BCTELA

After 26 years at UBC, Joe Belanger's best-before date expired and he was off the shelf. Sidelined but not silenced, here he confesses his Achilles' Heel and dispenses avuncular advice.

(Click here to download this article in PDF.)

In 1965, the Commission on English concluded that the teaching of English was not a profession but a predicament. In many ways, particularly evaluating students' compositions, not much has changed in almost a half century. During my 40-year teaching career, ninety-five of every hundred problems have resulted from trying to quantify the performance of human beings. Usually even the students who received the top grades on an assignment felt somehow slighted. In composition evaluation - that most subjective realm - I think I did a reasonably good job of classifying students' papers into "good," "better," "best" - like the old Eaton's catalogue - but when it came to adding plusses and minuses to these grades (as Hazlitt might say, a refinement of malice), or worse, used numbers from 0 to 100, I was asking for trouble. Of course, there is a good deal more to teaching English than grading students' written work, most of it delightful, but this task can be overpowering both because it has an insatiable appetite for time and because it creates barriers between students and teachers.

Four decades of tinkering, researching, reading, consulting experts, observing students and martyrdom left me with memories of a lot of bright ideas that did not meet their promise and an extensive list of grading practices I would try to avoid in the future. That said, I think there are five general problems in assessment that that would benefit from our attention:

 

1. Time Management in a Black Hole
2. The [Al]mighty Grade
3. Teaching Standard English Usage: The Error Trap
4. Attending to Students' Feelings
5. Engaging Students in Reading and Discussing Our Comments

 

1. Time Management in a Black Hole

The major festering sore in the teaching of English is the amount of time English teachers devote to responding to students' written work. Oh, yes, it is tacitly acknowledged that the loads of English teachers are far above average, but the caveat is added that all teachers respond to students' work in one way or another and all come up with grades for report cards. Teachers who do not mark a lot of essays contribute to the school in other ways such as supervising sports, music or drama or sponsoring clubs or graduation. Still, insights into the English teacher's plight come from some odd quarters. In a recent play at the Jericho Arts Centre the teacher pointed out to the parent that it took her twenty minutes to respond to each grade twelve student's English paper. This is only ten hours for a class of thirty, but she had five classes, so she had to find 50 hours each time she assigned a paper, and that was on top of preparing and teaching and supervising the yearbook.

This is not news: We have a long history of trying to deal with the time problem. In the mid-60's, the Conant Report recommended that the maximum load for teachers of English be four classes, that each class be limited to 24 students, and that each teacher of English have one additional "marking" period in his or her timetable. An Edmonton school board which had three university professors from the humanities as members implemented many of these recommendations. Unfortunately, not long after these board members retired, a budget shortfall took away the English teachers' marking periods and increased class sizes. Some British Columbia school districts hired markers to support teachers of English, but budget crunches devoured these, too.

Unfortunately, what's lacking is strong evidence that (a) English teachers are devoting significantly more time to their jobs than other teachers are and (b) providing English teachers with additional time to respond to students' written work would result in better student writing. Perhaps the paucity of such studies results from the fact that they would be very difficult to design and implement; perhaps it's just that we don't want to risk finding out that we are not quite so exploited as we think we are.

Neil Béchervaise contends that this talk of equitable workloads is just a red herring which distracts us from our real task, devising ways to arrive at fair assessments of students' written work which help students to learn. I have not been able to convince myself that he is more than half right.

 

2. The [Al]mighty Grade

Friends tell me that putting a grade on a paper is easy: once they have read through a paper, the grade it warrants jumps right out. That has not been my experience, and indeed I challenge these friends to prove their prowess by conducting a couple of little experiments suggested by Diederich (1974). First, photocopy a set of student papers early in the year, replace the names with random numbers and regrade the papers after four or five months. If you carry out this experiment and discover you have assigned similar grades to eighty percent of the papers, don't grow hoarse singing your praises: that's about the percentage research would predict. Instead, try to figure out what went wrong on the twenty percent in which the two evaluations are a letter grade or more apart. Alternatively, trade stacks of photocopies with a trusted colleague and assign letter grades to the papers. If you assign exactly the same letter grade to each composition, you will have made history and should write books on the subject.

As part of a team of researchers (Belanger, Allingham, and Sloan, 2003, hereafter "think aloud"), I sat with individual secondary school English students and recorded their responses to papers their teachers had evaluated.2 As might have been predicted, all but one student flipped to the back of the paper to see the grade first, but the big surprise in the study was the way that the grade acted as a barrier to further reflection. Many students who received the grades they thought they deserved simply did not read any further. As one grade-twelve boy reported "Since I got it right, there is no point in reading the comments." Even the top grades did not lead the students to read anything more than the sentence or two of praise at the end. The grade-twelve girl who received the highest grade in her class (46 out of 50) lamented that "I would have liked 48 or 49 a lot better." On the other hand, students who received low or failing grades were generally agitated and did not read the comments either. Instead, they focused on ways to convince the teacher to let them rewrite the paper for a higher grade. When asked how she would handle her failing grade in the classroom, one student said "I would just sit and sulk."

As suggested above, assigning a fair and accurate grade to a piece of writing is no simple task. The first issue is reliability: What is the paper's true value? Would a colleague in your school give it a similar grade? Would someone in a different district give it a similar grade? It turns out that individual assessments of students' compositions are not very reliable. Research suggests that one grade in five may be in error one letter grade or more. Diederich, French, and Carlton's (1961) classic study asked 60 raters (30 professors, 10 lawyers, 10 journalists, 10 businessmen) to arrange 300 university-student essays in nine piles according to merit. (Imagine volunteering for this job!) The results were chaotic. Over one-third of the papers received all nine grades; no paper received fewer than five different grades. Work I did in 1978 with two trained and calibrated raters produced similar results. Diederich argues that team grading procedures - the types used on large scale evaluations - should be used at the ends of terms to establish reliable grades on students' written work. (See Belanger (1985) for a rationale, procedures, and examples.)

The second issue is validity. Are we measuring what we say we are? If the paper is written in response to literature, for example, which part of the grade is based on the subject matter - insights into the literature - and which is based on the writing itself? Can you separate the two? Researchers who have assigned separate marks for content and presentation generally report that raters establish in their minds an overall grade for the paper and then fiddle the categories so that the component numbers add up to the grade they think the paper merits. At their best, the Reference Sets encourage rater training and post-grading discussions and thus come up with more valid and reliable grades. However, teachers tell me that applying the Reference Sets simply adds another task to an already overcrowded schedule.

Of course, all of this technical discussion avoids the fundamental question: Are grades necessary? worthwhile? educational? Some argue that grades provide motivation for students; others say that motivation should be intrinsic to the task rather than the product of some fanciful system of ranking and ordering. Some hold to the "next level up" theory which claims that students need records of grades so that those downstream can make decisions about hiring or admission to more exalted schooling. Others argue that in this case English teachers are simply doing the work that others should be doing. Why should high schools classify students for post secondary institutions or corporations? If these groups want to know how well students can write, let them devise measures which show this. Our job is to teach students to write, not to make it easy for universities to pigeon-hole them - and then complain that we don't do a good job of it.

