Tim Fredrick's ELA Teaching Blog

Portfolo Assessment: Reflective Utterances

In my last post, I detailed the types of non-reflective utterances my students made while presenting their portfolios to me last month. This post is all about the types of reflective utterances they made.

1. Process – Reflective Type - The student reflects on his own personal process in completing the assignment. "This is my character sketch and this was a really difficult assignment for me. I had a lot of trouble starting and thinking about what I wanted my character to be like." This differs from its non-reflective counterpart in that it discusses the student’s own process and the student reflects on the positive and negative experiences he had with the piece of writing.
2. Criterion-Based Assessment – The student compares his work to criteria discussed in      class. "I did well on my character sketch because I was able to show how my character was mean instead of telling the reader he was mean." He may or may not point to evidence in the text; being able to point to specific examples in the text that correspond to the criteria is preferred and considered more reflective.
3. Growth Over Time – The student compares two different pieces of work and shows how one is better by comparing it to a previous piece of work that was not as good. "You can see here that I did better with my freewriting because this first piece of freewriting in September I couldn't write nonstop, but in December you can see that I wrote non-stop for the entire 15 minutes."

Like I said in the last post, all students made non-reflective utterances to some degree. But, the more reflective a student was during the presentation, the more likely he made utterances that corresponded to the above.  

My next step is to develop lesson plans that I can give my students in June in preparation for their second portfolio presentation. Here lies a conundrum – I can teach them to speak more reflectively, but can I make them more reflective learners? In other words, if a student isn’t thinking about his work and what he’s learning to begin with, will he ever be able to speak reflectively? One would assume not.

If that is the case, I can help the emerging reflective learners (I’ll post later about types of reflective learners) talk more reflectively and give words to what they see in their work. But, how do I help the non-reflective learners do the thinking and reflecting in the first place. Is that something you can teach?  

The issue seems related to making students more “student-y” (a word of my own creation). When they are teenagers, can a teacher reverse the pattern of resisting learning and school? What does it take to do so? Surely there is anecdotal evidence to say that we can. I can think of a couple of students who’ve turned it round and became more student-y. But, I have more stories of students who never did that. What conditions have to occur for it to happen and what obstacles are in place against those who never make that transition?

Will a student ever learn to be more reflective when he doesn’t care about school or learning? It seems like a prerequisite. Or, perhaps helping students to do more reflective thinking about their work will help them care more about school and learning.  Perhaps the problem is that they are so detached from any kind of learning that occurs in the class that it’s no surprise they don’t care.  Maybe teaching students to be more reflective and look at their learning can help the resistant students be more engaged in what’s going on.

Portfolio Assessment: Non-Reflective Utterances

This year my action research for Teachers Network Leadership Institute revolves around helping my students become more reflective about their work. My goal is for them to learn how to look at their work and see their own learning and progress.

One way that I’m trying to help my students do this kind of work is through portfolio assessment. Since NYC high schools are run on a semester basis, my students completed portfolios in January and presented them to me in one-on-one conferences. I digitally recorded all of their conferences and analyzed the recordings in order to see what I could learn.

I learned that there is a definite divide between students who can do this reflective thinking and those students who cannot. The divide doesn’t always exist oe the same continuum as grades, though. I found many “high achieving” students unable to speak reflectively about their work; I found many “underachieving” students very much aware of what they were learning and not learning.

After listening to their conferences (over 20 hours worth), I was able to classify their comments about their work into types of non-reflective and reflective utterances. In this post, I will discuss the non-reflective; in the next post, I will share the reflective utterances.

Types of Non-Reflective Utterances Made During Portfolio Presentations

1. Naming – The student gives the "title" of a piece of work. "This is my character sketch. (Turns the page.) This is my freewriting." Naming could appear alone or could be part of another utterance. Students often named work and then had other comments to make about it. If that is the case, then the other comment determines the reflectiveness of the utterance. Much of the time, though, students just named the work and this is non-reflective.
2. Summarizing – The student explains what the assignment is about, but does not mention about what he learned. "This is my character sketch. We made up a character and wrote a story about him."
3. Process – Non-Reflective Type – The student explains the steps of assignment. "This is my character sketch. First, we brainstormed on what kind of character we wanted to      write. Then, we made up a whole bunch of facts about him like his birthday and his favorite color. Then we decided on the important traits about our character..." This is closely related to summarizing, but differs in that the student explains the steps of the assignment as if he were giving directions on how to complete it.
4. Teacher-Centered Assessment - Student cites that he learned something from the work because the teacher marked it as such. "I learned a lot from this piece of work and you can tell because you gave me a good grade."

These non-reflective utterances appeared in all the students’ presentations to some degree. Often, they appear when the student lacks the language to talk about the work. In an attempt to say something about a piece of work when they don’t know what they learned from it, students will use one of these types of utterances.

Students who were very adept at talking reflectively about their work, though, used these utterances sparingly and were able to talk reflectively at length about most of their work. But, many students made solely non-reflective utterances about their work. There were several like this and it was difficult to ascertain whether or not they never thought about what they could learn from doing the work or whether they just couldn’t talk about it. There were a couple from whom I really got the impression that they completed the assignments and never once considered what it was they were supposed to gain from it. They did the work simply to get it done and moved on. Even when questioned further about their work – questions meant to lead them to be more reflective – they looked blankly at me and repeated the same non-reflective utterance or perhaps made another non-reflective utterance. 

