​​​​Jason Wakeman​

While assessing front loading assignments, especially individual assignments like the second thematic analysis graphic organizers for my seniors described in the last artifact, I look for a number of things. Firstly, I look for recurring misunderstandings. More often than not most of the students in the class will have difficulty with a specific part of the task and this makes for excellent material for future lessons. My seniors, for example, struggled with describing how their themes interacted to produce a different meaning. Once they had described their two themes, they had exhausted most of what they had to say. In subsequent lessons we discussed working backwards, placing the dense interesting material at the end of their analysis and filling out the rest by breaking that down. 

 

Secondly, I also look for students who are struggling with the task. When I notice a student is struggling, I mark the assignment out in highlighter in my gradebook. Looking at the second page of the PDF linked to the right, you will notice that I have marked out a number of students under "thematic analysis practice #2." I pick these out after reviewing the individual thematic analysis outlines our sophomores put together during the frontloading sequence in second quarter.

 

Based on these highlights I was able to group these students in the front half of the classroom, ensuring that I could realistically work with the majority of them during a lesson. These highlights also served as a guide dictating where I should spend my time during group and individual instruction. Whenever I wasn't working with the class as a whole, I could refer back to my highlights and check-in with those students to see if they needed additional help. 

 

Having a guide to which students need additional help becomes especially crucial when students begin working on culminating projects. Using formative assessments like these I can construct whole workshop groups of struggling students. As long as other groups are able to work independently, I can spend the majority of my time during these workshops giving extensive feedback to struggling students.