Some of the most revered fields of study have abandoned letter grades in foundations courses. For example, for the past ten years most of the Faculties of Medicine in Canada have graded pass/fail in basic coursework. In education, there was a collective sigh of relief when Marilyn Chapman spearheaded a pass/fail grading system for the teacher education program at UBC. This change had an extensive evaluation component which sought the opinions of all members of this academic community at regular intervals. Evidence collected from instructors and students and the professorate in general has largely been positive. The caveat seems to be that the program must be all one way or all the other. Having some pass/fail and some graded courses turns the pass/fail courses into second-class endeavours: students know where the money is and put their effort into the graded courses. It turns out that grades in the teacher education program are not very necessary after all. In an informal study I conducted, administrators told me that they were very interested in reports on student teaching experiences but that grades in methods and foundations courses didn't predict very well classroom performance. An argument in favor of grades contended that students could use education grades to bring up their averages to be admitted to graduate school. Unfortunately for those with this on their wish-list, faculties outside of education generally do not pay too much attention to grades in teacher education programs when assessing applicants for graduate school.

It's tempting to suggest that if some university faculties can implement pass/fail grading, so can school systems, but I'm not quite that naïve.

 

3. Teaching Standard English Usage: The Error Trap

In responding to and grading student papers, we make a number of assumptions, many of them questionable at best. A major assumption is that students will learn correct usage if we point their errors out to them. Underlying this assumption is the belief that students will actually read our comments, that they will understand them, and that they will know how to avoid the errors in the next pieces of writing they do.

My favourite error quote is a bit of a mirror for me:

When I consider how many hours of my life I have spent trying to root out these errors by a method that clearly did not work, I want to kick myself. Any rat that persisted in pressing the wrong lever 10,000 times would be regarded as stupid. I must have gone on pressing it at least 20,000 times without visible effect.

(The panelist goes on to note that he gave many tests of usage which showed small improvement from year to year but that the drop-out rate more than accounted for this improvement.)

Panelist, Farrell (1970) Deciding the Future, p. 141

Alfred M. Hitchcock (the professor, not the director) advises teachers: "Don't be a ferret. Overlook many errors." He believes that many errors are just "the blunders of youth which will disappear in due time." Others argue that students assume that anything they have written which is not marked as an error is not an error. So, the logic goes, they will persist in using these erroneous constructions if they are not noted.

One of the major difficulties with noting errors on students' papers is maintaining consistency. In a study of grade-twelve papers marked by one teacher several years back, I found that the teacher would mark one example of a particular error, skip the next three or four examples of that error and then mark another. All of the papers had many notations per page, but there was no systematic effort to root out particular errors. The teacher, of course, was very conscientious - one of the leaders in the profession (Belanger 1986). Gary Sloan (1977) analyzed 2000 compositions he had inherited that had been marked by over 50 college instructors. He noted that inconsistencies in marking of individual papers were rife, especially for those who focused on mechanics. The most amusing observation, however, was that the instructors made the same errors in their comments that they were trying to root out of students' papers. It took me a long time to get into the habit of proofreading my comments.

I have also learned not to send home papers with errors which have not been noted because it gives industrious parents the opportunity to mark all of the errors I missed and send the papers to the principal or school board chair. A solution for this is a cover page for each paper which notes the editorial usage items which have been annotated. As a student teacher, Ernie Hall tried a variation of this: he bought a rubber stamp "Draft only; this paper has been marked for [fill in three or four points]" and used a green stamp pad. These items of usage students can be expected to know and use correctly on their papers. Daniels and Zemelman (1985) suggest developing a chart for each student's folder. Down the left side of this chart, items of English editorial usage are listed. Across the top is a list of the papers the student is to write during the term. Teacher and student can determine the focus for each paper and note the number of examples of each error marked on each paper.

Revising students' sentences to show them a better way of writing may not be as effective as I thought. Students in the "think aloud" study - when prompted to read their teacher's revisions - were at best lukewarm to the practice: "I suppose it's a better way of saying it," admitted one grade-twelve girl grudgingly. More often the response was resentful, "Well that's her style but it's not mine" (grade-eleven boy), or blatantly hostile: "It really picks me when someone rewrites my sentences, as if I can't write" (grade-twelve girl). When I think of the thousands of sentences I have rewritten, modeling what my teachers did but having no idea how my students might respond, I resolve to book an appointment with my psychiatrist immediately.

In the "think aloud" study, one of the most effective ways of teaching editorial usage was by a grade twelve teacher who divided editorial usage into ten categories and assigned three students to become experts in each category. Students offered their peers direct instruction and practice in these items and then became the class experts during peer editing sessions. When we examined these students' papers we found that they made fewer of the errors taught than we would generally expect and that in conversations with them they read the teacher's comments and could explain where they went wrong. Many said that as a result of this system they were much more comfortable with editorial usage.

Perhaps a key question in this is "how do we learn to grade papers?" Unfortunately, most of our models are college or university teachers who have a good deal of time, many more resources, and not a lot of students, so they are able to pounce on every error in a paper. Of course, if you have taught English long, you know the burden of responding and you have probably worked out your own system for handling the paper load. Your system works for you, at least marginally, and it gives you a good feeling having done your part. Addressing such questions as are your practices effective? and how could you make them better? It takes time and energy most teachers would rather devote to catching up.

A major barrier to change is overturning a system that works even if it does not work well. The profession is rife with systems, but the extreme cases are often either amusing or frightening. A grad student once shared her father-in-law's practice with the class. Every evening after supper he retired to his study and marked papers for three hours. He took Sundays off. It would be good to design research studies to document the effectiveness of such dedication. Other systems require more skill but less time. Herman Kirchmeier was ambidextrous and would write corrections in the left margin in red and comments on the substance in the right margin in green. When I taught his students the following year they encouraged me to use his system but I was unable to grapple with it, not having two right hands. On the other extreme, the story circulated in rural Alberta years back about a teacher who had his students write every week; he then locked the papers in his cupboard and had not returned one by the end of the year. On June 30 he piled the papers into the trunk of his car and moved on to his next school, somewhere across the province. Word was that he had done this for a decade before his antics became well-known and he had to move to another province.

 

4. Attending to Students' Feelings

Because students invest their personal beliefs and moral codes in their English papers, it is worth evaluating our comments from the point of view of how the student might feel reading such a comment. Unlike math, physics or chemistry where the answers are right or wrong and the student's investment is technical rather than personal, English essays are places where students can test their beliefs and values, hopes and fears, dreams and nightmares, and expect a response from a sympathetic but more worldly-wise reader.

