How PBL Lessons Work as Formative Assessments

Project Based Learning (PBL) is not an idea. It's a process placing the focus of instruction on content rather than on test taking skills. New assessments and ways of measuring effective instruction, teaching, and education are needed, but standardized tests are here to stay---so why not use a type of instruction proven to be effective, and adapt standards criteria to the instruction rather than adapt the instruction to the test? When PBL lessons are aligned to academic standards, they improve lower-level skills as assessed on standardized tests and bump students into the higher-level thinking that is missing in typical teach-to-the-test criteria.

Project Based Learning lessons are structured like formative assessments. The assessments are formed according to the content taught within each lesson, and by default, the effectiveness of the PBL lesson is also assessed. If students are successful on the project outcomes, the process and progress within the lesson is working. The lesson then provides data to inform instruction and helps form a rationale for the specific changes needed.

Formative assessments of student progress within a PBL lesson can be informal observations, holistic rubric assessments, and formal evaluative documented types like status-of-the-class monitoring, and checklists and formal tests. The final assessment in a PBL lesson is the final outcome as assessed using a set of questions similar to these:

• What is produced, solved or created? 
• Is it effective? Is it beneficial? Has the problem been solved?
• What processes were taken to lead to student success?
• How well do the students measure up to standards?
• What evidence shows student learning?

In developing these PBL lessons / formative assessments, some backward planning, creating and/or gathering of similar assessments, and criteria for expected outcomes is required. Of course, standards alignment criteria needs to be analyzed assuring skill requirements are covered.

Formative assessments can be done within the PBL instructional processes of lessons saving time and money by utilizing school-site assessment teams to evaluate the effectiveness of it all. By doing this, instruction can be better differentiated to meet student academic needs at a particular school. What it takes to make it work are organizational structures that allow PBL to happen, budgets specific to funding the materials needed, and administrative personnel at the national, state and local level who have flexible mindsets and believe in the expertise of teachers. It also takes a set of positive, forward-thinking teachers who love inquiry rather than following programmed pacing guides that guarantee instruction only gets differentiated  at the lowest level.

Project Based Learning (PBL) as formative assessment works well at a school district level, but formative assessments in general often fail at the national level because of the high cost involved in hiring professionals to score them, the time it takes away from instruction to administer them, and the slow turnaround in getting the results in time for the teacher to make productive use of them. The results then become an over-priced stack of paperwork showing only that an assessment has been made.

If formative assessments are part of the instructional design, then less time is taken away from instruction, results are quick, and money is saved. Money spent on standardizing formative assessments can be put toward authentic assessment types at the school site level, monitored by school districts who report findings to state departments of education, who then report results nationally. PBL is the perfect vehicle for this type of assessment. It's good teaching with built-in assessments that prepare students and provide rapid results on all levels. At a minimum, it enables the spending of funds on the study of instruction that actually works rather than on developing more testing materials that lower expectations.

National education policymakers want an expedient, efficient way to evaluate learning. They look only at results. So let the policymakers have their tests that measure lower-level thinking. Leave the formative assessments to the educators.

Formative assessments measure higher-level thinking. When they become part of the instructional design, they help improve learning because the educational focus is based on actual student need.

Project Based Learning is an instructional model that covers both content and assessment at the same time for all levels of learning. Results from this type of instruction show academic growth in higher-level content knowledge as well as improvement in standardized test scores.

For materials to use to get started, visit Kate Parker's TeachersPayTeachers website for Project Based Learning units. These units are filled with lessons designed to educate students and assess learning.

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Recommended Reading:

Edutopia -"Put to The Test: Confronting Concerns About Project-Based Learning"
Andrew K. Miller "PBL and Standardized Tests? It Can Work!"

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Illustrations:

1. No-Work Spanish
2. IMGArcade
3. Business2Community

Use This 3-part Process to Improve Reading Comprehension

These six proven reading comprehension strategies from Strategies That Work, Mosaic of Thought and Reading with Meaning, work well when taught explicitly to students.  