This makes me wonder if I can really teach students to be more reflective of their work or just speakmore reflectively.

UPDATE:  See the follow up post about Reflective Utterances ...

 

Why students should self-assess

This year in my MetLife Fellowship at Teachers Network Leadership Institute, I'm researching how I can help my students do more self-assessment and become more reflective learners.  I've already discussed what reflection is, and to be honest I'm still struggling with coming up with a definition that pleases me.

I know a big part of it is self-assessment.  Students need to be able to look at their own work and say what is good about it and what needs improvement.  They should do this because this is what real readers and writers do.  Too often, my students complete work but don't think about what they did.  They aren't worried about quality, just completeness.  When writing an essay, they rarely look it over and think about what they did.  They don't see that as their job.  But, as "real" writers, we do that all the time.  We identify parts that we are very proud of and revise parts that we aren't too convinced are good. 

Self-assessment also helps teachers see the invisible process of reading and writing.  We can see the end product, but that doesn't always give us the total picture.  Talking with students about their work and how they went about completing it can give us valuable information about where there might be problems and where our work is successful. 

Doing this work is also activating higher order thinking skills as they will need to take a step back from their work and truly evaluate its effectiveness.  Not only is this sparking deeper critical thought, it also gives students ownership of their work.  When the teacher is the sole assesser, the work becomes a joint effort: the student completes the work, the teacher tells the student what to change, and the student changes it.  What I'm finding is that when I read a student's essay, I see something that I would like to see changed, but the student also has questions and things they aren't sure of.  Who's to say that I'm always "right"?

Students are very reluctant to do this self-assessment, though.  Too much in the past, they have done work and the teacher has been the sole assesser.  They don't see it as their job to think critically about their own work.  Yet, it is.  We won't always be there to assess them.  Yes, it is important for us to assess student work - I'm not saying that we shouldn't.  But, we ALSO need to teach students to assess their own work and own it.  This is a skill that needs to be taught and sometime we need to put our assessments on the back burner and let the students follow their own assessments.

Improving my use of portfolio assessment

This year, as a MetLife Fellow in the Teachers Network Leadership Institute, I'm researching ways that I can improve my use of portfolio assessment in my 9th grade ELA classroom.  Over the summer, during the NYC Writing Project Summer Invitational, I created a document that helped me think through what was wrong with how I was doing portfolios before and how I could make them better.  Download portfolio_assessment_planning_document.pdf

I've begun doing the literature review for the study and find it mind-boggling.  There is so much out there on portfolio assessment and the success of these different methods depends so much on the preparation and the working style of the teacher.  There is a lot of paper to work with and when you have students like mine, who can barely manage to bring a working pen to class, keeping a semester's worth of work is not easy.  I've had to purchase folders for them, keep the folders in the classroom, and handback work once a week telling them to put the work in the folders.  And, I still find folders that have nothing inside of them, even though I distinctly remember giving work to the folders' owners.  Overall, though, I feel like portfolios will be better this year than they were in previous years because I'm focussing on it.  This despite the fact that my students are not inherently organized or reflective.

I read an article published in the January 1997 issue of NCTE's English Journal about process portfolios versus product portfolios.  The article was called "Portfolios-The Story Behind the Story" by Sheryl L. Mondock.  One thing from this article that I took away was that I should have my students look at the portfolios throughout the semester and reflect upon the work that is already in there.  My original plan was just to have them look at the end of the semester, but I like the idea of having them think about how they are doing right now.  Since we are nearing the end of the marking period, it is a great time to do so.  I'm going to have them do it, though, at the beginning of the second marking period and have it be a looking-forward-and-goal-setting exercise. 

Here are some questions I may ask them:
1.  What have you been doing well so far this semester?
2.  What has been your most significant change in your reading and writing skills so far?
3.  What else do you think you need to change in your reading and writing skills?
4.  Are you satisfied with your work so far this semester? Why/why not?
5.  What is one piece in your portfolio right now that you are particularly proud of and why?

Some of the vocabulary in my questions I took from the Mondock article - "significant change," "satisfied," and "proud" are all words she uses with her students.  The article really is thought-provoking and if you subscribe to the English Journal you should be able to search for it on the NCTE web site and read it in pdf format.

How do other ELA teachers (or other content teachers, for that matter) do portfolios?  What reflection questions do you use to help your students think about their learning?  Comments are very welcome.

TNLI and Research on Helping Adolescent Boys Be Engaged in the ELA Classroom

Today was the first meeting of the 2005-2006 MetLife Fellows in the Teachers Network Leadership Institute.  This is my second year as a MetLife Fellow.  Each year, this group of classroom teachers conducts action research in their classrooms.

Last year, my research was on how I could help the adolescent boys in my class be engaged at the same levels of their female counterparts.  I'm hoping to have this paper (Download boysandchoice.pdf ) published in a journal in the near future.  I will be presenting the research at the 2005 National Council of Teachers of English conference in Pittsburgh PA. 

What I found was that boys do read and write outside of the ELA classroom and these literacy activities are centered around their own personal interests.  The literacy activities that happen in the typical ELA classroom do not interest boys and are typically centered around literacies and interests that are viewed as feminine.  I wanted to find a way to engage both girls and boys in my class, but that would mean engaging 25-30 different interests.  How do you incorporate so many outside interests?  Choice!  Including choice in reading and writing activities can give all students the opportunities to utilize their outside of school interests in the ELA classroom.  Read my paper for more information.