I think we are beyond the stupid or arrogant comments which elitist teaching assistants once wrote on student papers ("Is English really your native language?") or the back- handed compliments that well-meaning professors might make ("You do a reasonably competent job of a desultory task" [this was 1963; the professor had awarded me the highest grade in the class on an assignment but, apparently, didn't want it to go to my head]). The problem lies in comments written in good faith, not mean or bullying statements written as if they were Acts of Parliament. The major question, one which is too seldom a part of our discourse and [almost] never found in marking rubrics, must be: how might the student who reads this comment feel?

In a graduate class, Jean-Anne Stene provided students with two types of comments and asked them to answer a series of questions, one of which was

How do you feel after reading what the teacher has written about your work?

This question raised a good deal of discussion about class members' experiences receiving comments and ways to avoid writing comments which inadvertently injure students.

5. Engaging Students in Reading and Discussing Our Comments

As a teacher, one of my faultiest assumptions was that students would hunger for my written advice, read each comment carefully, and be sure to avoid the errors that I had pointed out in the future. It sounded like a reasonable trade-off: I'd spend time reading and commenting; students would spend time reading and benefiting from the annotations.

Of course, it did not take too long to disabuse myself of this delusion, but it took a teacher from Sardis to offer the proof that I really didn't want to hear. He said that his wife and children were off to the beach one Sunday while he stayed home and answered the call of duty. As he wrote comments on students' papers he wondered if they were reading them. He then wrote "one Big Mac" in the margins of twenty papers and went out and bought vouchers for hamburgers. Only three students asked him after class what "one Big Mac" meant. I suspect that for even the students who read his comments "one Big Mac" made about as much sense as the universal "awk" or "frag" or "pro agr."

This is not an argument for abandoning marking but one for engaging students in learning from our comments. One of the major disappointments in the "think aloud" study was the miniscule number of students who actually read their teachers' comments without being prodded by the interviewers. With prompting most read the final comment and some of the marginal annotations, but allowed that this was not their usual practice.

What was worse, when we prodded the students to explain the teachers' annotations, more often than not they seriously misconstrued the substance of the comments. The transcripts are too long to reproduce here but can be found in the Technical Report, Appendix H: http://www.lerc.educ.ubc.ca/fac/belanger/technical.html

In my experience, whether they read the comments or not most students demand more than a letter grade on their papers. I asked a class once if they read the comments I wrote on their papers. "Of course, sir," was the response. However, when I asked the students why they were still making the same errors, most admitted that they didn't read the comments in more than a cursory way. "If you are not reading them," I said, "I won't write them." So I handed the next set of compositions back with mere grades. To save being assaulted, I needed to take the papers back and write comments on them. Another of life's little lessons.

In common with many other teachers of English, I have tried to devise ways to ensure that students read my comments with understanding and learn from them. As a graduate teaching assistant in English, I carefully annotated students' papers, put the grade on a separate sheet of paper, and returned the papers in class, keeping the sheet with the grade on it until students came to my office and discussed the annotations with me. A small number of students seemed to adapt well to this system, but most dragged their heels through our discussion of the annotations and then disappeared as quickly as they could once it was over. A small number didn't bother to come. One said that he would find out what his grade was when his transcript arrived in the mail. My wonderful system took a good deal of time; its major effect seemed to be alienating large numbers of students.

On the other hand, probably the most effective activity I used was to divide the class into groups of three, assigning each group to discuss each annotation, examine the underlying principle and discuss possible corrections. I circulated, asking and answering questions. I learned quickly that since the grades on the papers are personal, they had to be removed before the groups examined the papers. This had the disadvantage of having students wait until the end of the period for the thing that really interested them, the grade. It did, however, keep the grades, especially those lower than the students expected, from becoming a distraction. Unfortunately, I have no evidence that their writing improved as the result of these experiences.
Reflections

Where does all this leave us? I believe that there are steps we can take to address each of the five problem areas above. They are not quick fixes which will herald a new age, but they are steps we can take now to grapple with the massive problem of assessing and evaluating students' written work in English.

1. Gather evidence on the marking loads of English teachers and ways that teachers are coping. A series of graduate student investigations (graduating papers, theses, dissertations) which address various aspects of the problem could provide the evidence needed to begin to lobby our organizations to acknowledge the tremendous time commitment required to teach written communication and to respond effectively to students' written work.
2. Work with colleagues to improve the validity and reliability of grades on students' compositions. This will involve department or district work on scoring guides and rating procedures. Then share the findings through conference presentations, journal articles, and blogs.
3. Teach rules for editorial usage systematically, emphasizing selected rules at each grade level, reviewing the rules at subsequent grade levels, and insisting that students' papers be free of the errors studied. By the end of grade twelve, students should have mastered all of the rules in a college handbook.
4. Research the types of comments that students appreciate in both the affective and cognitive domains. How can constructive criticism be phrased so that it brings errors to the student's attention without offending the student's ego? Balance the comments on substance and presentation. In the "think aloud" study we discovered that students were very interested in comments which dealt with their insights and ideas but were not even mildly interested in those which pointed out errors in usage.
5. Articulate expectations and devise activities which engage students in reading and understanding each of our comments. Students should expect to have class time set aside each time papers are returned to read each comment, to discuss possible changes, and to write responses to the comments. If I had been able to do this, I believe I would have had a much more satisfying teaching career. Instead, during my time at UBC, I marked dutifully, handed papers back at the end of term, and saved in a file cabinet drawer the assignments I had marked but students had not picked up. As I was cleaning my office, I sent them off to the shredder in two cardboard boxes. How many novels or books of poetry could I have read? how many walks on the beach could I have taken? how many rounds of golf could I have played instead of writing advice on papers that went unread to the shredder? If all this advice fails to improve your life as a teacher of English, become a math teacher: marking is quite straight-forward and there isn't too much of it.

 

References

 

Belanger, J. (1978). Reading skill as an influence on writing skill. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Alberta.

Belanger, J. (1985). Conflict between mentor and judge: Being fair and being helpful in composition evaluation. English Quarterly, 18, 79-92.

Belanger, J. (1986). Student Written Errors and Teacher Marking: A Search for Patterns. A report presented to the Educational Research Institute of British Columbia (Project Grant 342).

Belanger, J. Allingham, P. V., & Bécheervaise, N. (2004). When will we ever learn?: The Case for Formative Assessment Supporting Writing Development. English in Australia, 141, 41-48.

Belanger, J. Allingham, P. V., & Sloan, A. (2003). Technical Report: Using think-aloud methods to investigate the processes secondary school students use to respond to their teachers' comments on their written work. http://www.lerc.educ.ubc.ca/fac/belanger/technical.html

Commission on English (1965), Freedom and Discipline in English. Princeton, NJ: College Entrance Examination Board.

Daniels, H. & Zemelman, S. (1985). A Writing Project: Training Teachers of Composition from Kindergarten to College. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Diederich, P. B. (1974). Measuring Growth in English. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.

Diederich, P. B., French J. W., & Carlton, S., T. (1961). Factors in judgments of writing ability (Research Bulletin RB 61-15) Princeton: Educational Testing Service.

