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Elena Alba
Class: EDIS 5030
Instructor: Jennifer Pease
10 December, 2018

Reflection and Next Steps

Section 1: Formative Assessment Analysis

A. Identify the specific learning target(s) measured by the assessment you have chosen for analysis
and explain where this assessment fell in the designated sequence of instruction.

I’ve chosen to analyze my t-shirt diagram formative assessment because it was the most
successful, useful formative assessment we did in this unit. The t-shirt diagram activity covered
learning targets U1, U2, D1, D2, D3, D4, D5, and D6, and fell on the second day of the mini-unit,
after students had had a chance to develop the main idea of their board game narratives.

B. Use evidence found in the work samples of your class to identify, describe, and interpret 2-3
patterns of learning.

 Pattern #1: The idea of a supporting character or detail can be both helpful and confusing to my
students and needs to be explained more explicitly for some. For others, that category seems to
be particularly helpful in getting their brains primed to add elements of interest and description
to their pieces. In the first picture below, this student had a clear sense of her problem, main
character, and setting, but had a difficult time nailing down the difference between her main
characters and supporting characters. She decided to add extra details directly into her narrative
piece as she wrote it, but needed some more explanation about why those were important
while we were brainstorming together. In the second photo of student work, this student found
the supporting details and characters category to be extremely useful to her because she was
having a hard time moving beyond the basic setting and problem she’d identified. She had self-
assessed that her problem was too vague and wouldn’t provide enough material for an entire
board game, so we used the sleeves of the t-shirt to brainstorm some additional details to help
expand her ideas.
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 Pattern #2: Having a category devoted to identifying a problem to be solved really helps
students understand their own stories better and create richer characters and details. When we
began discussing narratives during our first mini-lesson, most of the students identified that
there was a chronological element to story-writing. However, they were pretty confused when I
started to explain the need for events and problems that get resolved in a story. I’d noticed this
trend in their past writing, as well. When I handed out the t-shirt diagrams, the “problem to be
solved” category was particularly helpful for students in getting them to think through the main
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issue of their story, which I explained was necessary in order to have something for their board
game players to actually do.

The first photo below is by a student who has a plethora of interesting ideas that rarely
connect together in a coherent way. He described to me that his idea was to have the Mickey
Mouse cast of characters get stuck in Berlin in 1946, but couldn’t tell me why they were there or
what they needed to do to get out. Eventually, he used the problem to be solved category to
identify that the Mickey Mouse characters needed to get across the Berlin Wall in order to
escape. The second student had a very full, detailed idea of her setting and characters, but took
a good bit longer to identify her problem. I encouraged her to use the middle category to
identify a solvable problem, and she did so and seemed both relieved and motivated afterward.
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C. Explain how you used the assessment evidence and your analysis of student learning to inform
instruction moving forward.

I don’t think I expected this t-shirt diagram activity to be as supportive as it actually was
for students, which was both awesome and frustrating. It was awesome because they got more
and more excited and engaged the more they filled out their t-shirts, but it was frustrating in
that I realized that sometimes activities or diagrams/charts can be more useful to students than
mini-lessons. In light of this, I made sure to emphasize to students in one-on-one conferences
how they could use the work they’d already done on the diagrams to improve their narratives
and finish them by the deadline, using the categories on the t-shirt.
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Section 2: Summative Assessment Analysis

A. For each of the learning targets, address the following: To what extent did the class as a whole
demonstrate mastery of this learning target? How do you know? What specific evidence from
student responses supports your assertion above?

 Understanding goal: Students will understand that powerful narrative writing that engages a reader
requires clear organization; interesting details; and a compelling setting, plot, and hook.