The Six Reading Comprehension Strategies

1. Making Connections
2. Questioning
3. Visualizing
4. Inferring
5. Determining Importance
6. Synthesizing

When practiced and applied to reading all types of content, students internalize what they read and begin to read better on their own. Teaching these strategies is especially important for young readers, for struggling readers and for ESL students. They also enable critical thinking and help all students understand on a deeper level what they read.

But what about those students who do read well and are looking for a way to comprehend large chunks of information in a short period of time?

Try using these reading strategies within this 3-step process. The process works well when trying to remember historical figures and the significance of their contributions throughout history.

THE PROCESS

1. Read the character’s name.

• Read it out loud. Sound it out if you need to. Look for phonetic markings next to the name in parenthesis, in footnotes, or in indices. 
• Make a connection. Ask yourself if you have ever heard a name like this. What sounds familiar? What makes this name different than anything you have heard? 
• Question the origin of the name. Is the name a family name? Look for prefixes such as Mac or van or von; and suffixes such as son. Is this name from a royal family? Look for roman numeral indicators such as IV and XII that suggest lineage. Does the name indicate a warrior type? Look for descriptors such as The Lion-hearted and The Impaler following the first name.

2. Read what the character does.

• Question the significance of the actions. What affect do they have on others, on countries, on changing the course of history? Determine the importance of the actions. How did the actions help or hurt others, countries, and the course of history? 
• Make inferences about how opposite actions may have changed others, countries and the course of history. 
• Make connections. Think about what you see in society today that may be similar to the actions of this character or how your own behavior has been affected by these actions.

3. Imagine the character doing it.

• Envision what the character actually does. Imagine him/her leading a charge into battle, taking a stand against injustice with a sit-in or a boycott, and visualize character interactions who followed these characters or fought against them. 
• Use your five senses to smell the sweat of the horses, hear the galloping on the fields and the clanking of swords, firing of guns and cannons, and the agony of  injury; smell the fires burning, feel the fire hose spraying water, hear the hateful shouts and terrified screams; or feel the exaltation of group consensus and the thrill of victory, or hear the applause of recognition and the rallying cries for freedom. 
• Make connections. What have you seen, read about or been a part of similar to some of the actions taken by these characters. 
• What is the significance of these actions on the world today? Reenact these actions in your mind step-by-step. What could have been done differently? Better? Why are these actions important to know about today?

Following this 3-step process holds knowledge in short-term memory long enough to use the six reading strategies to plug the information into long-term memory. The process will help students learn a lot of information fast, but it will also help develop a deeper understanding and appreciation for the relevance of how historical characters and events have shaped societies and world events.

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Adapt this process to fit with the Project Based Learning (PBL) unit from GoTeachGo, Comic-con; A New Series of Comics for the Sunday Funnies. In this unit, students apply what they learn in literature about characters and their actions and generate their interpretations within a comic strip structure. The unit can be adapted, however, to include historical characters as well, covering the nonfiction requirement of ELA Common Core State Standards. 

This PBL unit, like all those from GoTeachGo, can be purchased on TeachersPayTeachers.

Be sure to visit Kate's TeachersPayTeachers site for lots of great PBL units.

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Recommended Reading:

Comprehension Strategies
Kids Discover - Historical Figures
Reading and Memory

Strategies That Work, Mosaic of Thought and Reading with Meaning

Illustration credit: St. Joan of Arc School

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8 Useful Links That Make Formative Assessment Easy

An interesting discussion is happening on LinkedIn. Pablo Garcia, entrepreneur, engineer and educator, starts the topic with this question: Formative Assesment: Why don't we all use it?

One answer is another question: Don't all teachers use it?

Another answer: Most teachers do use formative assessments on a daily basis, but some may not know to call them formative because the jargon of education swaps out synonymous terms every 7 to 10 years.

A solution: Project Based Learning (PBL) structures provide for lessons that enable teachers to observe student learning while they are in the process of learning. This is formative assessment.

In the LinkedIn discussion, Pablo asserts that "one learns largely through observing behaviours on the fly." Formative assessment helps teachers monitor the effects of their instruction on student learning in a similar way through observations and documentation. It provides rapid results to inform instruction, and teachers can alter techniques to fit student needs the next day instead of waiting for data analysis from the prior school year.

