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CHAPTER

2

Formulating a Pre- and Culminating Assessment and Establishing Criteria for Success

At this point, you likely read chapter 1, “Building a Narrative Unit Map,” and began or finished identifying what students should know, understand, and be able to do (KUDs) and established guiding questions for a narrative unit. As you continue reading this book, feel free to revise what you have recorded on your map from the exercise Unit Map—KUDs and Guiding Questions on pages 22–28 and add other components as needed. Proceeding with the backward-planning process, this chapter focuses on formulating a culminating assessment and determining the criteria to score it, plus designing a preassessment and ideas for launching the unit. There are four exercises in this chapter. I purposely placed the preassessment after the narrative writing prompt and writing checklist exercises so that you can design it with the foresight of the prompt and criteria in mind.

In this chapter you can (re)design a narrative:

1. Writing prompt

2. Writing checklist

3. Rubric

4. Preassessment

(Re)design a Narrative Writing Prompt

A prompt is a task teachers design that elicits from students the creation of a product to demonstrate what they come to know, understand, and do. For this unit, you will devise a prompt in which students apply what they have learned concerning narrative writing and perhaps subject matter content. In The Fundamentals of (Re)designing Writing Units (Glass, 2017a), I discuss curriculum-embedded and complex project performance assessments as the type of culminating project students will produce in response to a task. These assessments rely on an integration of curriculum, instruction, and assessment. They:

Not only measure learning, as is characteristic of summative assessments, but they are also designed for continuous involvement in learning through a host of meaningful assessment opportunities along a continuum of formality and intensity. Each learning experience you conduct requires students to think, produce, and build expertise to acquire many skills. (Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning and Equity [SCALE], 2015)

It is about not just the end product of the narrative they compose but also the process of working on the many steps it takes to complete it. Curriculum-embedded and complex project performance assessments immerse students throughout the duration of the unit to acquire skills that culminate in a polished product—in this case, a genre within the narrative text type.

There are innumerable possibilities for generating narrative writing tasks across content areas. In social studies, students might compose historical fiction to demonstrate understanding of a civilization, culture, or situation based on historically factual characters, settings, and events. In science, students might write a biography about a scientist who overcame obstacles to make a discovery that has worldwide implications. During language arts, students might write an original fiction or nonfiction narrative to apply what they learn about genre characteristics, elements of literature, figurative language, and targeted literary devices. Or they can change one or more aspects of a published story and rewrite it accordingly. For example, students can alter the ending, make the protagonist into an antagonist, convert a minor character into a dynamic one, redirect a significant decision, write from a different point of view, invent a new setting, or infuse literary devices like allusion, dialect, or foreshadowing.

Figure 2.1 is a template with specific examples to support you in creating and customizing a narrative prompt for your students as a culminating assessment. Feel free to deviate from the template and access it to foster ideas. Case in point—not every example provided in the figure aligns precisely to the template. As a friendly reminder, use your unit map as a guide for task design because it keeps you focused on what content, material, and skills students can prove they know and understand.

Figure 2.1: Narrative template for generating tasks and examples.

Visit go.SolutionTree.com/literacy for a free reproducible version of this figure.

Exercise: (Re)design a Narrative Writing Prompt

Design a narrative prompt and input it on the unit map that you began in the Unit Map—KUDs and Guiding Questions exercise in chapter 1 (page 22). When you devise a writing checklist in the next exercise, you’ll place this prompt at the top of it to make students aware of their assignment. To design a narrative prompt, consider the following.

• To fashion an original prompt from scratch or revise one you already have, use the narrative template ideas and examples in figure 2.1 (pages 30–31) as a resource.

• Search for prompts that align to your unit from the SCALE (www.performanceassessmentresourcebank.org/bin/performance-tasks) resource bank for performance assessments across content areas. Although argumentation and informational or explanatory assessments dominate the site, peruse the various tasks to find those for a narrative. Feel free to edit what you find to align to your unit goals and match learners’ needs. Also, consider converting an argument or informational prompt to a narrative. For example, read this “Spreads Like (Exponential) Wildfire” (SCALE, n.d.) prompt on the SCALE website:

For this task, students will create and solve a problem that addresses a situation involving exponential growth or decay. Students imagine that the school’s math department is conducting a math competition. The problems that they create are intended for that competition. The topic must be able to be modeled by an exponential function. (Examples include rumors, infections, wildfires, and so on.) Their final solutions should include graphs, charts, and other mathematical work supporting the solution.

You might rewrite this original task so students demonstrate understanding of the mathematical concept of exponential growth or decay by writing a story.

(Re)design a Narrative Writing Checklist

Students can use a checklist as a guide when they write to be sure they fulfill an assignment’s requirements. The Fundamentals of (Re)designing Writing Units (Glass, 2017a) covers the function, rationale, and suggestions for using a checklist in more detail. In this section, I provide information, examples, and an exercise (page 37) for you to revise or design a narrative student writing checklist. Additionally, I include an activity that you can conduct early in the unit to prepare students for using the checklist as an effective instructional tool.