Farrell, E. (1970). Deciding the Future: A forecast of responsibilities of secondary teachers of English, 1970-2000 AD. NCTE Research Report No. 12. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.

Sloan, G. (1977). The wacky world of theme marking. College Composition and Communication, 28(4), 370-73.

 

Footnotes

1. My teaching experience ranges from the junior high school through the post-secondary technical school to the university level. Therefore, my comments are directed to these levels. My observations of elementary classes and discussions with elementary teachers suggest that they have a different set of problems in responding to students' written work.
2. Eight teachers from five secondary schools provided the researchers with 57 compositions they had marked but not returned to their students. Individual students accompanied the researchers to a separate room where they were asked to "think aloud" as they read their teachers' grades and comments for the first time. The teachers were among the most experienced and dedicated in the province: five were current or previous English department heads; six had served on ministry examination assessment committees; five had served on the executives of specialist councils; two had taught as sessional university methods instructors. Who else might risk taking part in such a project?

 

by Krista Ediger

I've been teaching thematically for the nine years I've been in the classroom, but when I heard Jeff Wilhelm speak at the SFU Literacy Continuum Conference last August, his discussion of the importance of using essential questions to frame and focus units led me to reconsider my unit planning. I had been hearing murmurings of backwards design, and was involved in a group planning process two years ago for Humanities 8 which followed many of the principles of backwards design without my being aware of it, and I worked extensively with a partner on English 11 three years ago tackling big assessment questions, but I knew that it was time to explore the process further. The key difference between the unit planning I was used to and backwards design is the piece where, before deciding on instructional activities, teachers articulate the summative assessments they will use to determine whether or not their students have met their stated enduring understandings or learning outcomes.

Last year, I followed much the same program I taught the year before for English 12, and was feeling increasingly ineffective. In February, I decided I needed to plan the rest of my grade 12 course more purposefully, and so enlisted the help of a district consultant, Joanne Panas. In this article, I'll touch on our planning process, and then outline the unit itself, which grew into a multi-faceted, three month unit on story that touched on literary analysis of poetry and short stories, small group discussion, spoken word and personal narratives. Of course there are things I'll change next year when I teach this again, but it's a unit I will teach again, and some of the principles I practised in this unit in both the planning and implementing stages are ones that I am coming to understand as increasingly important in all my teaching: backwards design (identifying clear enduring understandings, essential questions, summative and formative assessments - all prior to the creation of daily lessons), planning with a partner or team, explicit teaching using modeling, gradual release, and differentiated instruction.

Our Planning Process

Before we began formally planning this unit, we had some conversations that focused on materials and activities. In particular, I was interested in a poetry unit Joanne had done last year with her English 10's that used text sets in a literature circle format. I also wanted to incorporate some spoken-word poetry that had been successful with my students in the past. We had a great conversation about how each of us might open a unit on short stories; from this came one of our big ideas: "Why do people tell stories?" After these informal chats, we set up a meeting to plan with a focus on backwards design. To our first meeting, I brought my copy of Understanding by Design, by Wiggins and McTighe; Joanne brought an activity from her staff meeting the day before, which was a boiled-down version of chapter 1 of Wiggins's and McTighe's book.

We began by determining the enduring understandings we wished to address, and these were based on our knowledge of the new ELA 8-12 IRP and its increased focus on oral language. At the same time, we worked out our essential questions. It's important to note that this was something of a back-and-forth process, not a linear one. We wrestled with phrasing, pared down ideas, checked the book, and moved items from one category to another. Once we had these ideas down, we looked at the skills, knowledge, and attitudes we wanted the students to acquire. Though somewhat "old-school," these last three areas are still valid organizers with their practical and concrete nature, but we realized they should come after the enduring understandings and essential questions are determined.

Our next focus was on assessment. For this part, we decided to go back to our two enduring understandings. We created a chart that helped us see how for each of the enduring understandings, we would have a formative piece and a summative piece. We found it easier to divide the enduring understandings up somewhat, as you can see in our final chart. This gave us a good idea of what we would have students do to demonstrate their acquisition of the big ideas. Again, this was not a linear process; we excitedly came up with ideas for instruction and assessment as we chatted, and wrote them down separately for the next section. At times it was hard to keep focused on just the key assessments. As we worked, we realized that we wanted to weave stories and poetry together; from that came the idea of choosing poems for the literature circles that had something to do with the idea of "story," which linked back to our essential questions.

Next, we needed to get a sense of the flow of the unit-how would we instruct and assess students so as to move them toward these final assessments? Actually, it was by then a fairly simple process. I began by sketching out a flow for the unit, incorporating instruction using modeling and gradual release, as well as formative assessment. Together we brainstormed ways to flesh this out, while continually checking back to our big ideas. Once this flow was pretty well set, we went back through it to make sure we were following a clear pattern of instruction and practice, followed by assessment. When we created the chart from our notes, the purpose of each activity was clear.

We met again about a week and a half later; by that point, I had just begun the unit with a class on "stories" - the history of story, their purpose and power, how their roles have changed. We also talked about narrators and points of view and truth and perspective before sharing some of the stories we tell often from our own lives. Then we looked at three short stories: "Man from the South" by Roald Dahl, "The Bet" by Anton Chekhov and "The Chaser" by John Collier, and did a variety of pre/during/post reading strategies, followed by discussion that linked us back to our opening questions and the essential questions of the unit. Joanne and I began our second formal planning session by brainstorming other possible stories for later in the unit. Then we worked on the shift to poetry. We decided to do a "fishbowl" with three teachers, Joanne, me and Gordon Powell, the teacher-librarian at McRoberts, using a new poem for each of my three English 12 classes; in addition, each of the administrators was invited to participate in the fishbowl sessions, and we ended up having an administrator at each one. We also worked on the poetry literature circle idea, and began to think of suitable poems as well as how to make up the text sets. Because we had done so much work last time on getting a clear idea of our focus for the unit, we were able to spend more time on the actual instruction, materials, and student activities we would use. We were also able to take our initial notes from the first planning day and make changes and additions to them to reflect what was happening in the classroom.

This has been a great process, and has solidified for us a few key points: two minds (or more) are better than one; the process of backward design is very practical, but it's not linear; and there is no "one right way" to incorporate the key concepts of understanding by design into your own planning. It doesn't matter what route you take, as long as you get to the desired destination.

 

The following is the result of our initial work with backwards design.

  

Part 1: THE BIG IDEAS
Enduring Understandings

• Students will understand how to engage with and respond to literature and ideas, and to interact with others around those ideas, orally and in writing.
• Students will understand that stories have a variety of purposes in our lives and society, and a variety of effects on us.
  