Student evidence:
Who Murdered Jeff?
It was an early morning at the Hotel Hibiscus Chevon, in San Jose, Costa Rica. the maid,
Cordelia was going to wake up Jeff, a guest of Hotel Hibiscus Chevon. “I’ll be right back”. She said
to the cook, Barnaby. While she was upstairs, all Barnaby heard was a scream. The maid walked
down the stairs, her face pale, and her eyes wide and red. Barnaby gasped! “Is everything
alright?” Cordelia was silent, but motioned for Barnaby to come upstairs. Barnaby too, was
motionless after seeing only the dead body of Jeff. the curtains were closed, so it was dark, “how
did this happen?” croaked Barnaby. Cornelia turned on the light. they gasped. Only to see that
his throat had been slit.
The next day they started to wonder who it could be. Was it the pizza man, Jerry Snout,
was it the butler, Edwin Jeeves, or was it the desk lady, Frances Rumbold. So they hired vonn
philippe, a highly trained detective from france. “eet vill take me zeveral weekz to a month to
figure zis out. Iz zat alvight?” He said. Cornelia was worried, will you need the body? “Yez” he
said. “Well, it may be different in france, but here in costa rica, the body will dry out an
distenigrate quickly. Can you do it in time? “I veel try.”
“Alright” she said. “Lets begin.”

Overwhelmingly, the students who completed and turned in their summative

assessments consistently demonstrated an understanding of what a clear narrative looks and
sounds like. In the above student writing example, the student decided to begin her story with a
hook, and then move into a series of events, giving important details and leaving the reader with
a cliffhanger ending. However, while the student above and many others demonstrated
consistent mastery of the main components of this understanding goal, some students did not.
Those who didn’t know how to construct a clear, organized narrative seemed to have gotten
confused by my explanation of the activity, thinking that their job was to explain how the board
game worked instead. I think this may have resulted from the fact that five different teachers
were all teaching the same lesson and I didn’t make my intent with the lesson clear enough
during morning meeting. I was pleased, though, that most students seemed to have mastered
the concepts.

 Understanding goal: Students will understand that certain narrative writing strategies can help
captivate a reader.
Student evidence:
“How long has it been?” A voice called into the darkness, leaves crunching underfoot.
The only light came from the stars above, barely visible through the dense trees.
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“Three days. I can’t keep this up much longer. How are we going to survive?” Answered a
new voice, female this time. The desperation in her voice was audible, though she was trying
hard to cover it up.
“Both of you, shut up! There’s light up ahead.” Hissed another female. You could see her
outline, bow poised to attack. Her hoodie was pulled over her head, creating a camo disguise for
her. She looked about thirteen, a natural golden glow radiating from her olive skin. Her
comrades crouched down next to her.
“Sorry,” Alyssa muttered, drawing her dagger. “Shade, stop!” Alyssa said. The other girl had
begun maneuvering her way through the trees towards the source of the light. Alyssa and the
boy threw themselves forward and grabbed the one called Shade. She threw Alyssa off, still
struggling with the other.
“Theo, get off! I’m just going to check it out. I’ll be back in a minute.” Shade dashed off
dragging Theo, Alyssa close behind. They hid behind a bush, and Theo peered through the leaves.
“Whoa,” said Theo. “Guys, you have to see this,” he uttered in awe. Shade peered
through the bramble and gasped.
“What? What’s going on?” Alyssa hissed, she leaned forward, but could barely see
through her thick black curls. Her eyes widened as they landed on the source of the light. They
were on a cliff overlooking more woods and within them was a small clearing, the light coming
from inside.
“Oh my god. What the heck is that?” she asked. Shade shrugged leaning forward to get
a better look.
“Your guess is as good as mine.” she said
Theo glanced at them, then walked forward. The girls followed cautiously, stepping over fallen
trees and attempting to walk silently. They hurried down the cliff, slipping and sliding all the way
down. As they reached the bottom, they stopped and took a breath.
“I. need. a. breath.” Alyssa panted.
They sat down and silently drank from their water bottles. Shade stood up and brushed herself
off, the others following suit. They ran into the woods following the light, and what felt like hours
later, they arrived in the clearing. They all stared at the light source, a ten foot tall portal, fire
inside. They walked forward, a feeling like a magnet pulling them forward. Shade stepped in, and
disappeared, then Alyssa, and finally Theo. They fell backwards, and landed on their backs,
dazed and confused. They sat up.
“Where are we?” Theo said.
“I think we’re in the Nether.” said Shade.