Figure 2.2 features a generic narrative writing checklist. It covers five categories: (1) general, (2) story elements and literary devices, (3) description, (4) sentence structure and transitions, and (5) grammar, conventions, and format. Each category contains items or indicators describing narrative writing requirements. In the figure, I have combined certain subheadings within the categories (for example, sentence structure and transitions) because I consider some of the grouped elements intrinsically linked. You can organize categories differently or use alternative ones to those in the figure. Whichever way you choose, work in concert with colleagues to ensure consistency so that students in your school or district see and learn the same or similar terminology and indicators for writing. In the exercise at the end of this section, I share several possible categories as a tool to use when working on your checklist.

As options, you might also add or replace any of the categories and indicators in the checklist in figure 2.2 with any of the following.

• Organization:

• My story follows a plotline and logical sequence.

• My story is well developed.

• My memoir is logically sequenced with a beginning, middle, and end.

• I clear up questions readers might have or reveal the significance of the event on my life.

Figure 2.2: Student narrative writing checklist.

Visit go.SolutionTree.com/literacy for a free reproducible version of this figure.

• Content:

• I show I am knowledgeable about _______ (historical time period, text, biography subject, era, or othe=r).

• In my biography, I demonstrate understanding of the obstacles my subject faced and how he or she overcame them.

• In my _______ (biography, historical fiction, or other), I write factually about characters (or individuals), settings, and events using multiple credible resources that I reference in a works cited document.

• In my myth, I reflect the culture of the _______ civilization.

• Word choice and description:

• I use precise nouns and domain-specific vocabulary, as appropriate.

• I avoid repetition and vague language. I use lively verbs and precise nouns and adjectives.

• I use synonyms to add variety and avoid redundancy.

• I avoid forms of the verb to be (for example, is, are, was, were). Instead, I use action verbs.

• In my memoir (or personal narrative), I use descriptive detail and figurative language to vividly explain how the episode (or situation, event, or memory) impacted my life.

• My dialogue is natural and intentional to enhance the plot.

• Grammar and conventions: I edit my writing to ensure proper—

• Word usage

• Sentence syntax

• Paragraph usage

• Pronoun-antecedent agreement (for example, “Everyone brought his or her book to class.”)

• Ellipses usage

• Active versus passive voice (for example, “The helpful child washed dishes” instead of “The dishes were washed by the helpful child.”)

• Conventions for dialogue punctuation

The excerpt for a mystery writing task in figure 2.3 shows a checklist example that addresses skills specific to a genre.

Figure 2.3: Mystery checklist excerpt.

After students write their narratives, they can create a PowerPoint, Prezi, or Keynote and present it to the class or read their stories aloud. Either way, they can include something stylistic or visual—for example, a prop or costume—and employ speaking techniques—voice modulation, inflection, tempo, enunciation, and eye contact.

When students share their narratives, ask the audience to critique the presentation using a checklist like the one in figure 2.4, which can promote active listening and engagement. It can also serve as an instrument to guide students as they prepare for their presentations.

Figure 2.4: Narrative audience critique.

Visit go.SolutionTree.com/literacy for a free reproducible version of this figure.

The writing checklist can serve as an instructional tool to set expectations and the purpose for learning; therefore, it is critical to introduce it effectively so students own it. However, help them become aware of what narrative elements of the genre entail before you introduce the checklist so they are familiar with the terminology. Conduct two activities that serve this purpose—one that familiarizes students with the characteristics of the genre and narrative writing in general and another that orients them to the expectations for what they will eventually write.

First, I’ll focus on a lesson you can conduct to present or review the characteristic elements of a specific narrative genre. To implement this activity, find and use differentiated writing models (also known as mentor texts) that give students a clear sense of what the genre entails, as this conveys your expectations for student writing. Later in the unit, you can return to these examples within a lesson to target specific skills, plus juxtapose strong with weak examples for instructional purposes. You can lead this preliminary activity early in the unit by following these five steps.

What the teacher does:

1. Arrange students into small groups differentiated homogeneously by reading levels.

2. Find and distribute at least two exemplary narrative writing samples for the genre students will write that are appropriately challenging to each group. See the Student Writing Models section in appendix E (page 152) and go.SolutionTree.com/literacy to access live links to these and other resources in this book.

What students do:

3. Each group reads both writing samples and makes a list of common characteristics that the samples share. (You may elect to tell them both are samples from a specific narrative genre, or allow them to determine it for themselves based on this activity.)

4. Groups report their lists to the whole class as you record these commonalities.

5. Students review the class-generated list and identify common elements among the samples. Make sure to name the genre if students have not already identified it.

At the end of the exercise, students should be familiar with the genre and what it entails. Explain that they will engage in many learning experiences to highlight these elements and support them in creating this type of writing piece. Next, orient them to the details of the writing assignment by following the ten-step roundtable activity that figure 2.5 details.

