I will start with a summary of what students in Pennsylvania should be able to do by the end of their sixth grade year:
- Summarize texts
- Determine authors' points of view and examine their claims
- Understand structure, inferences, story arcs
- Learn how to acquire new vocabulary
- Understand informational texts
- Compare literary experiences (written stories vs. performed dramas vs. spoken word)
- Read independently at grade level
- Write informative texts and reporting on research projects
- Write with an awareness of stylistic aspects of composition and conventions of language
- Write to state and support an opinion in a formal style
- Write narrative texts using a variety of narrative techniques
- Edit work for additional clarity and higher quality texts
- Use technology to collaborate and communicate without using plagiarism
- Present and listen appropriately in formal speaking situations
In order to teach every student at his or her level, I plan to pre-assess students throughout the first few weeks of sixth grade.
If I know where the students are, I can better understand how to bring them to the "finish line" with these standards, and, furthermore, I will have a better understanding of which students will require differentiation throughout our program.
There are several existing pre-assessments that I could use to ascertain students' general grammatical and vocabulary abilities. For example, School on Wheels developed a sixth grade pre- and post-assessment that covers the basics quite well.
Excerpts from their pre-assessment include questions based on textual evidence such as:
8. What is Elijah’s main problem in the story? {Be Able to Read and Comprehend Grade Appropriate Texts | CCSS RL.5.10, RL.5.2, RL.5.4} a. The key his mother needs is old and rusty. b. He is angry because his mother made him leave the city. c. His mother no longer talks to him. d. He does not want to come home when his mother calls him.
Other examples are questions that test a student's ability to infer unit from contextual clues, such as:
14. What does the word "elaborate" mean in the sentence below? {Determine Meaning of a Word Meaning through Sentence Context | CCSS L.6.4.A & R.I.6.4} The teacher asked Russel to elaborate on his reasoning because she thinks it’s vague and unclear. a. Expand b. Complicated c. Fancy d. Simple
In addition to this type of basic pre-assessment, I would want to perform deeper tests to ascertain my students' current ability to work toward these standards.
Rather than bombarding students with multiple hour-long tests at the beginning of the year, I would plan to execute these pre-assessments as a series of entrance tickets, and small assignments in the first few weeks of school. I would pluck through the standards listed above and give small bites of a larger pre-assessment as the students enter the classroom throughout September.
The tasks within this pre-assessment will map to the above-listed standards. These are my suggested pre-assessments for this purpose:
- Students will read a news story from that morning's newspaper, and summarize it in three to five sentences
- Students will read two opposing editorials regarding a high-interest topic (such as later start times in schools) then summarize each author's point of view.
- Students will create a story "map" of a well-known fairy tale.
- Students will make a Venn diagram of written stories, performed dramas, and spoken word presentations.
- Students will list the last two books they read "for fun" and then explain how much they enjoy reading in general. (They will be presented with a rainbow, and they can choose how they currently feel about reading for fun. Red means "I can't live without reading," and Purple means "I only read when I absolutely have to.")
- Students will write a quick "how to" about a topic of their choice, such as "how to get ready for a hockey game" or "how to take the bus to my Grandma's house."
- Students will read a passage and highlight the parts that are grammatically incorrect and/or poorly supported by evidence
- After reading several letters to the editor in the local newspaper, students will spend 10-15 minutes sharing their opinion on a topic that is important to them.
- Students will be asked to edit a tragically terrible paragraph, such as this paragraph provided by K12 Reader.
- Students will be asked to collaborate with one classmate on a silly, short limerick, and share it with the class. (This is in order to test their ability to connect with classmates on an application such as Google Docs, and to collaborate in the most basic way.)
- Students will write and perform a brief opinion-based speech about their favorite animal. They will have just five minutes to silently research the animal before giving a two-minute presentation. This is a miniature test of their ability to perform in a speaking situation.
For the purposes of this discussion, I will focus in on the "tragically terrible paragraph" pre-assessment, and how the results of that pre-assessment will guide my teaching throughout our unit focused on the revision and editing process.