It's real-time assessment of instructional effectiveness and academic achievement, and Project Based Learning is the perfect structure for its implementation.

Pablo also shares an important formative assessment of his own: "When I look at what teachers actually spend time doing, I also see far too much time spent in analysing and reporting." Often teachers get pulled out of the classroom to do just that --- analyze and report. It's part of the test climate. In the classroom, however, formative assessments go on all the time. It's a matter of using running records, or formalizing the process a little more --- formal in the sense of having checklists, rubrics or student work that shows evidence of learning, and documentation that relates. Not every time, of course, but at least once or twice per lesson such as pre- and post-lesson assessments with notes on the process.

It is the issue of time in planning, and it is unbelievably disconcerting how much teachers are taken away from planning and class time to go over information that correlates with what they already know.

There is a misconception that formative assessments have to be formal and paperwork intensive. Formative assessment relies a lot on intuition, and teachers need the time in teaching ---  in the classroom --- to enable the observation process to work well. If teachers are to use more formative type assessments, they need more leeway from local and national education leaders, more curricular options that enable the implementation, and more time-saving ways to document formative assessments. Project Based Learning provides for ongoing formative assessments both formal and informal, and the structure itself is a formative assessment process.

PBL Units from GoTeachGo

Visit TeachersPayTeachers where GoTeachGo offers comprehensive PBL units. All these units provide time-saving materials and assessments for each lesson, and each lesson supports the unit objective as a whole.

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Here are some other great places to find ideas for formative assessments.

1. Project Based Learning Units (PBL) from GoTeachGo
2. 54 Different Examples of Formative Assessments
3. 103 Formative Assessments
4. Examples of Formative Assessments - West Virginia Department of Education
5. A Sampling of Formative Types of Assessments
6. Reading A-Z: Running Records and Benchmark Books
7. Teacher Vision - Printable Running Records Forms
8. Running Record Images and Links

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Recommended Reading:

Curriculum Mapping and Real-time Assessment

Assessment of Instruction - University of Texas

Summative and Formative Assesment - Indiana University, Bloomington

Illustration credit: Scholastic

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6 Common ESL Grammar Errors Conquered by Project Based Learning

Many activities help ESL students learn English, but collaboration helps bridge conversational learning with academic content. Project Based Learning (PBL) enables collaboration by requiring students to engage in partner and group structures that promote total participation and enable opportunities for differentiated instruction.

In PBL lessons and units, ESL students move more quickly toward academic language acquisition because the conversation moves from the school grounds into the classroom with instruction that promotes the inquiry process

• questioning and investigating, 
• comparing and interpreting information, 
• and reporting findings

where students work in partners and groups. How these pairings and groupings are structured depends on the number of ESL students in a classroom and their English language acquisition levels. Keep the following list of grammar problems in mind when structuring your PBL lessons and units.

6 Common ESL Grammar Errors

Some native English students struggle with these grammar concepts, but all ESL students struggle with them. It takes a long time in repetition and practice to overcome these errors, so the more options available for practice and usage, the better. This is why collaboration is so important. The understanding of these grammar concepts may be learned, but usage and practice is limited unless English is also spoken at home.

The following list of six errors also includes examples taken from "Editing Line-by-Line", a chapter written by Cynthia Linville, California State University, Sacramento, for the book ESL Writers: A Guide for Writing Center Tutors.

Use this list as a reference to plan your own PBL lessons and/or units.

1. Subject-verb Agreement - subject doesn't agree with verb in person or in number

• He walk every day.
• Ever teenager knows how to choose clothes that flatters her figure.

2. Verb-tense - incorrect time marker used

• I was working on my paper since 6:00 a.m.
• Even though this is my first day on the job, I have already found there were some different people here.

3. Verb-form - verbs incorrectly formed

• I will driven to the airport next week.
• I was cook dinner last night when you called.

4. Singular and plural errors - confusion about nouns that are countable and ones that aren't.

• I have turned in all my homework this week.
• I set up six more desk for the afternoon.

