English Language Arts Exemplar

English Language Arts Exemplar

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The unit I’ve devised for my matrix is for teaching A Separate Peace by John Knowles to a mixed ability tenth grade class at HomesteadHigh School in Cupertino. I have designed three block period lessons which cover the first week of instruction. The object of my unit is to align curriculum, instruction, assessment, and students (CIAS).

Big Ideas

“Who am I and what is my role in society?” That is the overarching essential question that guides the sophomore World Literature classes at HomesteadHigh School where I teach. Tracking this common thread across literary genres, students determine how the events in our life shape our existence, behavior, and characters. Because of thisexisting link between literature and personal identity, I’ve formulated essential questions for my unit that not only explore the major themes of the novel I’m teaching, but can also be directly applied to students’ own lives and the larger question of “Who am I?” In the novelA Separate Peace, a teenage boy indirectly causes the death of his best friend—an idealistic symbol of innocence in a war-torn world, because of his jealousy and insecurity and, fifteen years later, must examine his motivation. As part of this unit, I will ask my students to explore personal identity as it relates to hovering on the brink of adulthood and navigating through adolescent relationships and self-examination.

The essential questions for this unit—which pertain to friendship, envy, evil, and self-discovery, satisfy all six of Wiggins’s criteria. As he stipulates, the essential questions have no obvious right answer. Rather, the answers are based on analysis of texts and personal beliefs and vary from one student to the next. Because students evaluate situations and characters, using their own judgment to formulate answers, the questions comply with Bloom’s “higher-order” thinking skills. Additionally, these questions about human nature arise naturally and sustain student interest, as they can be directly related to students’ own lives and relationships. Finally, the essential questions for the unit lie at the heart of the discipline of literature, which studies the human experience, and naturally give rise to other essential questions such as “If there is ‘evil in every human heart,’ how do we curtail it?”

Skills and Standards

The standards and objectives for the unit clearly relate back to the essential questions because they demand that students analyze the themes of the novel and then connect them to their own lives. Because the universal themes students are analyzing effectively mirror many of the essential questions, there is a natural link. Correlating to the essential question about personal identity, another objective is for students to analyze the novel’s main characters and their development over time. My standards rank high on Bloom’s taxonomy as they require analysis of themes, evaluation of characters and motivation, and self-application. Furthermore, the objectives fulfill Bond’s criteria of utility, durability, and transferability because they personally engage students by asking them to analyze themes and situations that can be applied to their own lives and to other novels and movies; thus, learning is not limited solely to the classroom.

Student and Family Knowledge

Obviously, one of my main goals in teaching literature to students, and in this unit, is to have the kids personally connect with the text. I don’t want them to think of this as a “boring” book with no relation to theirexperiences. Because the novel is not contemporary but is set 65 years ago during World War II, at a private boarding school and not a public school, and in a racially homogenous East coast town, not in diverse California, I’ve created objectives and essential questions that consistently tap into my students’ interests and experiences. These are the universal ideas about being a young person, becoming an adult, forming friendships, and developing an identity that are common to most teenagers.

To trace students’ personal views on various such issues, I will have them complete an anticipation guide before beginning the novel andthen discuss their thoughts on these essential questions in small groups. This will allow me to see what the class as a whole is bringing into their reading of the novel. As for the students’ skills at analyzing literature, I have already assessed their general strengths and weaknesses based on past work and have tailored my instruction and assignments in this unit to aidstudents in their comprehension of the novel.

Assessment

During the first week of instruction highlighted in the unit planning matrix, all my assessments are formative—formaland informal, and allow me to gauge students’ prior knowledge, their skills at analysis, and their comprehension of the novel’s plot and characters, and instruct me as to how I can modify my curriculum based on their understanding. Because each lesson of my unit involves several cooperative learning activities such as group discussion, much of my observation and assessment of the students is informal. I will walk around the classroom and monitor my students’ discussions, help them stay on track,and guide them with questions. My aim for these discussionsis that all students can safely discuss their views without fear of embarrassment, can test out their theories and ideas on peers, and can engage with the novel.

Though such an informal assessment is highly practical and can be done easily in a short amount of time, it is not entirely reliable. For one, a teacher can only monitor one group at a time and is therefore unable to assess what the other five groups in the class are discussing. Also, not all students will speak all at once, and the instructor may only hear a handful of students’ ideas. Therefore, this type of informal assessment lacks consistency. I believe that the monitoring of group discussion is a valid assessment however, because,overall,it measures that students are in fact discussing the novel. Additionally, it allows the teacher to provide groups with explicit and immediate feedback.

Every lesson of my unit also involves a more formal, formative assessment. In the first lesson, for example, student groups discuss one of five essential questions for the unit and then present their ideas out to the class using butcher paper to create a visual or a graphic organizer. The next day, groups present the visual symbols they have created for their characters after a close reading and analysis of several passages. Both these presentations and products allow the teacher to assess how adept students are at analysis and extension and to offer comments immediately.

Along with these oral/visual assessments, students complete formal written assignments also. The paragraph about a conflict with a friend and the journal entry about a memorable, idyllic timemeasure how well students are connecting their own lives to the text and to the essential questions—a major objective for the unit. The graphic organizer which compares the protagonist at different stages of his life shows the teacher how well students are mastering the skills of character analysis and close reading. Finally, the Study Guide questions and students’ list of themes provide a way for the teacher to individually assess students’ understanding of the themes of the novel. I will read all these formal assessments and return them to students with comments about their comprehension or areas for improvement. While this is time-consuming, I think it’s especially important at the beginning of the unit so that students have a firm grip on the major elements of the novel.

The “Who is Most Likely to…” quiz from the matrix asks students to determine which of the four characters studied will engage in which behavior or activity and why. Though the quiz is subjective and not reliable or standardized, it shows me that students have completed a basic initial character analysis and have participated in their group discussions.

I will use all of the assessments above to evaluate how I can modify my instruction to suit my students’ needs. If they are having trouble with a concept, I can teach it in a different way, perhaps by showing a video clip or playing a song that relates to a theme, or by creating a graphic organizer that scaffolds for the students. If students are easily grasping the material, I will include more challenging or research-based assignments.

All these formative assessments are directly aligned with the essential questions and objectives because they consistently require students to analyze characters, explore themes from the novel, and connect the text with their own life. Furthermore, the formative assessments help build toward the two major summative assessments near the end of the unit. The first is a unit test with multiple choice questions on various literary elements (plot, setting, character, point-of-view, theme, foreshadowing, etc.) and short answer questions asking students to compare and contrast, assess, and evaluate. The second major summative assessment is an analytical essay in which students explore a theme from the novel or trace the development of a character and show how his growth contributes to a theme.