Snapshot 8.4. End-of-Unit (Medium-Cycle) Assessment in Grade Seven
(cont.)During the course of the unit, with intentional and strategic scaffolding by Ms. Lambros
and considerable involvement in collaborative groups, students engage in close reading,
collaborative discussions, and analysis of the text organization, grammatical structures, and
vocabulary of persuasive texts on relevant topics. In the final part of the unit, the students
analyze the video, “The Girl Who Silenced the World for Five Minutes,” compare and contrast
persuasive techniques in the video to one of the texts they read, and produce a persuasive
text of their own. The students’ analyses of the video and written work serve as the
summative assessment for the unit. Using the students’ work, the teacher is able to make a
determination about students’ understanding of the purpose, organization, and structure of
persuasive texts and their ability to use various language resources (including vocabulary,
complex grammatical structures, connecting words and phrases) to write a coherent and
cohesive persuasive piece for a public audience.
After reviewing students’ responses, Ms. Lambros concludes that the students have
made good progress toward meeting the goals of the unit, especially in regard to their
understanding of persuasive techniques in different contexts (i.e., video and text). Examining
her EL students’ writing more closely, however, she notices that most of their writing is
characterized by spoken, everyday language. In other words, their written arguments are not
making use of connecting words and phrases (e.g., for example, therefore, consequently)
to create cohesion, nor are they using many complex sentences to connect ideas and create
relationships between them (e.g., Even though governments are taking action, it is not
happening fast enough). This analysis of her students’ writing informs Ms. Lambros’s planning
of subsequent lessons. She begins designing lessons in which she will show examples of
cohesion and complex sentences that connect ideas, model how to unpack the meaning in
the texts, collaboratively construct similar writing with the students, and provide students
with guided practice in writing related to the unit topic. She also plans to draw her students’
attention to various examples of persuasive language used in arguments and to observe
how her students incorporated them into their own writing in upcoming units. In addition,
she makes a note to address these linguistic features directly when she teaches the unit the
following year.Resources
Adapted from
Understanding Language. 2013. Instructional Unit: Persuasion Across Time and Space. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford
University.
Video: The Girl Who Silenced the World for 5 Minutes (available at a number of sites, including http://www.youtube.com).Interim or Benchmark Assessments
Interim or benchmark assessments, such as the Smarter Balanced interim assessments, are
medium-cycle and address intermediate goals on the way to meeting standards. The Smarter Balanced
assessments are aligned to the standards, and any other interim or benchmark assessment used by
districts or schools also need to be aligned to the standards. Typically administered quarterly or every
six weeks, interim assessments cover a shorter period of instruction than long-cycle assessments
and consequently give more detail about student learning. Results from interim assessments provide
periodic snapshots of student learning throughout the year. These snapshots help teachers monitor
how student learning is progressing and determine who is on track to meet the standards by the end
836 | Chapter 8 Assessment