Figure 2.5: Orienting students to a writing checklist.

Visit go.SolutionTree.com/literacy for a free reproducible version of this figure.

Exercise: (Re)design a Student Narrative Writing Checklist

In this activity, I invite you to work on a student writing checklist. You may (1) create one from scratch, (2) revise an existing one of your own, or (3) download mine and use it as is or adapt it. To locate my checklist, visit go.SolutionTree.com/literacy. The following points can guide you in this exercise; feel free to work collaboratively (in person or virtually) or individually. Once you complete your checklist, you can adapt or create an accompanying scoring rubric (or vice versa), which I detail in the next section.

• Review content standards and the KUDs on your narrative unit template that you crafted as the result of the Unit Map—KUDs and Guiding Questions exercise (page 22) in chapter 1. The checklist should reflect these learning outcomes.

• Include the writing task at the top of the checklist along with a reminder to use it as a tool while writing. Refer to (Re)design a Narrative Writing Prompt earlier in this chapter for examples on this point.

• Write items (or indicators) on the checklist in first-person point of view and with present-tense verbs since students use it to guide them during the writing process. Also, write in language accessible to your students.

• Consider excluding obvious line items that your students have mastered. You might include some generic ones as reminders; others will be specific to the genre and assignment students will complete.

• Concentrate on what you expect to actually see in the paper rather than strategies students use while composing. For example, avoid this kind of statement: I use print and digital resources to check that my spelling is correct. Instead, enter on the checklist the evidence of application, such as, I spell all words correctly.

• Generally keep line items brief unless you feel examples are necessary. Students can refer to resources or handouts if they need a reminder about what something means. For example, include this item—I write using different types of sentence structure—rather than something more involved like, I write using various sentence structures, such as simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex.

• Organize related line items under categories for easy readability such as these options for narrative writing. Combine those that make sense as shown in some areas in figure 2.2 (page 33).

• General

• Development of ideas (or idea development)

• Content

• Context

• Focus

• Incident significance

• Genre characteristics

• Story elements

• Narrative techniques

• Literary devices

• Organization

• Organizational structure (or text structure)

• Description

• Figurative language

• Word choice

• Language and style

• Tone and style

• Vocabulary

• Sentence structure

• Transitions

• Grammar usage

• Conventions

• Format

(Re)design a Narrative Rubric

Like checklists, analytic rubrics can serve as effective instructional tools, but they also function as scoring mechanisms. Rubrics include the following three components.

1. Scoring criteria: These are specific elements to assess—such as point of view, central conflict, dialogue, and so forth—grouped under overarching categories, like Story Elements and Literary Devices. Each element includes a brief overview of the skills associated with it—for example, this under Suspense and Climax: “Build tension through well-crafted suspense; present the climax to show the turning point.”

2. Criteria descriptors: Each scoring criterion includes descriptions along a continuum of quality to indicate performance at different levels.

3. Levels of performance: Levels—represented by numbers, words (for example, advanced, proficient, partially proficient, and novice), or a combination of both—indicate how well students have performed. Four- or five-point rubrics are common; however, some use three-and six-point scales.

Checklists and rubrics are valuable albeit different instruments that students and teachers use. Refer to The Fundamentals of (Re)designing Writing Units (Glass, 2017a) for more information about function, rationale, and suggestions for using a checklist, and also a thorough explanation and instructional suggestions for using rubrics, how to differentiate between analytic versus holistic rubrics, ways to write descriptors for levels of performance, and more.

In figure 2.6 (pages 39–43), I present a complete narrative rubric as an example. The end of this section includes an exercise you can use to devise a narrative rubric for your unit, or adapt the one I share. Like the checklist, my featured rubric reflects characteristic elements for a generic narrative, so you will not find genre-specific items. To arrive at a single score using the rubric, see figure 2.7 (page 43) for information on determining mode and median.

Figure 2.6: Narrative writing rubric.

Visit go.SolutionTree.com/literacy for a free reproducible version of this figure.

Figure 2.7: Process to determine median and mode.

Exercise: (Re)design a Narrative Writing Rubric

Design (or revise) a rubric to assess the narrative genre students will write making sure it aligns to the checklist. Visit go.SolutionTree.com/literacy to download and alter the rubric in figure 2.6 (pages 39–43), revise one you already have, or create a rubric from scratch. You might gather feedback from colleagues or create this scoring guide with them. The following is intended to guide you in this exercise; if you need more direction, consider accessing the information about rubrics in The Fundamentals of (Re)designing Writing Units (Glass, 2017a).

• Include scoring criteria and group them under categories: Write elements for the selected genre along with those for general writing that you included on the checklist because they are companion pieces. Also use the same overarching categories on both assessment instruments; for suggestions, refer to the list of category options within Exercise: (Re)design a Student Narrative Writing Checklist (pages 37–38) or the 6+1 Trait® Writing Model of Instruction and Assessment from Education Northwest (www.educationnorthwest.org/traits/traits-rubrics).