The Learning Context
Pupils, a boy and a girl of 8 years old, are studying in a secondary school, in the same class. The girl lives in a completely prosperous family, that is, in a family with an average income. The boy lives with an incomplete, mother and older brother but a prosperous middle-class family. The living conditions of both students are good. Both families are interested in the child’s successful development, follow the teacher’s recommendations on education and training issues, and attend classroom and school-wide events.
Pupils have the same developmental experience at school, having successfully formed the first necessary learning skills. Students can listen and perform verbal tasks, plan their activities, exercise self-control, and apply new knowledge. Students do not have special needs that could slow down the learning process. Motivation for learning is still developing, so it is necessary to change learning approaches to motivate children.
Assessment Purpose
In 2nd grade, the child gains more reading experience by practicing their skills in more complex and comprehensive ways. Students can retell what happened in the story and identify the main ideas and details about characters, settings, and events. Developing reading skills also implies independent work with materials and their interpretation. According to the Common Core State Standards (2022), the student must process the information in the text purposefully and with understanding. Students are expected to demonstrate class-relevant information processing skills to demonstrate knowledge of the main ideas (Next Generation Science Standards, 2022). Students should be able to form and answer basic research questions (who, what, where, when, why (5 W’s), and how) ((C3), 2022). Students should learn to design sound research to consider possible answers to the questions posed to understand and interpret the text ((C3), 2022). The lesson also includes representative support to facilitate understanding and stimulate productive discussions for core idea fluency (Principles and Standards, 2022). Each of the above points is essential in determining the purpose of assessing the instruction chosen for teaching.
Clear Learning Targets
The teacher may read an extract from the book focusing on one of the elements of the standard, such as the furnishings. As a suggestion, the teacher may not show illustrations in the text. After familiarizing themselves with the text, the students use the graphic template to write the beginning, middle, and end of the story’s plot. They may illustrate parts of the book that should contain characters and settings. Students can ask questions (5 W’s and How) necessary to determine the piece’s central theme.
Based on the questions asked, students can retell the story, include important details, and identify the text’s central theme. Students understand the character and their motivations and will develop a deeper meaning. They may define and convey the story’s main message, lesson, or moral and may also describe the characters’ reactions to events in the story. Students react to what they hear by creating a drawing or sketch. Students are encouraged to focus on unfamiliar concepts and try to share them in an illustration. After completion, students explain to classmates what their illustrations mean.
High-Quality Assessment
While completing the task, students can master and practice specific skills in working with texts. The evaluation of the results will include knowledge and understanding of the content, that is, how well the student learned what was read or heard. The questions that the student will ask during the task (5 W’s and How) will expand the thinking process and make it easier to find a solution to the problem. After the student analyzes the reading and completes the story map, the teacher will be able to evaluate their performance skills as the students will be asked to tell a story based on their drawing. It will also allow assessing the aptitude of product development (story map). The task evaluates the skill of understanding the main content of the original text, determining the main ideas and main facts, and guessing the meaning of unfamiliar words from the context.
Task and Assessment and Describe the Experience
The lesson aims to read and understand the text “The Ugly Duckling” through analysis based on research questions. After reading the text, students will be asked to create a story map. It is a reading strategy that teaches students to monitor their understanding of materials by reflecting on specific questions as they read. Students are encouraged to find answers in the reading material and write them down in a story map template, a document that shows the main points of the beginning, middle, and end of a story.
The lesson’s purpose is to teach students to understand important details and answer questions based on what they have read. The purpose of the story map is to help practice retelling the story’s plot, including the main ideas, details about the characters, setting, and events. The teacher observes the students during the task to see if they understand and cope with the text. Lesson objectives and learning standards will give grading. Thanks to the image that the students will present and their retelling based on the story map, the teacher will be able to assess how well the students understood the text’s content and how well they were able to answer research questions.
Effective Communication of the Result
The first student provided a rather colorful drawing (Figure 1); it can be seen that the main emphasis was placed on the background. The student demonstrated the main plot by correctly highlighting the beginning, middle, and end of the story. However, it was difficult for the student to identify the story’s main characters since there are episodic characters on the map that are still important for the story. Nevertheless, the student could convey the story’s content well, and even with a detailed examination, one can understand the text being discussed.
The second student emphasized in their map that the protagonist differed from his family (Figure 2). It is seen in the first two figures, but both show only the story’s first part, the beginning. Thus, the student could not identify the plot’s main points. The student needs to work on asking questions (5 W’s and How) and finding answers to them to understand the studied text better. However, the student correctly interpreted the story, highlighting that the main character was not like everyone else.
Motivation
Since the reading lesson involved creating a map of the story they read, the children were more inspired to complete the task. The students were interested that a regular reading lesson combines a creative approach. In addition, when retelling the work, the student could use their risk as a support, which allowed them to respond without much fear. The children wanted to demonstrate their results and look at the work of other students, so during the lesson, it was possible to keep the students motivated.
Although the students believed they could complete the task, as is clear from the evaluation of the results, each one emphasized what was necessary for oneself. That is, students could determine the text’s general theme (the difference between the main character and others). However, the definition of the story’s main points (beginning, middle, and end) caused difficulty. Students were also able to evaluate themselves by presenting other students’ work and comparing it with their own. In general, the chosen teaching method proved successful and allowed to keep the students’ interest to motivate them to master the necessary skills.
References
(C3) College, career, and Civic Life framework for Social Studies State Standards. Social Studies. (2022). Web.
Common Core State Standards. Common core state standards. (2022). Web.
Next Generation Science Standards. NGSS@NSTA. (2022). Web.
Principles and Standards. NCTM. (2022). Web.