Ongoing Assessments In addition, the unit includes several formative assessments. These are designed to be entirely optional opportunities that you can use to check in around the work students are doing, and they include suggested next steps that can inform future teaching and learning. Reading Workshop: In Bend I, we’ve suggested a time where you can collect students’ concept maps and study them to deter- mine students’ current understandings and misunderstandings about plants. In Bend II, you’ll channel students to create a written summary of a text. You can collect these summaries and use them to plan responsive small group instruction. In Bend III, your students will read aloud, and we’ve provided support for assessing their fluency and using this to determine next steps for instruction as you move into Unit 3. Read-Aloud: In Bend I, you’ll share a short-response question based on a read-aloud text and invite students to answer the question and to provide specific details from the text to support their answers. You’ll collect students’ responses, and you can choose to assess these. You will also study students’ additions to the class concept map, using their suggestions to identify and address any misunderstandings. In Bend II, you’ll invite students to compare and contrast two texts you’ve read aloud: a poem and an informational article, crafting a response about how the content of the two texts is similar and different. You might choose to extend the session and ask students to respond to the prompt in writing, so you can more easily determine next steps. Consider the demands of your state standardized test as you make this decision. Bend III ends with a culminating activity in which students are invited to invent a new plant species that’s specially adapted to a local habitat, drawing on all they have learned about plant adaptations. An included rubric allows you to assess students’ knowledge of the topic and use of topic vocabulary, as well as students’ ability to plan a speech with a claim and reasons and to confidently deliver that speech. Vocabulary Extensions: Bends I and II of the vocabulary extensions end with a brief formative assessment, which will help you to determine students’ mastery over new words. In Bend I, students use new words with partnerships across a variety of contexts. In Bend II, students self-assess their vocabulary learning and set goals for words they want to learn more deeply. Bend III ends with a summative assessment. You’ll share a Vocabulary Recognition Task, channeling students to identify and sort words that relate to the class research topic: plant adaptations. You and your colleagues can decide to add additional formative assessments, as needed. For instance, if a question you pose orally during read-aloud resembles the questions students will encounter on your state standardized test, you might occasion- ally ask students to respond to those questions in writing, collecting their responses and studying them to determine next steps.
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Unit 2 • Reading Nonfiction Text Sets: Plants and Their Adaptations
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