Teacher Life: Objective Summaries

Happy Teacher Tuesday!

Today I'm back with another teacher post.
I'm sharing how I have students create objective summaries in class.

If you're familiar with 8th grade ELA New Learning Standards, then you know one of those is having students create objective summaries or summaries that don't include opinions.

We've been working at this since the beginning of the year and are nearly to the finish line.
At first, I had students read an article with their paired reading partner and write an objective summary together.
We since have moved up to students reading an article with their paired reading partner and writing an objective summary on their own.

Last week I allowed students to determine if they were ready for the graded objective summary.
They could either read another article and do another practice writing an objective summary or choose the article that I've posted below and write a summary for a grade.
I let students have the authority in determining their readiness.
I feel that giving students more ownership and choice in their work and learning helps them to become more responsible and mature learners.

The article

A rubric that I will use to grade them, which also should be used by the student to help them write their summary.

Directions for the assignment.

Here's an example of one students summary and how I grade them.

Once I grade these and give them back, we will soon transition to students reading articles on their own and writing the summaries on their own.

I like to scaffold this type of learning, so that I'm not assessing the students reading comprehension along with their writing skills.
Overtime that ownership of reading/comprehending and writing is built together.

Teacher Life: Assessing Essays on EdCite

Today I'm sharing a little bit from my teacher life. 

I love using EdCite to assess students. 

If you haven't heard of EdCite, you need to hop over here and join now. 

It's completely free!

It makes online assessments that mirror state testing formats like PARCC and AIR. 

It has multiple select, select from the text, short answer and extended response question types. 

It also has the format where you can put multiple reading passages within one question. 

Today I wanted to show how I assess the essays that are on EdCite. 

Below you can see an example of the feedback that I give to the students. 

For this student, I had three things to write. 

I always try to find something positive to say about their essay, and then I add in what I want them to work on. 

Writing a five paragraph essay is hard work, even for adults. 

I find advice for improvement best received when students see that they've done something well first. 

Here's another example of a student's response. 

This student did a fabulous job and wouldn't have as many comments from me!

From there I keep track of a goal that I've given the students. 

I give one goal at time. 

Who wants to try to remember and work on five different things?!

While a student probably has many errors in their paper, I choose one major error and create a goal for them. 

Once a student masters that goal, I will give them a new goal. 

Below you can see goals that I gave students from an essay they wrote back in December. 

In this next picture you can see the comments I made about students algae essay. 

I didn't really give students new goals for this writing assignment. 

A few students did master their previous goal, so I did give them a new one, but for the most part I'm seeing students need to practice the old goal that I gave them. 

So, instead of giving a new goal I wrote down things that I student needs to improve and any areas that they did exceptionally well. 

This format of keeping track of what the students do well and giving them one goal at a time has really seemed to work well in my classroom. 

Writing is a constant area in need of improvement for my students. 

I've vowed to increase the amount of writing that they will do for the rest of the year. 

I think as we increase the amount of time that they write through journals, in response to questions, on essays and analysis that their writing will improve. 

I, also, think it is critical that I provide feedback to them on each of these writing assignments. 

This week I will supplement their writing goals with some practice on their current goals using No Red Ink. 

Next time on Teacher Life I will share how I tie in No Red Ink with their writing goals.