Essential Questions

• Why do we tell stories?
• What are the ways we tell stories?
• What stories do I (students) want to tell? Skills:

Students will…

• Respond personally to literature and ideas
• Participate appropriately and thoughtfully in small-group and large-group discussions
• Make appropriate choices in diction, language, rhythm, and structure when presenting
• Write analytical paragraphs and essays about short stories and poems

Knowledge: Students will…

• Review and use the elements of literature and literary devices of short stories and poems

Attitudes: Students will…

• Gain an appreciation of the purpose of stories in our lives and culture n Demonstrate willingness to engage in and explore literature and ideas
  

  

Part 2: Assessment

Enduring Understanding	Formative Assessment	Summative Assessment
Engage with and respond to literature and ideas, and interact with others around those ideas, orally…	■ class discussion of rubric for group discussion; students use rubric to evaluate teachers in fishbowl discussion ■ self-assessment and teacher feedback of small-group discussions (first - poetry lit circles and then short stories)	■ self-evaluation of small-group discussions (poetry lit circles)
…and in writing	■ teacher feedback and self/peer-assessment of analytical paragraphs on poems and essays on stories using teacher rubric	■ teacher evaluation of analytical essay on short story
Understand that stories have a variety of purposes in our lives and society…	■ peer/self-assessment of language and presentation skills for group poem written in response to a story or poem, presented to the class	See below.
… and a variety of effects on us	See above.	■ teacher assessment of spoken-word poem (your own story) written by individuals and presented to the class (Poetry Café)

 

Nicole Widdess teaches in Richmond and is the Curriculum Co-Chair for BCTELA. She is committed to teaching diverse learners and is passionate about literacy. Her current focus is teaching students in the middle years.

Click here to open a PDF version of this article.

As one of the Curriculum Coordinators, I am pleased to share that our Curriculum Pack sub-committee has developed new submission criteria that reflect current thinking, research and pedagogy. These criteria are also aligned with the ideas and research presented in the pedagogical considerations section of BC’s new K-7 and draft 8-12 English Language Arts IRPs. We hope that the new criteria will support you, our members, in writing up and submitting units of study for publication.

When you submit a curriculum pack, a member of our committee will provide descriptive feedback to assist you in revising and readying your unit for publication. Once accepted for publication, you are eligible for curriculum resource funds ($400). If you are interested in crafting a unit to be published by BCTELA please be sure to review the criteria below. Please send your unit (or proposal for a unit) to Nicole Widdess at NWiddess@richmond.sd38.bc.ca. Once your proposal or unit has been reviewed, we will be sure to get back to you as soon as possible.

 

Overview

• Identifies essential questions and enduring understandings

o These are the big ideas/inquiries that will guide the unit and the skills/strategies (including cognitive and metacognitive) that will be used/developed by students

• This overview should demonstrate links to the 2006 K-7 and/or the 2007 Draft 8-12 ELA IRPs m cuts across outcomes from the 3 organizers and 4 suborganizers of the ELA IRP

Assessment

• formative assessment/metacognitive activities

o formative assessment practices that help students learn to analyze and critique their work and to set personalized goals in relation to shared criteria

o offer students opportunities to generate criteria and strategies that are both contextual and meaningful

o a variety of assessment activities, including performance-based assessment

• summative assessment m performance-based assessment that includes detailed rubrics and links back to enduring understandings

Lesson Sequences

• a clear, detailed outline of suggested lesson sequences including m gradual release of responsibility

o assessment-to-instruction m metacognitive activities (e.g. using and/or generating criteria, self-assessment, goal-setting, and reflection)

o reading, writing, and oral language activities

o well-structured lessons that help students connect, process, and transform and personalize texts, concepts, and/or understandings

Diversity Considerations

• suggestions for adapting based on students' individual strengths and needs

• ways to differentiate based on student interests and context (e.g. text choices, variety of output options, variety of instructional modes)

Additional Documents

• performance rubrics

• handouts used in the lessons

• resources used, and suggestions for alternative resources

Reflection

• what worked especially well

• what came before this and after this in the year

• how this unit built on or was able to be built upon by other inquiries/units

Would you like support in developing a unit that integrates strategic teaching, formative and summative assessment, gradual release and the use of diverse texts using learning outcomes from the new IRP? Consider attending the Saturday Institute at our Fall Conference October 25, 2008. The 2008 Conference will be held at the Delta Hotel in Richmond this year. BCTELA Executive members Krista Ediger, Joanne Panas, Leyton Schnellert, and Nicole Widdess will be facilitating an institute on backwards design tentatively called "Designing Units with the End in Mind." A description of this institute follows:

So many best practices...how do you put them all together to create engaging, pedagogically-sound units that will help your students learn what they need to? Come and spend the day with us-learn about inquiry and backwards design, modeling and gradual release, assessment-to-instruction-and put it all together in a framework for a unit you can use. To get the most out of this session, bring a topic for a unit and sample texts you might use, and any brainstorming you might have already done.

The Curriculum Pack sub-committee members are looking forward to a year of learning together as we explore the new English Language Arts IRPs and develop new curriculum packs to support their implementation.

Stacey Wyatt teaches Grade 5/6 in Richmond. She is currently working on her Masters Degree  at Simon Fraser University in Educational Practice. Some of her interests include student diversity, literacy education and assessment.

Contents:

Methodology

Student and Parent Surveys

Developing Criteria

Using Criteria

Reflecting on the Criteria

Conclusion

References

"When we set criteria for assignments,
we establish what counts. When we involve
students in setting the criteria, we increase
their understanding and ownership."
(Gregory, Cameron and Davies,
1997, p.58).

As an elementary student, I remember my teachers explaining an assigned writing activity, and then doing my best to work through the task in the hopes of producing
what my teachers wanted. At no point do I recall being involved in the process of building the criteria for the assignment, nor was I given an assessment rubric ahead of time to help me with the writing task. Today, as a teacher, I realize students need to know the criteria in order to be successful. Without having a clear picture of the expectations of the assignment, student progress is impeded and it is more difficult for them to succeed at the task.

This past year, I have spent time investigating my assessment practices. From current research, I understand how vital it is to have students involved in the assessment process, and in particular, to have students and teachers working together to develop the criteria to be assessed. In their book, Knowing What Counts: Setting and Using Criteria,
Gregory, Cameron and Davies found that "when students take part in developing  criteria, they are much more likely to understand what is expected of them, ‘buy in', and then accomplish the task successfully" (1997, p. 7). Clearly, students who do not know the criteria of the assignment have little direction for success and end up trying to guess what the teacher wants, much like my elementary school experiences. Obviously, I do not want this to be the case for my students.

Establishing criteria with my students and working collaboratively to develop the rubrics used to assess their fictional writing pieces is an area of my teaching practice that I have spent a considerable amount of time investigating. Carol Ann Tomlinson and Jay McTighe note that "by considering in advance the assessment evidence needed to validate that the desired results have been achieved, teaching becomes purposeful and focused" (2006, p. 59). I believe this statement can also be applied to student learning as it, too, "becomes more purposeful and focused" when students know the criteria.