5. Word-form - wrong part of speech chosen

• I'm happy to live in a democracy country.
• I feel very confusing this morning.

6. Sentence structure errors - Many things---verb left out; extra word added; word order incomplete; clauses that don't belong together are punctuated as one sentence

• As a result of lack of moral values being taught by parents and the reemphasis by school many children have little respect for authority.

Check out the Critical Thinking Unit from GoTeachGo. 

Add grammar practice to the lessons in this unit. These lessons provide a perfect vehicle for grammar practice in pairs, groups and the student reflection journal sections. Students have options to discuss and share concepts individually, in pairs, within groups and for the whole class as well.

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Recommended Reading
 The Attitudes of Secondary Students Towards Learning English through Project Based Learning. 

Visit Kate's TeachersPayTeachers site for lots of great PBL units.

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The High Art of a Successful Project-based Learning (PBL) Unit

Project-based Learning (PBL) is a journey into cognitive awareness that produces results. If you're looking for successful PBL units to use in your classroom, look to Kate Parker, CFO of GoTeachGo. Her PBL units on TeachersPayTeachers cover everything needed to facilitate successful PBL instruction and engage students.

This week's blog examines the outline of one of Kate's PBL units:

Drawing the Line: Global Theme Park Design.

This unit, as with all of Kate's PBL units from GoTeachGo, begins with an explanation of what PBL is and what it is not.

As Kate says:

"Our Goal is Simple: Be the Bridge"

It's best to let Kate do the talking on this one:

"Project-based Learning (PBL) is an approach that challenges students to learn through engagement in a real problem. It is a format that simultaneously develops both strategies and disciplinary knowledge bases and skills. It places students in the active role of problem-solvers confronted with an ill-structured situation that simulates the kind of problems they are likely to face in real life situations.

Many teachers want to introduce special projects or group assignments that will engage students and motivate them to take practical steps in applying knowledge. Unfortunately, many problem based learning units require too much of the teacher's time in preparation and management. Other times, project-based units are incomplete, unfocused or uninspiring.  The soft skills, like critical thinking, are neglected---thus rendering the unit to the category of project centered, which is not project--‐based learning."

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Kate's units put students into problem-solving situations that inspire them. She also incorporates critical thinking skills for students to use while solving the problems, and offers in each unit a well-outlined, well-designed format for teachers to use.

Her PBL units are time savers, student engagers and adaptable to instructional needs. One of the many great things about Kate's PBL units is the amount of research done. She has already found resources such as videos, photos and print sources for reference, and she has created poster displays, handouts and forms necessary for collecting data, assessing progress and evaluating outcomes. Kate's research, references and resources save teachers enormous amounts of time so they can spend more time engaged with students.

All of Kate's units provide integrated curriculum structures. In the unit Drawing the Line: Global Theme Park Design, the skills emphasized are "math, visual arts, geography, social studies, strategic planning, strong collaboration skills, critical thinking skills, critical thinking and problem-solving elements." Every lesson begins with a review of the critical thinking skills used for learning, the critical thinking skill used the day before, and an introduction or reminder of the critical thinking skill that will be used during the current day's lesson.

Included also in Kate's PBL units are team building lessons for instruction and review. Her units are so comprehensive they consistently receive high rankings on TeachersPayTeachers, and the feed back she gets is stellar.

Anatomy of  Drawing the Line: Global Theme Park Design

This is a typical look of the table of contents in one of Kate's PBL units:

Here is just one page of resources Kate provides in this unit, and all of her units include page after page of useful tools.

Here is an example of a data gathering handout from the unit.

And here is an example titled "Team Presentation Rubric".

Kate's units are so intensely comprehensive that each one could be taught for an entire school year. The great thing about her units is their adaptability to different instructional needs, and teachers will have a deal of time trying to find Project-based Learning units as well put together as Kate's PBL units. She has spent time preparing for teachers a means to help them educate students for the 21st century. Thank you Kate!

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               Visit Kate's TeachersPayTeachers site and take a look at her work. 

