Assessment Group Presentations
The purpose of this assignment is:
 to help you think about assessment as an integral part of the teaching process.
 To provide you with an opportunity to demonstrate your ability to develop sound
assessment practices.
Assignment Parameters:
You must work in groups of 4. Each group will be given 15 minutes for their presentation.
When designing an assessment tool, think broadly about assessment. Your tool could focus on
assessing for learning – using assessment to gather information that will help you plan future
lessons/scaffolding. Your tool could focus on assessment as learning – the act of completing the
assessment is designed to foster or encourage learning. Your tool could be an assessment of
learning—summative assessment to determine what students learned during a unit of instruction.
You will present your assessment tool to the class. In your presentation, you will:

Discuss
o What the assessment is designed to accomplish (of, as, or for learning).

Assessment of learning: The goal of this assessment is to have students
critically analyze the text of Romeo and Juliet and to critically analyze and
interpret one of the characters in the play. Through a close reading of the
literature students should pick up on temperament, disposition, likes and
dislikes, as well as form their own connections and judgments about the
character.

Assessment for learning: This assessment will also add to student learning
by leading students to understand the links between literacy and identity –
how literacy can represent an identity (regarding a Facebook profile, this
is both through words and photos, etc. – “multiliteracies”). Secondly,
students will practice metacognition through the written component of this
assignment, articulating why they made certain choices and evaluating the
effectiveness of specific elements and of the assignment overall.
o What information it is designed to collect.

Students’ understanding of the text

Students’ ability to analyze a character throughout the text

Students’ ability to represent their interpretation of a character through the
literacies of a Facebook profile

Students’ ability to justify their decisions and evaluate their own work
o How that information is going to be used

Summative assessment of students’ abilities to analyze and interpret
characters in a text and present their interpretations through a Facebook
profile and written justification/reflection
o How the assessment could fit within a larger unit of study.


An “Explore” element of a unit on Romeo and Juliet, particularly a unit
focusing on media representations of characters/identities (eg. Through
play, film, etc.) and imagining those characters In modern-day contexts.

Preceding lessons: students will have already completed an in-class study
of the play. Scaffolding activities include: a previous summative
assessment in which students acted out a scene from Act III in a modernday context, and a formative assignment in which students wrote a letter
from one character to another.

Proceeding lessons: after completing this assignment, students will view
the 1996 film version of Romeo and Juliet and complete the final
assignment for the unit, which is an essay comparing the Shakespearian
play with the modernized film version
Explain
o How your assessment reflects approaches to teaching/assessing ELA discussed in
current academic and/or professional literature.

The following sources have been included to help justify a) the importance
of media and multiliteracies in the classroom in general, and b) the
inclusion of social network systems like Facebook in the classroom

Pahl and Rowsell highlight the “relationship between literacy and identity,
. . . [that] literacy is bound up with our identity and our practices”. They
note that different literacies can be used to present different identities (eg:
parent, teacher, band member). And they stress that the classroom is
simply one of many domains where literacy occurs, emphasizing that
popular culture “offers a range of ideas to link in with your students’
literacy experiences out of school”.


Milner and Milner comment on students as producers: “This kind of media
production has a natural appeal: It brings a cultural phenomenon to the
classroom that is familiar, persuasive, and powerful in the lives of most
students. They know this world intimately and can quickly understand and
manipulate media for a variety of purposes. . . . [A]sking students to be
producers invites them to be active language users”


Tierney, R. J (2007). New Literacy Leaning Strategies for New
Times.
Robleyer et al illustrate that students are far more open to using
technologies like Facebook than teachers/professors, despite the fact that
FB has “the potential to become a valuable resource to support their
educational communications” (134)


Weeks, P. (2003). Old literacies, new literacies, media literacies . .
Tierney: “Being literate means being able to make meanings while
probing ideas, solving problems, or pursuing new understandings.”


Milner and Milner (2008). Making Media Matter.
Weeks claims that “we truly are at a time when the whole structure of
communication is in a nascent stage and multiliterate skills are becoming
an essential human survival skill in the home, school and business worlds.
. . . ‘A one-medium user is the new illiterate’”.


Pahl, K. and Rowsell, J. (2005). The New Literacy Studies and
Teaching Literacy: Where we were and where we are going.
Roblyer, et al. “Findings on Facebook in higher education: A
comparison of college faculty and student uses and perceptions of
social networking sites”The Internet and Higher Education 13
(2010), 134-40
Messner’s article acknowledges the potential for technologies like
Facebook and Twitter, scrutinizes the fact that these have been banned in
many schools, and guides teachers in creating petitions to access and
include Facebook in the classroom

Messner, Kate. “Please to Tweet You: Making a Case for Twitter
in the Classroom”. School Library Journal 55 (2009), 44-7.

Selwyn 158: The prominence of SNSs in the lives of learners of all ages
has prompted great enthusiasm amongst some educators. It has been
claimed, for example, that social networking applications share many of
the desirable qualities of good ‘official’education technologies –
permitting peer feedback and matching the social contexts of learning such
as the school, university or local community’.

The conversational, collaborative and communal qualities of social
networking services are felt to ‘mirror much of what we know to be good
models of learning, in that they are collaborative and encourage active
participatory role for users’.

Selwyn, Neil. “Faceworking: Exploring Students' EducationRelated Use of ‘Facebook”Learning, Media and Technology 34
(2009), 157-74.
o What curriculum learning objectives you could link to your assessment.

Reading and Literature Studies

1.5 Extend understanding of both simple and complex texts by making connections
between the ideas in them and personal knowledge, experience, and insights; other texts;
and the world around them

1.6 Analyze the texts in terms of the information, ideas, issues, or themes they explore,
examining how various aspects of the texts contribute to the presentation or development
of these elements.

1.7 Evaluate the effectiveness of both simple and complex texts, using evidence from the
text to support their opinions

1.8 identify the perspectives and or biases evident in both the simple and complex texts
and comment on any questions that they may raise about beliefs, values, and identity.

Writing

2.2 Establish an identifiable voice in their writing, modifying language and tone to suit the
form, audience, and purpose for writing.

3.6 Use several different presentation features, including print and script, fonts, graphics,
and layout to improve the clarity and coherence of their written work and to engage their
audience

Media Studies

3.3 Identify several different conventions and/or techniques appropriate to a media form
they plan to use, and explain how these will help them communicate meaning

3.4 Produce media texts for several different purposes and audiences, using appropriate
forms, conventions, and techniques

4.1 describe several different strategies they used in interpreting and creating media texts,
explain which ones they found most helpful, and identify several specific steps they can
take to improve as media interpreters and producers

4.2 explain how their skills in listening, speaking, reading, and writing help them interpret
and product media texts

Demonstrate
o Using a brief activity, you will provide your colleagues with an opportunity to
experience how the assessment tool you have developed would be used and what
information it collects.

Provide
o Your colleagues with a handout that explains how to use the assessment tool and
that provides a brief summary of your presentation content. (Rather than making
copies for everyone, you can post your assessment handout on the wiki. I will
create a separate assessment page on the wiki.)
Presentation will be assessed using the following criteria:

Evidence of awareness of relevant professional/academic literature (10 marks)

Evidence of preparation and organization (10 marks)

Appropriateness and quality of assessment tool (10 marks)