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Julie Aldrich
Dr. McCarthy
CIE 685
May 1, 2013













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In preparing for this assignment I did a lot of reflecting on my teaching style. I
taught third grade for 10 years and spent 2 years in fourth grade. In thinking about my
teaching across both grades and all subjects, I noticed that I tend to begin each lesson
with whole group direct instruction. Usually, I move into a cooperative group or some
type of collaborative work and end with some individual practice. I prefer to have my
students moving and active throughout my lessons and working with others. Over the
course of my career, I have been very fortunate to be exposed to a myriad of various
teaching strategies and techniques via lesson studies and projects through MASE and
CPD.
This year I made a move from being a regular classroom teacher to being the
Library Media Specialist at my school. It has been an exciting change, but has really
made me much more aware of my teaching style and effectiveness. It was not too long
into the school year that I realized that you need to take a very different approach when
teaching 30 first graders than you do when teaching 35 fifth grade students. One
frustration that I have had all year is in the area of assessment. In the past, I had my
students for the entire day and five days a week. I was constantly able to teach and
reteach concepts that I knew students needed. Additionally, I always felt as though I had
a clear idea of the ability levels and strengths for each student. This is far from true for
me as an educator now. I teach over 800 students each week and only interact with them
for about 50 minutes each week. Within those fifty minutes, I only take between 20-30
minutes to teach my lesson so that students are able to have enough time to select and
check out new books. My struggle this year has been in getting the most learning as I can
work into a short amount of time and include all of the components of an effective lesson.
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I noticed very early in the school year that the area I was lacking in, or not getting to was
assessment. Although many librarians do not include this piece in their daily lessons, it is
important to me, especially as a new librarian, so that I am able to get a true picture of
how effective each lesson is with each student I see.
For this action research project I chose to try a new type of assessment that would
give me a quick and reliable look at what students have learned while they were in my
class that day. I chose to use an assessment that I had not used before. I found this
strategy in an assessment section of a packet on reciprocal teaching. The literacy coach
at my school received the packet at a differentiated instruction seminar that she attended
earlier in the school year. The assessment strategy is called Facts in Five. The activity
works as follows:
1. Have students individually generate a personal list of the five most important
concepts that they have learned about the current topic.
2. Have students move into groups of five.
3. Have the group reach a consensus on the five most important facts or concepts
and clarify their rationale for selecting each.
4. Have each student go back to their own seat and create a final personal list of
most important concepts about the current topic. Students will include their
rationale for selecting these facts.

I used this assessment as a culminating activity and final grade for a 3 part lesson
I taught with third grade students on plagiarism. The first time they came to class I read
them a book called, When Marion Copied. We discussed the story and defined
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plagiarism at length. The lesson focused on ways which students plagiarize both
knowingly and unknowingly and also the consequences. The second lesson focused on
taking a look at various scenarios which involve plagiarism. Students worked to decide
whether children in each scenario did something wrong or were innocent. The third
lesson focused on how to paraphrase rather than copy word for word from a book or
website. My plan was to use the Facts in Five strategy to assess how much students
learned over the course of the 3 weeks of lessons. I had not used this strategy for
assessment before as it is something that I had not heard of prior to this time. Since
moving into the library, I was relying heavily on a ticket out the door and an occasional
performance assessment to assess my students. After a while, it seemed as though I
needed to spice it up a bit and try something new. This new idea made me a bit nervous.
I was worried that every student would have nothing to share and say. I hoped that too
much time hadnt passed by and that students would forget what we had learned a week
ago. I was also nervous that I would find out that absolutely no one was listening and
learning the concepts that I was trying to shove into a 20-30 minute lesson. My hope was
that since the activity had some individual response time and collaborative time, that all
students would have a leveled playing field, meaning that even the kids who were
struggling to think of anything at the beginning, may learn something while sharing with
their group.
I was surprised to see that the same thing happened with each class. I told the
students that I would be assessing what they had learned over the past three weeks about
plagiarism. I quickly reviewed the three activities that we had participated in, and then
proceeded to give students the directions for the activity. As I expected, some students
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got right to work and wrote down their ideas with no hesitation. Others took awhile to
get going. Eventually, most students had a good start and were able to share their ideas
with others. Although I had told students that this activity was an assessment, I do not
think that they really felt as though it was. They had fun and did not stress about it at all.
The results were similar to what I would expect with any traditional pencil and paper
assessment. Some students were very articulate and found this to be an easy assignment,
whereas some students had nothing on their paper in spite of the fact that we had shared
with a small group of students.
I think that this activity is a wonderful alternate to giving students a typical and
traditional summative assessment. Students reacted well to it because it wasnt dry and
boring as tests can sometimes be. I liked it because it gives students a chance to talk with
others and confirm their thoughts before writing their ideas down for a grade. Since I do
not know student ability levels as well as their regular classroom teacher, this worked
well for me because it felt as though it leveled the playing field for many students to be
able to work collaboratively for a bit. This is an activity that I will use again. It was not
too time intensive and did give me a good grasp of who really understood the concepts I
had been teaching. It helped me to realize that I could assess students in a short amount
of time in an authentic and meaningful way.