Week 4 Term 1 - Teacher Practice: Summative Assessment 1.3 (February 19 - February 23)

OUR STORIES, OUR HISTORIES, OUR VOICES

The new curriculum refresh for NCEA Level 1 English has officially launched at Tamaki College. Our focus and theme for this year is 'Our Stories, Our Histories, Our Voices'. The theme is centered around the concept of 'our stories', 'our histories' and 'our voices' as something that we need to treasure, acknowledge, explore and celebrate. After all of the planning and drafting of our new NCEA Level 1 English course, we are excited to start our year off with the new curriculum refresh. 

The primary focus for Term 1 is 'Our Stories and Our Histories (Through Film)' with the primary text being the film 'The Dark Horse' (Napier 2014) and the assessment to flow on the text study being 1.2 - Demonstrate understanding of specific aspects of studied texts. For my Level 1 class, the plan is to start the film study of 'The Dark Horse' (watching the film and studying the film - scene analysis, character analysis and film techniques) in Week 3 to Week 7 of Term 1. 

SUMMATIVE ASSESSMENT: Summative assessment is intended to summarise student achievement at a particular time, whereas formative assessment is intended to promote further improvement of student attainment (Crooks, 2001). However, summative assessment can also be used formatively, if it provides feedback to the student, teacher (TKI)

Prior to the film study, I prioritized space and time for my students to complete a summative assessment. The summative assessment I put in place is aligned with the external assessment that the NCEA Level 1 students are going to do in Term 3. This assessment is 1.3 - Develop ideas in writing using stylistic and written conventions. For this external assessment, the students have to craft a text that is centered around a statement of intent. The text that they craft needs to be in a style that they choose from persuasive writing to formal writing or creative writing - the students must use the correct stylistic and written conventions for the style of writing that they choose to craft their text. In order for the students to understand what style they want to write, I knew that I have to provide opportunities for the students to try different styles of writing so that they know what they are going to do come Term 3.

101ENGE doing their summative assessment for 1.3

I am going to outline the summative assessment and what I did with my student's in Week 2 of Term 1 and explain my learning from this experience. 

Phase 1: Our Stories | Our Histories

Integrating local curriculum into the summative assessment

An integral part of 'Our Stories, Our Histories, Our Voices' is celebrating 'our stories' in the classroom. We have had the privilege of learning the history of our local area and in particular our iwi - Ngati Paoa. For the summative assessment I used one of the stories from our iwi and the history behind the name 'Maungarei'. We read this text and the discussion around how history, tradition and customs for Maori and Polynesian families is transferred through conversation, through song, through oratory practices. It was a great discussion following the reading of the text. 

Phase 2: Crafting a Persuasive text

Summative Assessment: Persuasive writing task

The students were given the task to craft a persuasive text using the prompts above. The word limit was 500 words and the students had to decided what their argument is, write a statement of intent and find evidence to support their statement. The students spent two sessions crafting their text. 

Student Exemplar from 101ENGE class

Phase 3: Peer feedback

101ENGE Persuasive Writing Feedback

The students spent the last session reading their persuasive texts to each other in small groups. Once they shared their text, we had a whole class discussion where the students shared their feedback to the whole class. The feedback was framed by three questions (below):  

• What did you like about their text and why?
• What was their opinion/argument?
• What sentence starter/prompt did they use well? Give an example. 

Feedback session for 1.3 summative assessment

Some the feedback from the student's: 

"I really enjoyed their piece. Their opinion really made me think about my own and where I stand with it."  

"He had researched online and used it to back his point, I like that and I felt that is something that I can do to support what I like."

"I liked how they used the prompt - I disagree - because it was strong and it showed me where their argument is at straight away, no mucking around."

"The sentence starter that she used well was - I believe - she used it throughout the piece so she kept repeating it which made me see her point."

This was a fun part of the summative assessment. The students were able to see what their friends wrote and learn from it. Sometimes we learn the most through the eyes of those closest to us, I felt that this was a meaningful and beautiful way to end our summative assessment. 

Next Steps: 

• I want to do another summative assessment with the film that we are studied in Week 3 - as the primary text. I will do another persuasive writing summative assessment so that they can give it another go!