She has truly brought the writing of PBL units to a high art.
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7 Propaganda Techniques All Students Should Learn

Use this whole class lesson to help students learn how they are targets of advertisers. Get your students into the language of advertising and build an understanding of the propaganda techniques used to influence them to do things, feel things, and believe things that may or may not be good for them.

Start with inquiry and class discussion for a critical analysis of the propaganda techniques used in the advertisements below. Use these as daily mini-lessons or teach them over the course of a couple of days. Let the questions guide each discussion, alter the questions to fit your instructional needs or come up with questions of your own.

The key is to help students begin an awareness of and ability to identify how their outlook on life is related to the advertisements they see.

Step 1: Whole Class Instruction - Analyzing Advertisements for Propaganda Techniques  

1. Glittering Generalities
Words of praise for product or person; nice words like goodness or patriotism

• Who is the target audience/market? What evidence suggests this? 
• What word(s) identifies this advertisement as an example of Glittering Generalities?
• How does the layout of the advertisement emphasize the propaganda technique?
• How do the font styles, colors, subtext, background colors, props and photography techniques emphasize the propaganda technique?
• Is this advertisement effective? Why? Why not? 
• What other observations do you have about the way this propaganda technique is used in this advertisement?

2. Name Calling

Trash-talking another product or person

• Who is the target audience? What evidence suggests this? 
• What is the fight?
• No language is used, but what in the illustration shows rivalry?
• Examine the objects in the illustration. What other observations do you have that indicate this as an example of Name Calling propaganda?

3. Testimonial

A famous person recommends a product or a political endorsement

• Who is the target audience? What evidence suggests this? 
• Who is the famous person?
• How does the endorsement by this person make the product seem like it is worth the purchase?
• Examine font styles, colors, and page layout. What do they suggest about the product, and how do they strengthen the power of the testimonial?
• What other observations do you have about the way Testimonial propaganda is used in this advertisement?

4.  Plain Folks

Appeals to regular people and their values such as family and patriotism

• Who is the target audience? What evidence suggests this? 
• What is this advertising suggesting will happen if regular people eat Subway?
• How does this advertisement appeal to regular people?
• Why does the use of this regular guy appeal to regular people?
• Notice the only word used is the company logo. How and/or why is this effective?
• What comparison is shown that supports the usefulness of the product?
• What other observations do you have about the way Plain Folks propaganda is used in this advertisement?

5.  Bandwagon

An appeal to be part of the group

• Who is the target audience? What evidence suggests this? 
• What is this advertisement suggesting as an important reason to eat this cereal?
• Examine font styles, colors, language and page layout. What do they suggest about the product, and how do they strengthen the power of the Bandwagon technique?
• What other observations do you have about the way Bandwagon propaganda is used in this advertisement?

6. Transfer
An appeal that helps a person imagine themselves as part of a picture

• Who is the target audience? What evidence suggests this? 
• What is this advertisement suggesting about the president?
• How does the layout and background create an image for America and/or the president?
• What is the tone of this image? Positive? Negative? How can you tell?
• What other observations do you have about the way Transfer propaganda is used in this advertisement?

7.  Card-stacking

Manipulating information to make a product appear better than it is often by unfair comparison or omitting facts

• Who is the target audience? What evidence suggests this? 
• What in this advertisement suggests the product is good and/or that facts may be omitted?
• Examine font styles, colors, and page layout. What do they suggest about the product, and how do they strengthen the power of the card-stacking technique?
• Notice the adjectives used in the description. How does word choice affect the idea that smoking is a great thing?
• What other observations do you have about the way Card-stacking propaganda is used in this advertisement?

Step 2: Group Project - Analyzing Advertisements for Propaganda Techniques  

From Web Quest - Propaganda Techniques

"Use magazine ads to locate an example of each propaganda technique. In cooperative groups, create a collage about the propaganda techniques. Identify the techniques used in the ads."

Step 3: Begin Unit of Study

From GoTeachGo: Selling Out The Kids - A Graphic Novel Expose' on the Advertising Industry

GoTeachGo offers 3 grade level ranges for this unit of study.