This student and several others employed advanced narrative writing strategies in their
pieces to engage their readers and explain their plot. The student above chose to use dialogue
and sensory details to help paint a picture in the minds of her readers. Her characters also
appear and reappear, which is something we went over in class as a way to make the story more
believable. While this student and a few others made good use of dialogue, intrigue,
cliffhangers, repetition, and sensory details, others tended toward a stream-of-consciousness
style of writing which added little to the narrative overall. I learned that we still need to spend
time going over narrative arc, punctuation, and transition words and phrases to help these
students improve their narrative writing.
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 Higher-level Do goal: Students will be able to compose a short, clear narrative piece with a setting
and a plot. (Create)
Student evidence:
Once upon a time there was a woman named Edna she lived on Wall Street one day she
had her friends over Jeff the pizza guy, Bobert the mailman and Brian the guy that works at the
bank. Edna was a fashion designer and showed them her new jewelry line. It was late so Edna’s
friends left to go home and Edna went to bed in the morning edna was found dead in her bed
with a knife in her.luckily Edna’s house had security cameras but the robber was smart enough to
have smashed those and her safe had been opened and the new jewelry was gone the safe was
empty! The three victims were taken into custody. Jeff said he was delivering pizzas when he saw
someone jumping out of Edna’s window with jewelry. Jeff went inside the house and saw Edna
dead in her bed. Brian said he was walking his dog and Bobert said he was delivering mail.
Bobert was found guilty and before anyone could do anything he slit all their throats and ran
away.

This student really struggled to clarify her ideas while writing. Even with the t-shirt
diagram activity, formative assessments, and mini-lessons, she, like so many other writers,
wanted to include absolutely everything she’d thought of the minute she sat down. However,
after much negotiating, she managed to create a narrative that had a clear set of characters, as
well as a plot for what occurred in the story and why. Her writing process was very similar to
many other students who held their characters and plot elements close to their hearts and had a
hard time relinquishing them for the sake of clarity. In the future, I think I’ll have to model how
streamlining a story can be difficult but truly worthwhile.

 Higher-level Do goal: Students will be able to write a powerful hook for a narrative piece. (Create)
Student evidence:
Captain Eleczo is a nobel hero with the powers of electricity. He can control lightning and
shoot it from his fingers. But he has a great and despicable enemy that he has been fighting for
many years. His name is Mr. Treemon and he has the powers to control plant life and use it as a
weapon. Mr. Treemon transported Captain Eleczo and himself to a desert during one of there
long battles, but they did not stop fighting. Mr. Treemon got swept away in a sand storm before
he could strike. Captain Elecso took a short nap while his enemy was away, but what he did not
know was that there was a loose camel and not a normal camel. This camel was trained to steel
its enemies items. It had taken Captain Eleczo’s canteen while he was asleep. When he woke up
he notest his canteen was gone but more importantly Mr.Treemon was walking up the sand
dune rite in front of him. They continued to fight you will have to see who wins.

Each role the die and who ever gets the bigger number move forward that amount of spaces
and the person that lost that round just moves back one space. Role each round. If you land on a
space with writing do whatever the space says (it will be very descriptive). Whoever gets to the
end first wins.
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I think this board game story narrative was a particularly good prompt to get kids thinking
about hooks and engaging their readers because there was an authentic reason that they
needed to create a compelling story. In order to convince people to play their game, their
narratives had to be exciting and interesting right off the bat. Most students inherently grasped
this concept and played off common stereotypical murder mystery, hero-villain, and fantasy
storylines to help them formulate a good hook. The student above decided to make her story
about a particular hero trying to fight off a horrendous enemy, and I think she did a great job of
being engaging within the first few sentences.

 Higher-level Do goal: Students will be able to organize events chronologically and/or in another
logical manner in a piece of writing. (Analyze)
Student evidence:
Paul and his friends were just wandering in the forest when they stopped to admire a red
puddle with white spots seeing as it was a big puddle and they were all kids they all jumped in
the puddle and then they felt as if they were stand on something squishy but solid and they
looked down paul was the first to notice it was a mushroom so they got of the got off the giant
fungus
And a little frog hopped up to them and said “looks like we got some new kids,look you kids want
to get home,so just find enough mushrooms and then put them in the shrine at the end of the
path and it will send you home but if you don't have enough you will be sent back to the
beginning,oh and study your mushrooms because the shrine doesn’t like poisonous or mimicing
mushrooms.”the kids thank the frog and went on their way so they searched and they searched
and when they finally found there first mushrooms they were ravenous they grabbed a whole
bunch and one person got in the middle of them then froze the others couldn't get her to move
and they walked off without them then they un-froze and joined up with them people were very
sure that they would never go into the center of mushroom circles again so once they got to the
portal-bella shrine

