Planning & Instruction
Planning for a collaborative teaching experience to develop a local common assessment is a critical piece of the work. To guide you, a process is described below. You may need to adjust these steps depending on where you begin on the Collaboration Rubric. The model is one of "planning backwards".
Developing Collaborative Units & Authentic Assessments by Gerry Crocker
- Start with an essential question to guide your work. An overarching or central question can help focus students on where you are going with the curriculum. Choose a broad theme that will pull together key learningnt to target. Good questions lead to multiple entry points, are relevant, go beyond the classroom and have no one right answer.
- Determine what Maine Learning Results you want to target with this unit, both for content and for information literacy skills. Use the question: What do I want students to know and be able to do at the conclusion of this unit? to help you identify the essential standards for your unit.
- Decide what the final assessment will be for students to demonstrate their learning and write a product descriptor. What multiple intelligences are required? You may want to provide options or you may feel that one certain type of assessment best suits the assignment. Consider why one assessment works better than another. Look at the big picture and be sure you are providing opportunities for different styles to emerge throughout the year ptor provides details about exactly what students are to produce.
- Design a rubric for evaluating the essential skills and knowledge of the assessment. At this point, you are focusng on the criteria you outlined in 1 and 2. It may include attitudes, behaviors and critical thinking skills, and conceptual knowledge. Depending on the type of assessment, it may also include criteria focused on the quality of the product. Your rubric should also include the degree to which students are demonstrating these criteria. If you have examples from past classess, you could ask your students to determine what a high quality product looks like and enlist their input in completing the rubric. It's a great homework assignment! (See the Assessment page for more information on rubric development).
- Determine the specific activities and a timeline to support the sucess of your final assessment and the ultimate answering of the essential question. To achieve a higher degree of collaboration, the teacher(s) and media specialist could introduce the unit together. Develop research guides that require students to conference at key points in their research, and make them accountable to either the classroom teachers or the media specialist. One way is to require that students get a signature before continuing in the process. (See sample research guide) Other ideas include checklists and logs. All of these tools provide opportunities for formative assessment and can in included in the final grade.
- Detail the organization of students and resources for your unit. Use this checklist to help:
- _____Have you determined how students will be grouped if at all?
- _____Have you included individual accountability as well as group success?
- _____Do students have all the requirements on the first day?
- _____Have you given them a timeline?
- _____Have you determined how the products will be presented?
- _____Do you evaluate process and product?
- _____Have you provided differentiation for learners in process and/or product?*
*i.e. Differentiation might include: open-ended questions that allow varied entry points. Student choice over a number of different topics. Varied options for students to demonstrate their learning.
Back to the top