• 4-5
• 6-8
• 9-12

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Be sure to visit TeachersPayTeachers to examine lots of great PBL units of study from GoTeachGo.

RECOMMENDED READING 
Credits and Illustrations

• Web Quest – Propaganda Techniques
• Bandwagon 
• Testimonial
• Glittering Generalities
• Name Calling
• Plain Folks
• Card Stacking
• Transfer

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Improve Student Writing with This One Super Revision Strategy

English teachers begin their instruction of writing by either teaching or reviewing the writing process.

English teachers also know that the revision stage of the writing process is the hardest one for students to learn. It's the critical-thinking part of the stage. It's the stage that requires the most work, and it's the stage that takes the most time.

It's also the stage where the rigor happens.

Students sometimes become frustrated with the intensity of the revision process, but their main frustration comes from not having concrete strategies to use when doing the revisions themselves.  

The 4 Rs of Revision

Once students reach the revision stage of the writing process, they need to learn that this stage has its own process, too.

• Re-visit
• Re-read
• Re-vision
• Repeat

When they revise what they write, they re-visit their work, they re-read what they have written, and they read for a purpose. Then they can re-vision how they might change, add, delete, restructure, and/or re-write sections to better communicate what they mean.

---and then they repeat the process. 

Students also need to understand the distinction between the revision and the editing process as well. Revision is for content and purpose. Editing is more for checking the conventions of the language---spelling, punctuation, capitalization, grammar. Of course students also need to understand that the writing process is not a step-by-step process---that writers often go back and forth between the steps, completing some in at the same time.

When students begin learning how to revise their work, try this strategy. It works well for most genres of writing including expository and informational writing, narrative writing, and persuasive writing.

Three-in-One Revision Strategy

This revision strategy gets students revising their work right away. The foundation of the three-in-one strategy starts with the read aloud. When students read their work out loud, so many things pop out to them as awkward, extraneous, missing, or incorrect. The key to success is reading to a partner, or a peer writer, or anyone willing to listen. For instructional purposes, this partner activity teaches students to revise well, and teaches partners to focus their listening by asking questions that require detailed answers. Your students will enjoy learning this strategy because it makes idea development tangible, and it teaches them how to improve their writing themselves.

1, 2. 3 Revision Strategy

1.  Read Aloud to Partner / Partner Asks Questions: Writers read their stories, essays or reports out loud to partners. When writers finish, partners ask three questions about what they may not understand, what they want to know more about, and/or what they have questions about in general. No one writes anything in this step.

2.  Writer/Partner Discussion: As partners ask questions, writers list and number these questions 1, 2, 3 at the bottom of their papers. Then writers and partners discuss answers to the questions. Writers don't answer questions in written form. They discuss with their partners possible answers. Students can write the answers as they discuss the questions, but this section is to get students verbalizing what they mean or meant to say.

3.  Writer Re-read: Writers then re-read their work to find where within their document they might piece answers to the questions asked. Students don't write the answers, though. They place numbers in the area where they might add information, and then
re-write their work inserting the information that corresponds to the question. 

Repeat this process for each revision.

For the repeat process you can require students to  insert similes, vivid verbs, compound sentences, or anything else that corresponds to the writer's craft you want to teach in the assignment. Make sure to have students insert no more than two craft items, and when partners read for a second, third and/or fourth time, they can focus their listening on finding evidence of the craft.

The strategy itself can be revised to fit your instructional focus.

Use this strategy for short or long writing assignments and/or within Project-Based Learning (PBL) units of study. Try it with the writing projects in the PBL unit
Publish or Perish - Deadlines and Designs from GoTeachGo. Throughout the unit, students learn the writing, editing, proofreading and publishing processes involved in creating a magazine---and then they create one.

They also strengthen their abilities to examine and understand different points of view while researching and writing about varied topics. The 1, 2, 3 Revision Strategy is the perfect strategy to facilitate discussion and develop informative written presentations from varied points of view.


Students enjoy the process, and they learn how to improve their writing themselves.

So why not give it a try?

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Be sure to visit TeachersPayTeachers to examine lots of great PBL units of study from GoTeachGo.

