New Year, New Me! A Lesson for Reflective and Self-directive Thinking

I'm usually not too big on resolutions--as I generally fall off whatever wagon I started off on by February--but then I began thinking about them in terms of self-assessment. After all, isn't that essentially what resolutions are? They represent something about ourselves that we've determined needs a bit work. I dutifully started to make my regular go-to list, and then I wondered--Why not make them in lesson plan form, modeling the skills of self-assessment, reflection, and self-directive thinking for high school students in English Language Arts?

Resolutions are somewhat like a formative assessments, designed to help us see where we need to "re-teach" ourselves using self-direction. Where do I need to reteach myself as it pertains to my thinking? Where would my students need to reteach themselves as it pertains to their respective approaches to thinking, in general (and by default, learning)? I selected the 16 Habits of Mind as a theoretical foundation for this lesson as these impact how we learn and if we learn.  

“New Year, New Me!”

Resources: Habits of Mind   

Applicable Standards: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.9-10.1;CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.9-10.2;CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.9-10.4;CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.9-10.6 AND/OR CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.9-10.4;CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.9-10.5; CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.9-10.6

Objectives:

By the end of this lesson, participants will be able to:

•  identify two Habits of Mind (HOMs) that they wish to improve upon.
•  provide two evidenced-based reasons for why they wish to improve on each HOM.
• provide a short definition of each HOM in their own words, using one analogy per definition.
• identify at least five points of criteria for each of the two selected HOMs that answer the question How can I tell that a person has achieved this HOM?
•  write at least one goal for each selected HOM that reflects all aspects of SMART criteria.

Lesson Outline:

Intro Hook:

Trivia question/discussion starter: When did people first start making New Year’s resolutions?

·         Ask question or have it up on the board for a bell activity.

·         Discuss possibilities/open discussion

Segue:

·         Short discussion: Why make resolutions?

·         Presentation of teacher model of New Year, New Me! Why HOMs are being used as a framework (as opposed to general resolutions)

Activities:

·         Provide copies of HOMs and SMART criteria (or present on whiteboard) as well as the HOM brainstorming worksheet.

·         Jot down what they think they might want to work on for their resolutions.

·         Have students work in pairs or small groups (no more than four) to complete their reasons, definitions, points of criteria, and goals.

Follow up (block scheduling) or Homework (standard scheduling):

·         Develop an essay or a video podcast that explains what HOMs you’ve chosen, how and why you determined these would be your focus, your SMART goals, and how you know that they will help you

Assessment Rubric:

	Superior	Above-average	Average	Needs Further Development
Identifies personal HOMs to work on for the New Year	HOMs identified are both relevant and authentic and unmistakably  indicate reflective thought	HOMS identified are either relevant or authentic, but indicate reflective thought	HOMs identified are either relevant or authentic and may or may not indicate reflective thought	HOMs identified do not indicate relevance, authenticity, and/or reflective thought
Identifies reasons for selected HOMs	Reasoning reflects all of the critical thinking criteria: clear, precise, accurate, relevant, significant, authentic, and unmistakably reflect depth	Reasoning reflects most of the critical thinking criteria: clear, precise, accurate, relevant, significant, authentic, and reflect depth	Reasoning reflects some of the critical thinking criteria.	Reasoning reflects only one or two of the critical thinking criteria
Defines selected HOMs	Definitions are valid and relevant and indicate reflective thought	Definitions are valid and relevant, but may not indicate reflective thought	Definitions are valid and/or relevant	Definitions do not reflect validity or relevance
Establishes criteria for selected HOMs	Established criteria are clear and relevant and unmistakably indicate reflective thought	Established criteria are clear or relevant and indicate some reflective thought	Established criteria are either clear or relevant, but indicate minimal reflective thought	Established criteria do not reflect clarity, relevance, or reflective thought
Develops SMART goal for selected HOMs	Developed goal clearly reflects all SMART criteria, in additional to being unmistakably logical in application to selected HOMs	Goal reflects SMART criteria, but they are either not clearly logical or applicable to the selected HOMs	Goal reflects most of the SMART criteria, but they are neither logical nor applicable to selected HOMs	Goal reflects some of the SMART criteria, but are neither logical nor applicable to selected HOMs
Presentation of New Year, New Me!	Writes a reflective essay (standard essay format) or develops a video podcast (standard speech format) that clearly expresses what HOMs the student selected, why, and how he/she intends to reach them; presentation reflects creativity and exceptional writing or speaking skills	Writes a reflective essay (standard essay format) or develops a video podcast (standard speech format) that expresses what HOMs the student selected, why, and how he/she intends to reach them, but some points may be unclear; presentation reflects above-average writing or speaking skills	Writes a reflective essay (standard essay format) or develops a video podcast (standard speech format) that expresses what HOMs the student selected, why, and how he/she intends to reach them, but presentation may be unclear and may reflect lack of organization or some language errors	Writes a reflective essay (standard essay format) or develops a video podcast (standard speech format) that expresses what HOMs the student selected, why, and how he/she intends to reach them, but presentation is unclear and disorganized, with some language errors

Exit Ticket:

·         On sticky notes (or perhaps via a quick google survey), students anonymously answer the following question and post their responses in designated area: To what degree or extent do I think this assignment is relevant to my life, and why do I think that?

To print out this lesson plan separately, click on this link.

 Let me know what you think! : )

Wishing you well this season!

A Formative Assessment Strategy for Essays

It’s enough to drive you insane. You provide students with copious notes on their rough drafts and essays. They make some revisions, but ugh…it takes for-EV-er to work through them.   

I worked out a strategy that helped me formatively assess essays so that it not only saved me time, but it also put the “workload” on the student. Don’t sit there and mark up the whole paper! Have the student systematically work through revisions! 

The general method is to assess in terms of existence of a category (Is there a thesis?) to evaluating the quality of the writing in that category (How effective is the conclusion?)  Whatever issue you find that is at the “top” of the prioritization of categories is what the student will work on.

I’ve created this INTERACTIVE TOOL to help you train your brain to prioritize writing issues. Think of it like…an interactive flowchart. 

Yes, there will be a lot of back and forth between you and the student as you wait for him/her to submit a revision. Consider, though, that the review of each essay will most likely move from 15-30 minutes per essay to about 2 minutes per because you’re only identifying and focusing on the most pressing issue. The more you work with the strategy and get used to the prioritization of categories, the faster you’ll get. That “back and forth” is also they key to helping students write more effectively.

You’ll notice, once you’re working with it, that you don’t deal with any grammar, mechanics, or usage errors (lower-order concerns) until AFTER the student’s higher-order concerns are in-place. Here’s why:

  

Students tend to find errors when they go back to revise other things.

Of course, that’s not always the case, but generally speaking, students will “see” things once they’ve had a respite from working on the writing. Thus, you will have given them more opportunities to correct those issues on their own. It also takes a little bit of the stress away from writing, allowing them an opportunity to focus on their thinking before dealing with issues of correctness.

Let me know what you think of this FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT TOOL FOR ESSAYS and the strategy! I’d love your feedback! Feel free to share it as you wish—we’re all in this together!