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Reflection About Assessment Experience (Post-Assessment)
By and large, I would say that our unit was successful. We covered the material very well
(especially considering the time that we had available and the intricacy of teaching compound and
complex sentences – and differentiating them) and the students were as engaged as we could have
expected. Teaching sentence structure can be incredibly dry for students, particularly at this age and
stage. To begin the school year with a unit that was largely comprised of “rules” and required a great
deal of lecture/explanation (and very little “fun”) was challenging.
Each time we were able to provide students with an interactive and hands-on activity, their
interest was apparent. For example, one of our foundational lessons was on complete subjects and
predicates. We were teaching the students about independent clauses and attempting to reinforce the
fact that independent clauses require both a subject and a predicate – that they are clauses which can
stand on their own as complete sentences.
We handed out index cards to students and had one half of the class write down a descriptive
subject. The other half wrote down a descriptive predicate. For example, a student writing a descriptive
subject might write down something like “The fat brown and purple platypus,” while a student creating
a descriptive predicate could say “galloped wildly over the rooftops.” We then paired each subject-
writing-student with a predicate-writing-student and had them write their complete sentence on the
board to be shared with the class. This was a fun and engaging lesson that helped build a foundation for
teaching compound and complex sentences.
Ultimately, we felt pressed for time and we had to assess the students a day or two before they
were ready to be tested (this was a result of a scheduled cross-town meeting). As expected, the scores
were not as consistently high as we would have liked. However, we did find that the students generally
improved their sentence-combining skills. Their understanding of proper nouns and capitalization
increased over the course of the unit, and they were largely able to identify and create compound
sentences. Complex sentences were introduced, but students did not appear to be at the point of
mastery.
During the cross-town meeting about the unit, all teachers agreed that there were issues with
the assessments. For example, some of the instructions weren’t clear, which led to confusion about
exactly what skill was being tested (i.e., understanding directions, following instructions, or the ability to
craft a compound sentence). Additionally, some of the content in the test questions was distracting and
may not have been appropriate and/or engaging for a 6th grade level (several sentences contained
information that 6th graders would not be familiar with – in both the pre-test and post-test).
Fortunately, the cross-town meeting doubled as an editing and revising session. The pre-test
and post-test were improved for use next year. We also discussed the skills that students still needed to
work on and planned to integrate mini-lessons throughout subsequent units during the school year. The
un-edited post-test is below (taken by the same student who took the pre-test).
The unit was moderately successful, but in the future, more appropriate assessments should be
used (both pre- and post- ) and there should be sufficient time devoted to teaching, modeling, and
practice. Students should be given adequate instruction and the ability to complete exercises in order to
promote mastery of the concepts.