Both teachers and students need to know what they are working towards and how they are going to get there. By creating assessment rubrics together, teachers and students come to share a common language, students know what is expected, and they understand the purpose of the assignment. Thus, creating rubrics collaboratively with  my students became one of the parts of the assessment process I focused on improving this past year.

As my students and I used the assessment rubric for fiction writing, I was faced with my next query. I discovered that when I asked my students what they could do to improve their fictional story writing, they were adept at naming their next steps. They simply read what I had circled on the rubric we created. In reality though, many of my students didn't really know how to improve. This realization prompted my next inquiry questions: How can my assessment practices provide students with a clearer picture of their next steps in writing development? How can my students use descriptive feedback to provide them with their next steps in writing in relation to collaboratively developed criteria?

In order for children to move forward in their learning, they need to know what they are doing well, where they need to improve and how they need to go about improving. Through examining my assessment practices, I learned the type of feedback I was giving my Grade 5/6 students did not help to point them in the direction of what or how to improve in their writing. Listening to my students' conversations and watching how several struggled to identify the areas they needed to work on led me to investigate my practice further, looking specifcally at the nature of the feedback I give to my students and the quality of feedback they give to each other.

Methodology

Throughout this inquiry I used several strategies to collect my data. I conducted surveys with my students hoping to gain some insight into how the students felt about having their writing assessed by their teachers, peers and parents. I gave a questionnaire to the parents in my class asking them to recall their writing experiences as elementary children. Specifically, I wanted to know whether or not they remember developing criteria or being involved in self-assessment or peer assessment during writing instruction. I read recent literature on formative assessment practices, wrote in my journal and reflected on what I learned. Later, I read back through my entries looking for patterns in my reflections and changes in my thinking. I listened to the students' conversations while they were developing criteria, collected samples of their work and had discussions with colleagues.

Student and Parent Surveys

This year I moved from teaching a Gr. 4/5 class to a Gr. 5/6 class. Because I essentially moved up a grade with the students, I had taught 19 of the 28 students last year. We therefore know each other quite well and have developed a trusting and safe classroom environment. To start the school year, I began by surveying my students' attitudes about assessment and in particular asking how they felt about having their writing assessed by their teachers and peers. The data revealed that most of my students were comfortable having their teachers assess their writing as most commented, " I know they are trying to help me" and "it's their job". When asked about having their peers assess their work, students made comments like, "we are friends and I know they are trying to help me"; another student wrote, "I am okay with it as long as they don't say anything mean." I have no doubt the trusting environment that had been built in our classroom over the course of the previous year made a difference. For the most part these children were comfortable when sharing their work with others. In Jeanne Gibbs's book, Reaching All by Creating Tribes Learning Communities, she states, "the power of being included and valued by peers motivates students to active participation in their own learning" (2006, p. 10). I am not saying that we did not need to continue to work on maintaining this relationship and environment in our classroom; we simply had a strong base already developed from which we continued to build.

When I read the responses from the questionnaire I gave the parents, I noticed their writing experiences as children were much like my own. Most of them do not recall being involved in the assessment process or know that they were not. Many of them reported that they did not assess their own writing. While some parents remembered listening to students share their stories, they were generally not encouraged to give the student author feedback. The comments and the experiences of the parents completing the questionnaire were not surprising. Many of them are similar in age and completed their elementary school years around the same time as I had. I feel that several parents and I missed out on a valuable part of our learning in elementary school by not being involved in our own assessment. I wanted to make ensure my students had the  opportunity to experience what we had not.

Developing Criteria

After reading the students' and parents' responses to the surveys, we began the task of collaboratively developing the criteria for writing a fiction story. I asked the students to think about this question: "What makes a story good?" I recorded all of their ideas on the chalkboard. A few days later, I sent them off in groups of three with the task of organizing the brainstormed list. In their triads they were asked to group the criteria by looking for similarities or perhaps crossing out suggestions that were redundant. As each group worked together they devised their own system for categorizing. Most groups used different colours to represent each category. The students worked diligently on this activity and took it very seriously.

As students worked on this task, I listened to their conversations and took photographs and photocopies of how they organized the criteria. As I circulated and eavesdropped on conversations, there were discussions within the groups and students were questioning each other's ideas and suggestions. While a few groups struggled to come up with the categories for the criteria, the majority were able to group the criteria in a way that made sense and were able to explain their thinking to the class.

All triads commented on how important it was to consider the audience when writing a fiction story and for the story to have feelings, details, and good description. Most groups said the story needed to have a problem, a strong lead at the beginning, and a beginning, middle and end. They were clearly becoming more involved in the assessment process. Not only were they deciding together what were the important criteria to include, they were organizing the criteria and then writing their stories with these criteria in mind. I was pleased.

After the small groups of students finalized their way of organizing the criteria, each group shared their design with the class. I recorded their reasons for organizing the criteria in the ways they had chosen and listened to the comments and questions from the audience. One of the great things about sharing the criteria this way was all the students were involved and they were able to question each others' system for organizing the criteria. Students were free to agree and/or disagree and were able to listen to another group's point of view. Towards the end of this process, students
individually voted on the collaboratively-generated sample that worked the best for them. Once the votes revealed the most effective sample, we discussed the format
for the rubric and I typed it up for the students to use (Figure 1).

Content Area	3	4
Snapshot:	My story is complete, easy to read, and uses enough description and detail to catch the reader's attention. There are not many errors	My story is original, very easy to read, and uses description and detail that holds the readers attention from the beginning to the end
Meaning: Have I included important ideas & information? Do I use descriptive details? Am I thinking about my audience? Does my story impact the reader?	My story includes my own ideas. I use descriptive words and details to develop events, characters, and images. (SDT: Show Don't Tell and MIM: Movie In my Mind) I know who I am writing for and I get their attention.	My story is original and leaves the reader with something to think about. I use a large amount of detail and specific words to fully develop the events, characters, and ideas. SDT and MIM is effective and throughout story. I "hook and hold" the readers' attention and I make them think.
Style: Is my language clear? Does the language I use make my story interesting for my readers?	I use descriptive language that is clear. I use different types and lengths of sentences. I use different words at the beginning of sentences.	I use language that is clear, expressive and figurative. My sentences flow smoothly. My sentences are written with different lengths and patterns.
Form: Does it have a beginning, middle, and end? Are my characters described? Do I use dialogue?	My lead is written with dialogue or action. My story has a beginning that hints at the problem and makes the reader wonder or worry about the character right away. The events in my story are in order and are easy to follow. My ending attempts to solve the problem. My characters are described beyond what they look like. My dialogue sounds realistic.	My lead is written with reaction. The beginning of my story presents the problem, introduces the main character(s) and catches the readers' attention. My story is in order and is believable. My characters have a S.O.C. (Stream of Consciousness); their feelings, emotions and personality are shown in my story. My ending effectively solves the problem and there may be a surprise. My dialogue is clear and helps the reader see the characters in my story.
Conventions: Spelling, punctuation, complete sentences, grammar, connecting words	I have a few mistakes, but they do not confuse the reader.	I have hardly any mistakes. The errors I made are because of the risks I am taking when using new words or types of sentences.