I think this student’s work is a good, representative example of how the students
understand chronological organization fairly well, but tend to use many run-on sentences and
very little punctuation. The organization of their writing is thus somewhat a bit hampered by
their lack of grammar and punctuation. However, most students did organize their writing in a
distinct and clear way, even if the reader had to work a bit harder to separate out the sentences.
Some of the students chose to organize their writing by plot point, rather than chronologically,
which worked just fine, and some students chose to forego organization altogether, which
means that my mini-lesson didn’t engage all students the way I’d hoped it would.

B. Based on student performance and analysis, what changed might you make to your overall
assessment plan if you were to teach this unit again? Why would you make these changes?

Honestly, it was extremely difficult to try to fit this mini-unit performance assessment
into a two-day window, although I know many teachers face the same time crunch obstacles on
a daily basis. In an ideal world, I would give students another day to develop and compose their
narratives, because some of them work more slowly than others and I think they felt rushed to
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finish. In terms of the summative assessment overall, I and the kids really liked the prompt and
the structure of the assignments. Almost every single one of them ended up writing a story that
they were excited about. I think, though, that some of our slower writers needed more support
for how to develop the story itself, even with the t-shirt diagram exercise. I’d love to help them
gain confidence in their writing so that they’re not so hesitant about the process. I think I’d
incorporate some free-writing and non-stop writing to encourage this non-judgmental
approach.

Section 3: Personal Reflection & Next Steps

A. Successes: What were the most successful aspects of this experience? What factors contributed
to this success?

Boy, what an experience. Three mini-units later and I think this one went fairly well. The
best part of my mini-unit was the t-shirt activity and the first mini-lesson. I know that I still need
to work on how I deliver mini-lessons, but I think my enthusiasm came through and the kids
were really excited about the prospect of their project stories. I also heard from multiple
teachers that their kids were excited by the t-shirt activity and that it helped them solidify and
clarify their stories in a short amount of time. I also gained confidence in myself as someone
who’s capable of creating lessons that will work for multiple teachers and a variety of kids.

B. Challenges: What were the most challenging aspects of this experience? What factors
contributed to these challenges, and how were you able to overcome them?

This will come as no surprise, but my school context presented an enormous challenge,
since my mini-unit simply did not work well with our PBL model and constantly-changing
curriculum. It took a lot of communication and lost hours on my part to find something that
worked and I was enormously frustrated that it was so difficult to tailor my project to my own
context. I know I learned plenty about persistence by sticking it out, but I’d rather have used
those hours to learn other things. I found ways to overcome these issues with extra effort,
coordination, flexibility, and doggedness, and it turned out alright in the end.

C. Self-awareness: What have you learned about yourself as a teacher through this experience?
What are your strengths as a teacher, and what are areas in which you need to continue to grow
and improve?

I’ve learned that I don’t like to be a burden to my team or disruptive in terms of what
the kids are used to, even though this program sometimes necessitates that they accommodate
my needs. I also learned that I need to hone my ability to do direct instruction and mini-lessons
in an engaging way with kids, and work on giving quality feedback in the moment. So far, I know
that my greatest strength is connecting with kids and making them feel like they should have
high expectations for themselves, and being adaptable as needed. I’d love to grow toward
becoming a “warm demander,” learning how to show kids I care about them while retaining
high standards for them.
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D. Next Steps: After completing this experience, what will you change/and or do differently moving
forward, specifically as you move into your spring internship experience? What specific
resources might support you as you make these changes?

In the future, I’m going to prepare more activities for the kids to do during and after
mini-lessons. I’m also going to try ask my colleagues/teammates, Curry Coach, and professors
for advice on how to create resources that support students on the extreme ends of the learning
spectrum, since it’s easier to plan for the majority of students than those who need more
challenge or more scaffolding (aka differentiation). I’ve also now learned that I need to advocate
for myself in this program to make sure that I communicate what is actually going to work in my
context so that frustration is lessened for both me and my professors. I know there have never
been any student teachers at CPCS before, so it’s my responsibility to communicate CPCS’
expectations and my own in order to try to find a way to meet Curry objectives.