Ms. Frick's Teaching Portfolio

Rather than giving a test or some other boring, one-dimensional assignment for their Fairy Tale Unit summative assessment, I designed it around creation - the highest level of Bloom’s taxonomy. It only made sense to have the unit culminate in creation, after we had moved up through many of the levels of the taxonomy. In the beginning of the unit we started with identifying elements of the genre and plot parts, then we moved on to analysis of things like symbols, theme, and plot comparisons. We had also used evaluation as we explored character motivations for actions in the stories. The project was worth 50 points and called on the students to demonstrate their understanding of unit objectives such as elements of the genre, persuasive techniques, and most importantly, portrayal of theme. Students worked in assigned groups of ~3. Every single student was actively engaged in the creation of the trailer, whether they were acting, directing, editing, or doing all three. We used a website called "Stupeflix" to film and edit the trailers, and the project was even highlighted on the East Hills Middle School Twitter page! 

​

A note on the rubric: 

I thought very carefully about my rubric design - I wanted to ensure that they were being graded on both effort and quality of work, as well as participation. So, I split the rubric into three categories: Content, quality, and participation. Content is weighted the most, because it contains the “meat” that will let me know if they understand the unit objectives. Participation is worth the second highest amount of points, and I am including a grade for both group participation as a whole (meeting daily quotas and using time wisely) and individual focus and contribution (putting in an equal effort). I kept track of this by making notes on a clipboard based on my observations as they worked on it the next few days. The least weighted part of the rubric was the quality part, and I explained that it didn’t need to look professional, but it should be readable and audible so that the content can be understood. The detailed rubric was a great tool for diverse learners because I wrote everything out in an easy to follow chart format and also elaborated on it verbally so that there was no confusion on what was being expected.

​