While I realize how long this process took for us to move from the initial criteria brainstorm session to the rubric stage, the learning that went on during this process was invaluable. It was so important for me to take a few steps back and let the students "play around" with the criteria. Not only did it help students really think about what was important when writing a story, but the process and final rubric became theirs, and they understood it.

Using Criteria

As we drafted our stories, we used the rubric and made changes to it as necessary. I asked the students to take note of any parts of the rubric that seemed confusing or needed further clarification. Sometimes we needed to change the language we had chosen to use within the rubric to make it more clear, and other times we simplified sections of the rubric that were confusing. It was evident that my students were able to complete this task and because they were involved in the process of developing the criteria from the beginning, they had a clear vision and a deepened understanding of what they were working towards. We had succeeded!

At the same time we were working on developing an assessment rubric for story writing, I was also reading research about giving students feedback. Carol Ann Tomlinson and Jay McTighe agree feedback is necessary in any learning situation as they explain in their book, "all types of learning, whether on the practice field or in the classroom, require feedback" (p. 77). I discovered I was not providing feedback that was rescriptive enough to help my students set their subsequent goals for writing. Gregory, Cameron and Davies write, "teacher-approval phrases, such as ‘I like it; this is great,' do not provide the information or the direction that students need to achieve success" (1997, p. 43). By listening to my students and watching them try to set their next writing goals, I learned that these comments do little beyond letting the student know you liked their writing. Similarly, circling phrases on the assessment rubric, especially one which students were not involved in creating, is not enough to help them set goals. If we want our students to progress, we need to involve them in the criteria development, show them what they are doing well, and help steer them in the direction of what to work on next (Chappuis et al., 2004).

With this in mind, I spoke with Melanie Anastasiou, our teacher librarian, who co-teaches with me three times a week, looking for suggestions to help our students give each other feedback on the stories they had been working on. She
explained a technique the adults in her writing group use to give each other feedback. We decided to try this with my students. Each student was given a blank strip of paper and was asked to read another student's story independently. As peer editors, their task was to write down two things the author did well and one suggestion for improvement.

Melanie advised the students to write down their compliments and suggestions as they were reading, not to wait until the end. She also informed the students that editors read a story several times over and they should do this as well. As students finished reading each other's stories and writing down their feedback, they were asked to give their strips of paper and the story they had read back to the original author. The author of the piece then read the feedback and was asked to reread his/her story thinking about the editor's compliments and suggestion for improvement. Here are some of their written comments:

Todd: "This is good"
Adam: "Some of the words are spelled wrong"
Andrea: "I like how you used talking in the first sentence"
Debbie: "I like how you show and express your character's emotions"
Debbie: "On p.7 you made me say, ‘what' because of Zac ripping the tickets"

While there were some comments that reminded me of my elementary school days, there was definite evidence that my students could give each other fairly specific feedback when they knew what to look for. Creating the rubric together was an important step for students to be able to give each other feedback. Students then made changes based on the feedback they received. The paper containing the feedback was glued into the author's writing book so they could refer to the suggestions as needed. This activity revealed what type of feedback my students were able to give each other.

Tomlinson and McTighe describe four qualities of an effective feedback system in their book. They state, "the feedback must (1) be timely, (2) be specific, (3) be understandable to the receiver, and (4) allow for adjustment" (2006, p. 77). It is important that feedback be detailed, specific and given regularly during the process by the teacher and his or her peers. Students must also be given time, practice and support to retry and make changes. My students were generally given 3-4 blocks a week to work on their stories in class, and several opportunities to self-assess and peer-assess.

Over the course of the term we experimented with the formats we used to self-assess and peer-assess our stories. Students regularly self-assessed using the rubric we created. During these self-assessment sessions, students focused their assessment on only one aspect of the whole assessment rubric at a time.

(see PDF for Fig 2 Meaning Aspect of Writing Rubric)

For example, students read their story looking specifically at the aspect of meaning within their story and then wrote down what they felt they were doing well and what part needed work (Figure 2). Then, they spent time reworking their piece based on what they noticed needed revision. This is a crucial step to the assessment process. Gregory, Cameron and Davies state:

When students assess themselves they develop
insights into their own learning. Rather than relying on
feedback from one person - their teacher- and asking
"Is this right?" "Is this long enough?" "Am I doing it
right?" "Is this what you want?" students begin to monitor
their own learning and consider what part of the
assignment meets the criteria and what needs more
attention. (2000, p. 10)

My students were learning to compare the rubric to their own writing, looking for what they did well and aspects that needed work. This was very exciting!

Students also peer assessed in this same manner and then took the feedback they received and reworked the piece again, focusing specifically on their suggestions. Student editors were forced to focus their editing skills and their thinking by paying attention to one aspect of the rubric at a time. Focus edediting resulted in clearer and more specific feedback.

As the year progressed and the writing rubric we created was fine tuned as needed, students adjusted the ways in which they gave feedback to each other. For example, during our "Writing Share" individual students read their writing to the whole class while classmates and teachers sat with their assessment rubrics in front of them. As we listened, students placed sticky notes onto the aspects of the rubric the author had exemplified in his or her writing piece. Because of the community of trust and level of comfort that was evident in our classroom being the second year most of the students were together, many of the students were comfortable sharing in this type of setting.

At the same time, Melanie and I were using the same rubric to write specific feedback for every student in the class. At the end of the story share, students were invited to give specific feedback to the author of the piece using the rubric as their guide and either Melanie or I gave feedback as well. The students were instructed to give a comment about something the author did well and a suggestion for improvement.
The positive feedback given by the students was relevant and fairly specific, indicating what they liked about the story style or meaning. The suggestions for improvement, while accurate, did not always comment on what I wanted them to. Sometimes comments were based on how the author read the piece aloud, not on the story itself. Once I reminded the students to focus on the rubric, they were able to give more specific suggestions for improvement. At the end of "Writing Share" each student received verbal feedback from peers and as well as two copies of the assessment rubric that Melanie and I used to provide additional feedback.

Students became more confident with the rubric over time. Not only were they self-assessing their writing and peer assessing each others written work, they were setting goals for improvement based on the feedback they had been given from their teachers, peers and from what they had noticed in their own writing. Students had a sheet in the back of their writing books where they began to record their strengths and needs as writers as they worked on their drafts. Each student was responsible for keeping a running record of their next steps they used to improve their writing skills based on the feedback they had received. Students were asked to refer to this goal setting page often, to remind them what they were working on.

Reflecting on the Criteria

At the end of the second term I asked students to reconsider the rubric we made, the feedback they were getting about their writing and to answer some questions based on
these two things. Now that they had worked diligently with the rubric for several months and had experience giving and receiving feedback, I wanted to know what they thought. So in an individual survey I asked this question: "Do you think it is helpful to use the rubric as you write your story? Explain your thinking." The data revealed 22 out of the 28 students surveyed reported that the rubric was helpful. Here are some direct quotes from the students:

Kim: "I think it is helpful because you get to know what you need to work on and what you already did."