Assuming I have a class of 22 students, I will prepare for 5 students who have already mastered the sixth grade standard for editing, and are ready for a bigger challenge. I will prepare for 12 students who are approaching the standard, and are ready for sixth-grade level teaching on the subject, and I will furthermore prepare for 5 students who are well below the standard, and may have limited knowledge of the topic.
As a group, we will discuss revision as the process of making a written work better, and editing, the process of making a written work right. We will review what we problems we look for when we revise, and what results we look for when we edit.
We will then break into three groups, with different assignment, all working toward meeting the same standard.
Plan for Advanced Students
These students have caught every error and correctly edited it in the pre-assessment. Some of these students have even found additional errors or suggested unexpected revisions. These students will be challenged to revise and edit on an entirely new, unexpected level. Specifically, they will be challenged to take the first chapter of a book they know well, such as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, and revise it. What could have been done to improve this famous work of fiction?
These students will be able to understand that revision and editing is a process that can continue, even when a piece seems "perfect." There are multiple ways to present information, and they can dig straight into this tough piece -- at first by printing out the words and cutting the paragraphs into pieces, then by re-placing them in the text.
Plan for At-Grade-Level Students
These students will approach a few additional "tragically terrible texts" provided by the teacher, and use highlighters to identify additional edits and revisions that the author could make in order to improve the piece. They will be broken into "jigsaw" groups, and asked to look for very specific problem areas in small groups, such as lack of details, repetition, unnecessary verbiage, misspellings, grammatical issues, and finally, the order of the paragraphs. Could they find ways to rearrange the paragraphs themselves for better effect? They will, like the advanced group, eventually use scissors and glue to rearrange a fictional work for best effect.
Plan for Below-Grade-Level Students
These students will start with sentences at first -- they will compare two similar sentences, and choose which one is the best presentation of the text. They will be challenged to determine why one sentence is better than the other one. They will then compare paragraphs -- they will discuss which is the better constructed paragraph, and why?
Then this group will start with a tragically terrible short paragraph, and look for the same kind of errors they found in the inferior sentences. They will be tasked with finding a certain number of errors. After they have discovered all of the errors, they will each work individually to re-write the paragraph with the edits in place.
The larger revisions will be done as a group, from the same text that the At-Grade-Level. They will do popcorn reading and work together to manipulate the text, with the assistance of a teacher at a SmartBoard, to find the best fit for all the "puzzle pieces."
All 22 students should be able to meet or exceed the standard by the end of the lesson, which may stretch one or two class periods. This lesson will be done early in the school year, as the skills to revise and edit will come in handy throughout their sixth grade English Language Arts adventures.
The assembly of these groups may vary from day-to-day, based on how they perform on pre-tests. For example, a student who was working with the Advanced Group in the above lesson may be Below-Grade in the opinion-based speech lesson. Therefore, these groups will remain fluid throughout the year, and it may be in some cases that members of the three groups will be deliberately mixed in group projects, so they can mentor and learn from one another throughout the year.
If I'm doing my job right, their sixth grade year in English Language Arts will be an ever-changing adventure!
References
6th Grade Pre- and Post-Assessment. (u.d.) Retrieved from https://www.schoolonwheels.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/6th-Grade-ELA.pdf
Alber, R. (2016, February 22) 4 Strategies for Teaching Students How to Revise. Retrieved from https://www.edutopia.org/blog/4-strategies-teaching-kids-how-revise-rebecca-alber
Editing and Proofing a Paragraph (u.d.) Retrieved from http://www.k12reader.com/worksheet/editing-and-proofing-a-paragraph/view/
Pennsylvania Department of Education. (2014 March 1) Academic Standards for English Language Arts: Grades 6-12. Retrieved from http://static.pdesas.org/content/documents/PA%20Core%20Standards%20ELA%206-12%20March%202014.pdf
Image of students working in a group retrieved from http://www.evidencebasedteaching.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/group-work.jpg
Image of students reading a newspaper retrieved from http://www.startschoolnow.org/wp-content/uploads/campus-newspaper.jpg
Image of the "Revise vs. Edit" chart retrieved from https://i.pinimg.com/736x/95/85/09/958509ee4691642a7c0a80a3fc25f864--writing-tips-creative-writing.jpg
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