RECOMMENDED READING:
Reading Rockets
Best Practices in Teaching Writing
Teaching Meaningful Revision:  Developing and Deepening Students' Writing

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Try This Back-to-School New School Twist on an Old School Question

Back to school. 

It's that time of year and students, parents, and merchants are getting ready.

And so are you.

What you do on your opening day sets the tone for your entire school year, and there are plenty of ideas for how to start.

Whether you are a first year teacher, or a veteran educator, using a first-day 
ice breaker helps students ease into your class procedures and expectations,
and helps them get comfortable within the new social setting.

It also provides you with insight into the personalities and mindsets of your students.

Typical Ice Breaker Structures

Most ice breaker activities use one of these structures.

1.      paper and pencil find-the-person-who questionnaires.

2.      anticipatory sets to get students thinking about content

3.      intriguing examinations of topics from different perspectives

Some of the best ice breakers combine all three elements into one activity. 

Try this one:

This question only requires a simple recall of events.

--- What did you do during your summer vacation?

Ask the question this way to encourage inquiry.

--- Guess what I the (teacher) did during my summer break?

Try this activity, and you will have students making inferences, drawing 
conclusions, and supporting them with evidence --- and writing something --- on the first day.

Follow it with the second activity and gather information for the Project Based 
Learning (PBL) Unit Have Passport, Will Travel, written by Kate Parker,
CFO of GoTeachGo.

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Think and take Mini-Lesson #9  

Can you guess what the teacher did this summer?

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Content Objective: Assessment for Informational Writing and Paragraph Structure 

• Use of Transitions
• Use of Evidence to Support Assertions
• Clarity and Coherency of Content
• Evidence of Closure

Critical Thinking Skills Focus:

• Look For Evidence and Drawing Conclusion
• Making Connections

Total Time Approximations: 

15 minutes – Mini-lesson
20-25 minutes – Partner activity

Materials: 

1. Gather Props that indicate things you did on your summer break

• plants for gardening
• pictures of family who visited
• reunions 
• trip souvenirs
• T-shirt w/logo
• anything else that represents what you did during your break.

2. One roll of small carnival tickets 
    – alternate numbering 1, 2 on the backs.
3. Some kind of overhead display option, whiteboard
4. Two Critical Thinking Question Sets; one per activity (See lesson activities below for sets)

Typical First-Day Question with A Twist: Guess what I did this summer?

Before students enter your classroom, display 
the following set of directions on the board in
front of the class:

1. Choose a seat, put your things down, and take 
out 1 sheet of lined notebook paper.
2. Put your name on the paper.
3. Title the assignment: 

What my teacher did this summer.

Procedural Suggestions

1.      As students enter your classroom, smile and welcome them, hand them a small raffle ticket, and invite them to choose a seat.

2.     Once all students are in the classroom, observe who noticed the directions written on the board, who is actually following them, and who is busy socializing. This gives you a quick insight into how to structure your lessons for individual classes. 

3.     Settle them in, introduce yourself, take attendance, and go over your behavioral expectations, and daily and weekly routines and expectations. Tell students that every day there will be a short lesson (some call them bell-ringers) and that they will be expected to complete the lesson each day. Let them know your procedure for collecting and grading the assignment. 

4.      Let students know that they will complete the first activity of the day by themselves, and you will collect it because it helps you understand how to help them when you know how they think as  individuals. Tell them the second activity will be done in partners, and for the partner activity, they will need their tickets. 

Watch to see who fumbles about trying to find the ticket. 

5.      When the fumbling stops, check for the raffle tickets by asking students to hold them up so you can see how many still have them. This will also give you some first-day insight into the organizational skills of your students. Give out more to those who have misplaced them. Tell them to hang on to the tickets for the second activity. 

6.      Allow for a few more minutes to set up for the mini-lesson for those students too social to notice the directions on the board. Walk around and observe, and help where needed. They should all have or be in the process of getting the paper set up with their name and the title on the page. Some may have even started to make a list of what they think you did over the summer. That’s okay. It’s another authentic assessment that shows which students are able to make inferences and are ready to get to work.

