Demonstrating learning

You’ll do three basic levels of assignment for this class. Here’s the general breakdown:

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Level 1: Practice

Like an athlete with her sport or a musician with his instrument, you need to practice the skills you’re learning in this class in order to improve. The more you practice — and the more seriously you take your practice — the better you’ll get.

So, what does practice look like? Well, it could be any of the following:

1. Reading for understanding and taking notes

2. Writing at home or in class

3. Completing guided tasks at home or in class, some of which will be stamped and counted as homework

4. Taking quick recall quizzes

5. Writing out vocabulary sentences or creating key term flashcards

Because it’s practice, you may or may not get actual credit (i.e. points) for practice assignments. That’s okay. You need to do it to learn, and that learning will transfer to later assignments. When we do give points for practice, it’s usually in the 1-5 point range. These assignments cannot be made up for late credit when missed (though you can always submit assignments the day following an excused absence).

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Level 2: Check-ins

Periodically, we need to know if you’re on track. These check-in assignments, what are called “formative assessments” in teacher-speak, help us to see that. They’re higher stakes than practice assignments because we need an accurate gauge of where you are, but we don’t necessarily expect your learning to be complete yet, so they aren’t worth as much as an end-of-unit assessment, like a test or final project.

Here are a few examples of assignments that would count as check-ins:

1. An in-class or out of class activity to be turned in (rather than completed in your Transitions section)

2. A quiz

3. A quickwrite

4. A revision after a peer or writing coach edit

5. Project planning and progress documents

Check-ins are generally worth 10-25 points. They can typically be revised up to a C, though not always. You can sometimes turn them in late or complete them late for partial credit, but not after the end of the unit, when you’ll complete the end-of-unit assessments. So a good rule of thumb is: if you miss something, don’t ignore it. Make it up as soon as you can.

 

Level 3: Final assessments

These are the biggies — tests, papers, and projects — where you get to gloriously demonstrate everything you’ve learned. These are planned well in advance, and there are usually several check-ins along the way. Keeping up with the check-ins typically leads to success on the assessments.

In this class, you’ll have three major types of assessment:

1. Exams: An end-of-unit culmination of everything you’ve learned related to that unit’s themes. Part one of the tests typically include: key term matching, vocabulary fill-in and write-your-own sentences, quote identification for major readings, and a few graphic organizers to complete. Part two, which you’ll take the second day, asks you to write 5 short responses to essential questions from the unit.

2. Projects: Though they vary in specific format, unit projects share several common traits: they are focused on the big idea/theme of the unit; they require you to work with a group in some capacity; they require some level of research; they ask that you create some sort of original, authentic work.

3. Essays: You’ll explore several forms of writing this year, but they will almost all be directly related to the theme of the unit. (We will do a few stand-alone creative writing assignments.) Essays will usually have several drafts, which we will workshop in class and with Writing Coaches.

 

Major assessments are worth 80-100 points. Major assessments are eligible for correction or revision. If you’d like to take advantage of this learning opportunity, you’ll want to see your teachers right away after you get them back.