Sandy: "Yes because the rubric is like a helper."

Richard: "Yes I definitely think the rubric helps. It helps you pinpoint the things you need to work on."

Charles: "Yes, because it helps that we can go over our story over and over again."

Michael: "Yes, I think my stories have improved a lot thanks to the rubric."

And Travis, who "hit the nail on the head", so to speak, said, "Yes, so you can see the criteria and get motivated to do better than last time."

The comments from the students were very telling. I was extremely pleased that they felt the rubric was helpful and that they were able to use it to help improve their writing next time.

The next questions on the survey focused on receiving feedback from peers and teachers. I wanted to know if the students felt the feedback they received from their peers and teachers was helpful. Twenty-five out of 28 students felt that getting peer feedback was helpful. All twenty-eight of the students reported that the teacher feedback was helpful. One student very honestly shared that he preferred the feedback from students. Here are some written comments from the students:

Andrew: "Yes, feedback from students is very helpful. Most of the time I agree with suggestions they give me, some I disagree."

Paula: "I really like my feedback because it helps me understand what I missed in my self-assessment. Also, I like hearing what could make my story better."

Kim: "I thought that getting feedback from our classmates was helpful because we get to find out what everyone else thinks about your story, not just teachers."

Chris: "Sometimes it (teacher feedback) is helpful, but sometimes I do not agree with some suggestions I've been given. I prefer the feedback coming from my peers."

In addition to the comments about the rubric and the feedback, it is clear that my students were able to identify what they did well and what needed work when they used a rubric they helped create. By being invested in the process and ultimately more involved in assessment, my students were able to set realistic goals and work to improve these goals. Through these exciting realizations, I am reminded of a powerful quote by Tomlinson and McTighe in their book, Integrating Differentiated Instruction and Understanding by Design. They believe that "the most effective learners are metacognitive; that is they are mindful of how they learn, set personal goals, regularly self-assess and adjust their performance, and use productive strategies to assist their learning" (2006, p. 79). At the end of the day, aren't these the habits of mind we all hope to instill in our students?

Conclusion

Through this investigation I have come to realize the importance of immersing my students in the entire assessment process. From developing the criteria to peer and selfassessment, students need to be involved. An equally important piece to the assessment process is providing descriptive feedback to students that helps to further their learning. For the most part, the feedback the students gave each other during writing class was accurate. It highlighted things the author did well and what he/she needed to improve. The students were polite in their comments, but honest and to the point. I discovered too, not only does the feedback benefit the author of the piece, but the editor as well. Because the editor must read the piece with a careful eye looking for successes and areas needing improvement, this in turn helps their own writing. I learned to be more purposeful in the wording of the feedback I gave the students as well, and focused my suggestions only on one or two areas at a time.

In Rethinking Classroom Assessment with Purpose in Mind, Lorna Earl and Steven Katz write, "When learning is the goal, teachers and students collaborate and use ongoing assessment and pertinent feedback to move learning forward" (2005, p. 5). I understand this to be the key to continued student success. Not only did my students show me that they were fully capable of coming up with the criteria for a good story themselves, but they were able to use the criteria they created to help give each other specific and honest feedback, with the goal of improving their stories.

While I realize I have more to learn, I now look at assessment differently. No longer is assessment solely my responsibility. My students play an integral role in creating the tools we use together to assess ourselves, each other, and to move forward with our learning. I include myself in this process, but I am not there alone. I have learned how important and valid my students' input is to each component of assessment. And, my students no longer have to guess what I want: we've created what we want, and we work together to pave the path to get there.

References

Atwell, N. (2002). Lessons That Change Writers. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Atwell, N. (1998). In the Middle: New Understandings About Writing, Reading and Learning. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Chappuis, S., Stiggins, R., Arter, J., and Chappuis, J. (2004). Classroom Assessment For Student Learning: Doing it Right-Using it Well. Portland, OR: Assessment Training
Institute.

Earl, L., and Katz, S. (2005). "Rethinking Classroom Assessment with Purpose in Mind." Winnipeg, MB: Western and Northern Canadian Protocol for Collaboration in Education.

Gregory, K., Cameron, C., and Davies, A. (1997). Knowing What Counts: Setting and Using Criteria. Courtenay, BC: Connections Publishing.

Gregory, K., Cameron, C., and Davies, A. (2000). Knowing What Counts: Self- Assessment and Goal Setting. Courtenay, BC: Connections Publishing.

Gibbs, J. (2006). Reaching All by Creating Tribes Learning Communities. Windsor, CA: CenterSource Systems, LLC.

Tomlinson, C., and McTighe, J. (2006). Integrating Differentiated Instruction and Understanding by Design. Virginia, USA: ASCD.

Background

The First Nations Education Steering Committee (FNESC) in partnership with the Ministry of Education (MOE) is in the final stages of the development of the English 12 First Peoples (EFP12) curriculum and examination.

A primary focus of the course is to develop students’ literacy skills while satisfying the English 12 graduation requirements. Students may choose to take English 12 and/or English 12 First Peoples and they may use both towards Provincial Scholarships and graduation credits. It is the intention that students taking this new course will qualify for entry into post-secondary educational institutions, and the response from the universities has been positive.

This First Peoples English language arts course is intended for both aboriginal and non-aboriginal teachers and students. It represents an invitation to all learners to explore and discover First Peoples worldview through the study of literary, informational, oral and media text from local, Canadian and international First Peoples sources.

Curriculum

The draft curriculum for English 12 First Peoples will be posted on the MOE and FNESC websites in early September so teachers can review and provide feedback before final changes are made to the curriculum prior to full implementation of the EFP12 course in September 2008.

The Curriculum team developed the Classroom Assessment Models (CAMs) that will be piloted within English 12 classrooms this fall. The CAMs include units of study on poetry, the oral tradition, film & drama, storytelling, research essay, and two multi-genre thematic units “Residential Schools” and “Lost People.” The CAMs will also be posted on the FNESC website so they are available to other schools that wish to implement independently within their school districts.

Piloting Process

FNESC sent out a “Call of Interest” to all the districts in the province to ask for volunteers to pilot units of the EFP12 course in September 2007. Over 50 schools responded, and 14 district pilot sites were chosen and included a few First Nation schools. Considerations of workload, budget and gathering of pilot information from a manageable number of sites precluded involving more schools. Due to the overwhelming response, 16 seats were added for other Districts that wanted to attend the orientation session at their own expense.

At the end of August 2007, FNESC will provide a two-day orientation training workshop for the 14 pilot teachers (and 16 non-pilot teachers) to provide them with culture awareness training / protocol, introduction to the course / resources, etc.

For more information on this course, be sure to attend the English 12: First Peoples curriculum panel at the BCTELA fall conference or contact Karmen Brillon of FNESC at karmenb@fnesc.ca