Mini-lesson Activity

1.     Once everyone has their papers set up, tell the students they will be using the critical thinking skills of looking for evidence and making connections using their own experiences to draw conclusions that lead them to smart, intelligent answers.

2.      Show students the items you brought to use as clues to what you did during your summer break, and show them one item at a time. Have students write the name of each as you show them. After you have shown all the objects, have students answer the following questions in paragraph form based on what they see in all 3 objects. 

This activity will assess your students’ paragraph writing abilities and understanding of transitions in paragraph writing, so it is recommended that you don’t frame the paragraph for this activity.

3.     Display the main question on the board, and include these questions to be covered in the paragraph as part of the display, like so:

Main Question:  Can you guess what I did during my summer break?

• What are the objects? List all three before you draw your conclusions.
• From looking at the objects, what do you think I did during my summer break?
• What evidence from or about the objects suggests that I participated in this activity?
• What connections did you make to your own experiences that helped you draw this conclusion? 
• Use sensory clues to help you describe your ideas: smell, sound, sight, taste, touch
• Were you right?

4.     Let students share their findings with the class. When the sharing stops, tell them how you spent your break as it connects with the items. Ask for a show of hands to see who got it right.

Lesson Extension Activity – Partners – Two Lies and One Truth

1.     For the partner activity, tell students to turn their papers over and write two lies and one truth about what they did during their summer break. Let them know that they will be trying to fool their partners, so they want to be clever in the clues they write.  

2.     Then have them look at the number on the back of their tickets. If they have a  #1, they find someone who has a  # 2, and if a #2, find someone who has a #1. They may need to move about, so instruct them to take their papers, pencils, and tickets with them if they move.

3.     Once everyone is partnered up, instruct students to turn their papers over, and write their partner’s first and last name on the back.

4.      Next, students read their two lies and one truth to their partners, and their partners try to guess from the list which is true. Students then write about what they found to be true by answering the following question in paragraph form.

What is your partner’s clue?

• Based on this clue, what do you think your partner did during his/her summer break?
• What evidence from the clue helped you decide?
• What connections did you make to your own experiences that helped you draw this conclusion?
• Use sensory clues to describe your ideas: smell, sound, sight, taste, touch
• Were you right?

5.    Once both partners complete the activity, have them trade papers, read what their partners wrote, discuss, make adjustments, and ask them if there was anything else they would like to have done. Prompt them to discuss places they would like to visit and make lists of them on their papers. This information will help you when planning for the PBL unit --- Have Passport, Will Travel.

6.   Students then introduce their partners to the class and describe one thing their partners did during the summer.

7.   They may read from their paragraphs.

Set-up for PBL Unit  -   Have Passport, Will Travel

1. Finally---Show them the Essential Question for the PBL Unit Have Passport, Will Travel, to let them know they will be studying how to plan for travel to places they would like to see. Encourage them to discuss this question outside of class and come to class the next day with ideas to share.

Essential Question: What are the benefits of planning before you travel.

2.      Make sure to make brief notations about your observations throughout the lesson or directly after your class session.

Closing

1.     Monitor the time throughout the lesson, and end the second activity 3 to 5 minutes before the bell rings. Review with students how the critical thinking skills used helped them understand the requirements of each activity

2.      Remind them that the mini-lesson/bell ringer directions will be displayed daily, so they need to look for them each day and get started on the activity right away.

3.     Collect the tickets for the next class, and remind them to gather their things together in time for the bell. 

4.     Leave them knowing how much you enjoyed working with them and how much you look forward to seeing them all tomorrow.

5.      Have them turn in their assignment as they leave the class.

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REMEMBER:

These activities make a great introduction and way to gather information for the Project Based Learning (PBL) Unit Have Passport, Will Travel, written by Kate Parker, CFO of GoTeachGo.

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Be sure to visit TeachersPayTeachers to examine lots of great PBL units of study from GoTeachGo.

RECOMMENDED READING for Ice Breaker Ideas:
The Critical Skills Classroom
Couseling Youth With Depression 
ESL Printables 

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