Week 3 Reflection

With the end of week 3 we've reached basically the end of this first performance task (apart from their presentations and my grading of the papers). Although I still have many, many papers to grade there is a lot about this task I can evaluate now.

What worked:

• Grouping my EL students together. Usually I believe in heterogeneous groups, but since this task was focused on ultimately a single major project that was so reading and writing focused, I felt that grouping made sense. Looking back I still agree. It let these students support each other and also allowed me to have time each day to work with them as a group than I would have if I had to go to each student individually.
• Peer evaluation. I had initially planned on having students peer evaluate at different times, waiting until they were at the end of that part of the task before they got that feedback. And there is certainly logic to that. But in this task I had all my students peer evaluate at the same time. It allowed my students who were behind to see an example of someone who was further along, while still allowing those who were done to get feedback. Plus, those who were not done, had a more succinct list of expectations for the assignment. 
• Mini lessons. I included a few mini lessons throughout on credible sources, thinking maps, how to cite resources, and more. Although these were review for many students, there were certainly ones who were new to these concepts or just needed a refresher. 

What I'd do differently next time:

• Time. Next time I would focus on encouraging my students to be faster (to a degree). There are certainly students who I know spent longer researching than needed. The challenge is giving them as much time as they need, while making sure they are being effective in their use of time. 
• Conveying the importance of mastery. No matter how many times I went over the requirement for mastery (for us 80% or better on a task) I know there are students who still don't feel like it is really a requirement and probably won't until they see an impact on their grade. 

Overall:

I liked this task. I am a huge proponent of writing in science. It is something all science teachers already do, but also something we can be more deliberate about. This task did that by focusing on the steps before the final paper (such as collecting research and organizing that research), which was great for the students who don't yet have the skills to just tackle a research paper independently. Plus, it put value on those steps which means that a student could ultimately pass this assessment with those preliminary steps completed. This might seem counter intuitive as a positive in valuing writing, but if a student would likely be unsuccessful in writing the whole paper, they are at least getting something out of collecting good research and organizing that research into thinking maps.

One of the challenges in this task, compared to some of the others, is that it really was one progressive task and keeping up with grading each part was a challenge. Ultimately, I let the students move onto the next task (so if I was checking their research they could move on to the thinking maps) while I was grading. I was able to give back rubrics the next day, but it meant that students who ultimately needed to revise part of the task may have already moved onto the next part. It felt unavoidable to me without giving them busy work to complete until I gave them their score or having them sit doing nothing waiting for a grade. However, I think this contributed to some students' lack of personal buy in to the requirement of mastery.

Ultimately I look forward to grading their final papers. I have read bits and pieces here and there, but I always love see their interesting ideas and am constantly blown away by their skill in conveying their ideas through writing.