Assessment

=**Assessment Plan:**= Formative assessment will be conducted throughout the unit to check student learning and comprehension of the lessons. During the Introduction to Poetry mini-unit, the teacher will collect in-class work, quizzes, and poems that the students write to check for completion and the inclusion of literary elements as specified in each assignment. In this way, students will be held accountable for the work they are doing in the first two weeks. This will help ensure that students have a strong foundation both in their knowledge base and in the work they create before moving forward within the unit. The unit is broken into three additional mini-units, each focusing on a different poetic form paired with a common theme: Nature Haikus, War Free-form poems, and Love Sonnets. During each of these mini-units, teachers will frequently assess student learning to ensure that comprehension is occurring. This unit works because there is a system of built-in checks to make sure the students are keeping up with their work correctly. There is time for in-class assessment as the teacher circulates throughout the room to answer questions; assessment occurs outside of class when the teacher looks at the rough drafts of the students’ poems and other assignments that the students turn in. Each mini-unit has students analyze a sample poem written in that mini-unit’s form and then write a poem of their own in the same form. Each of these poems is turned in so that the teacher may verify the students’ understanding of the use and interpretation of each poetic form. If through these formative assessments the teacher realizes there are concepts that certain students or the whole class is struggling with, then she can remedy the situation with specific Overt Instruction addressing the issue. As an additional way of ensuring comprehension, students will take a second quiz during the War mini-unit to check for retention of everything that the unit has covered up to that point. At the end of the Unit, the final assessment will be an individual student portfolio, displaying all of the student’s work throughout the unit. The students will include all of the poems that they wrote throughout the unit, revising some to be included as finished work. This portfolio should show that the student understands the three forms of poetry and can create poems in each of the forms covered, plus other poetic forms.

=**Evaluation Plan:**= By collecting and revising assignments throughout the unit, both teachers and students will have many opportunities to check for comprehensive teaching and learning. The student will learn from teacher and peer feedback what can be done to improve her writing and analysis, while the teacher can see what concepts she needs to stress more heavily or differently to teach them effectively. At the end of the unit, the portfolios will be useful in reflecting on what the students have learned and what the teacher succeeded in teaching. The teacher will be able to look through the portfolios to see evidence that the students understand how to analyze and write poetry, and can make note of any lessons or concepts that were not grasped fully by the students. With this knowledge, the teacher can improve her lesson plans for this unit in the future, to insure that the lessons will be taught better the next time. At the end of this unit, student portfolios should show that students can write and understand Haiku, Free-form, and Sonnet poems. Students should display competence in following poetic form, structure, and characteristics in their original poems. By the end of this unit, students should have honed their close-reading abilities, helping them analyze all forms of literature in the future.