On Pre-Assessments and Rubrics.

Setting

I conducted my pre-assessment with my beginning acting class, a mix of mostly freshmen and sophomores with a few juniors and seniors jumbled in. None of them have taken drama before, though two of them are technicians who are enrolled in my advanced technical theatre course. I have 32 students in the class, 5 of which are EL students, 4 of which are designated GATE, and 5 of which have 504 plans or IEPs.

This class takes place first period, at 7:30 in the morning. This is a difficult time for teenagers to learn, so I start every class with a series of stretches and warm-ups to help them be present and engaged. After about ten minutes of activities to wake-up their physical, vocal, and kinesthetic responses, I told them we would be engaging in a pre-assessment activity to "check in on where we are as a class."

A hand shot up immediately. "Is this going to be graded?"

"No, I'm just trying to figure out what we know and don't know yet."

Another voice. "Assessment? Like a test?"

"Uh, no, not quite," I hadn't expeted them to react so strongly to the term "Pre-Assessment"!

"Because we do Pre-Tests in Geometry and they suuuuuuck." Ah-ha. I had hit upon it--"Pre-Assessment" already meant something to them, and it wasn't positive. I had to pedal down a different road.

"Well, this isn't a Pre-Test, and it isn't graded. And hopefully you won't think it 'sucks.' It's more like...like I'm taking the class's temperature. Are we warm, are we cool, what do we need to all come together and feel like a nice San Diego 72 degrees." They smiled at that.

Pre-Assessment

My initial pre-assessment activity was very low-stakes:

Have students go to the bookshelves and grab a play they think looks interesting (may take 5 minutes or more). Have them page through the scripts, getting familiar with the font, the size, the formatting. Have them write any questions they have on post-it notes and stick them on the board. Answer all questions. Focus on format. Ask: What’s different about plays versus novels, poems, or nonfiction books?

My first instinct was to completely overhaul this activity in the prep period before my class started. I was second-guessing the effectiveness of the entire exercise: the students would be disengaged, would learn nothing, would refuse to participate! All I could think of was the worst-case scenario.

Ultimately, I realized this moment was my pre-assessment. I needed to trust in the process, trust in my students, and let go of the perfectionist impulse to get teaching "right". I needed to lean into the learning--after all, I'm learning, too!

 

Pre-Assessment Findings

The good news is that my students did participate--and participate fully! While a few students hung back and did not approach the bookshelves with the same enthusiasm as their peers, everyone eventually found a text they were content to flip through.

And flip through.

And flip through.

Many of the students got caught up in the story very quickly--they began to read the plays! What a funny problem to have. I reminded the class to approach the board and begin to fill it with their findings, but the questions were very specific to each text as a singular piece of literature. They were not connecting to the universality of plays as a type of text, they were advancing to the story.

I had to write the first note on the board myself. "Plays > Books because they don't take as long to read." That got a laugh from my students. A few of them began to write observations on the board. "No surprise characters in a play" "Less descriptive than books" "italics". The board slowly grew.

A few of the kids wrote nothing, but watched their peers and nodded as salient points and valid questions were scrawled.

Effectiveness of Pre-Assessment 

I was fairly happy with the way the pre-assessment activity turned out! We had a crazy mind map on the board in all sorts of fun colors. The students felt free to write "silly" questions that they might not have in a class discussion ("What's en mean??" Answer: Enter). I got a good sense of the class dynamics and where their content-area learning melds and merges. Since ours is a collaborative practice, a collaborative pre-assessment felt good.

This style of pre-assessment, however, does not allow me to track individual progress the same way as a quiz or other independent "pre-test" would.

 

Effectiveness of Rubric, and Amendments 

I didn't have a rubric going into this pre-assessment, because the nature of the activity was collaborative. However, I now think that I would amend this and first have the kids rank themselves on a rubric of 1-5:

5    I know a lot about plays and feel very comfortable talking about their content and conventions.

4    I know a fair amount about plays and feel comfortable talking about their content and conventions.

3    I know some things about plays and could talk about their content or conventions.

2    I know a small amount about plays and might be able to talk about their content or conventions.

1    I know very little about plays and am not able to talk about their content or conventions.

After the pre-assessment activity, I would ask kids to rank themselves again on the rubric and see if they felt more confident after the "group mind-meld" activity.

The rubric also gives me a way to gauge the class as a whole--are they comfortable talking about content and conventions, or are they very confused and unable to discuss at that level?

Conclusion / Next Steps

I'm excited to use group-based collaborative pre-assessments throughout my course; I think that it helps the class see how much their collective brain knows. I think individual students can slip through the cracks in activities like this, and the self-check rubric can hopefully help connect the dots and point me towards those students who may need more support.