
most of the students were confused on some aspect about why the British acted the way they did.
In the next lesson, then, I would teach them about the British side of the American Revolution so
they could learn a bit more about it and why the colonies were so important to the British. Using
exit tickets for the class as whole would help me as a teacher understand what the kids need from
me and allow me to plan lessons that help them to understand the things they aren’t sure about.

For students B and D, this assignment was helpful, and I think they learned a lot from it. To
solidify the ideas for them, I’d have them complete the worksheet and turn it in to be “graded,”
just to make sure they had the concepts down. If, after that side of the worksheet, they were still
having problems grasping the meaning of the Declaration of Independence, I would find some
alternative way to teach it to them, maybe through a fun video or an activity where they would
write their own Declaration of Independence to the school. By making it more relevant to things
they believe in and hold valuable, I hope that they would then understand the Declaration and
why it was such an important document for the colonists who wrote it.

For student A, although he/she was on the right track, he/she could still use some further guided
instruction. I would have the student complete the worksheet, but we would go over every
excerpt after he/she finished it to make sure that everything was correct before moving on. The
next step would include making sure the student understands how to determine what the
important information is. I would help him/her through that by reading a section and asking
him/her to tell me whether it is key to the excerpt or not from how it sounds. We would discuss
why. Once he/she completed the worksheet, I would check it and plan the next steps from there.
If the student was still struggling to understand and interpret primary sources, I would give
him/her supplementary primary sources to practice with during Leopard Time (study hall in the
middle school). These steps could be taken for any student that had problems with interpreting
any of the primary sources given in class, which is why I would teach the entire class the method
for annotating and interpreting primary sources that I used with the smaller group of students.]

b. Explain how these next steps follow from your analysis of student learning. Support your
explanation by citing two course readings.
[When analyzing the student learning, I looked to the goals I had set for the lesson to decide
whether or not the students had met the goals. I wanted them to be able to interpret primary
sources better, as well as learn about why the Declaration of Independence was significant in
American history. I missed the mark a bit on the significance because I really wanted to focus on
their ability to interpret it (that was the main goal). Since they all seemed to better understand
how to interpret primary sources following the lesson, I was able to tell that my assignments
matched the learning targets I had set, as Chappuis, Commodore, and Stiggins (2016)
recommend (p. 1). However, since part of my purpose was to help the students better understand
the significance of the Declaration of Independence, I was able to use the results of the exit ticket
activity to inform my instruction for the next lesson; this also allowed the students to reflect and
see what they learned and what they still do not understand. To plan the next steps based on the
analysis of the classroom assessment, Chappuis, et al (2016) state that the teacher’s role is to
“Diagnose student strengths” and determine “What comes next in my students’ learning? What
misconceptions are present? What needs reteaching or differentiating?” (p. 9). Those were the
questions I asked myself while trying to determine what else I could do to help my students
reach all the goals I had set for them. I determined that their misconceptions included the level of
“caring” of the British about the colonists wanting to leave, so I thought about ways to address
that misconception to help the students see that the British did care and fought a whole war over
it. I also determined that there was one student who needed a little additional help and thought of
ways I could differentiate for him/her.

I know that students learn in many different ways and at different paces. Because student A was
close but not quite there, I knew I needed to do something different for that student. Recalling
from the differentiation reading that differentiation can include a lot of things, like additional
materials, different difficulty of materials, time variations, etc., I decided that the differentiation
that would best help this student to grow would be multiple sessions and extra scaffolding
(Tomlinson, 2000, p. 4). If the other students also showed the need for more practice, I would
have worked to differentiate in a way that would tap into what matters to them to make it more
personal and help them understand it better by writing a Declaration of Independence from their
school.

Classroom assessment like I implemented in this lesson is ultimately a way for me to guide my
instruction to make sure that every student gets the information and skills they need to succeed.
Without this crucial step, assessment would not be nearly as powerful a tool (Tomlinson, 2000,
pg. 1).]

Citations:

Chappius, S., Commodore, C., & Stiggins, R. (2016). Balanced Assessment Systems: Leadership,
Quality, and the Role of the Classroom Assessment. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin
Publishers.

Tomlinson, C.A. (2000). Reconcilable Differences? Standards-Based Teaching and

Differentiation. Educational Leadership, volume 58, pages 6-11.
http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational_leadership/sept00/vol58/num01/Reconcila
ble_Differences%C2%A2_Standards-Based_Teaching_and_Differentiation.aspx.