Shiloh Unit Plan Assessment Ideas?

[MsK]

Hello all,

I am new to the community and am completing my student teaching in the spring. I am in an initial/professional program and will be earning both my certification and my Master's in NY. I am student teaching in a 4th grade in which I observed all last semester therefore I am familiar with the students already. I begin my first unit, an ELA unit on the book Shiloh, on January 5th.

I have created a Shiloh journal for the students. Each day is a new topic based on the reading they were assigned the night before (setting, characterization, central theme of honesty, point of view, etc.). Students answer one question as homework which pertains to the topic being discussed the next day in class. In addition, I have a vocabulary word of the day for each night's reading in which students are encouraged to make an educated guess as to what the word means. We will then discuss the word's dictionary definition in class. Finally, because the chapters do not have titles I will have the students create titles for each chapter that they read. I was told by my cooperating teacher that the students love to do this! After reading the book, students will view the movie in class. On this day I will bring in snacks for each student and after viewing the movie we will complete a Venn diagram comparing and contrasting the movie to the book as a class. The unit is 10 days long.

My question is what should I do as a formative assessment for this unit? I would like to offer students a choice as to what their project will be and provide rubrics for each of the choices so that students will be aware of how they will be graded prior to creating their project. I would also like to provide the assignment sheet at the beginning of the unit so that parents are aware that their child will be creating some type of project. I don't want to assign anything too difficult or time consuming because I know that families have busy lives! Short and simple...something that can be completed over a weekend. Any suggestions?

[shouldbeasleep]

The formative assessments would be done through out the unit. So if I'm picturing this correctly, the journal answers would be the formative. They read, they reflect on a skill, you assess their understanding by reading the journal.

A summative assessment sounds like what you want to come up with. That would be a project for the book, usually done after the book is completed to assess understanding of all the skills and the comprehension of the story.

I think some kind of flip book or foldable that has a space for answers to each of the major skills--
* What three character traits can you assign to Marty? What does he do, say, or think that leads you to assign each trait?
* What part does the setting play in the book? Think about what would change if the setting where in a different time or place.
* What do you think is the major problem or conflict in the story? Explain why you think so.

Etc. Whatever skills you taught can be put into somekind of foldable.

You can get some ideas of foldables from Dinah Zike, Homeschool Share,

And some ideas of questions--resource centre: 100 things to do with books, Busy Teacher's Cafe,

unit on Shiloh--http://www.mce.k12tn.net/units/units_with_books.htm

Good luck, (Love that book)