Pre-Assessment Field Experience

Pre-Assessment Field Experience: Sage Creek High School

I conducted my Pre-Assessment Field Experience at Sage Creek High School, in Ms. Payne's class - 3rd period.  The students in this class are focused on college prep and range from grades 9-11.  There were 12 students in the class and all participated in the warm-up.  The classroom is on the third level of the building, with many windows and a central A/C system that kept the room very climate controlled.  The students are setup in classic rows and are allowed to have their phones on them in class.  Most students had earbuds in their ears when they came into the class, and had to be asked to remove them to participate.  There are little to no decorations on the wall, but the room is bright and promotes learning without distractions.  I conducted my warm up at the beginning of the class, before roll or any other preliminary steps were taken.

The warm up I chose to demonstrate was the KWL Chart for the Medieval Time Period.  I didn't show the clip of Game of Thrones as planned, as the students had never heard of the show and didn't seem interested.  In the future I am going to show a clip from Merlin or King Arthur--these stories are a bit more popular for all age groups.  Instead, we discussed some mythical stories from that time period that they were familiar with to lead into the KWL Chart.  Next, the students helped me filled in the first two sections of the KWL chart, leaving the "Learned" to be filled in later in the week during the lesson.  The students were active in their participation, but were a bit chatty as we went through the subject.  I think knowing that all we were doing was the warm up made them less interested in fully participating in the discussion, but overall we had a good list when we completed. 

The findings from the Pre-Assessment showed that students had covered the Medieval Period before, but did not retain much information; particularly about culture, clothing or literature.  The majority of the class could discuss monarchies in general and the basics of the social classes, but could not name the specific classes or discuss any particular monarchy.  Their History teacher was the substitute in the class this day, so this was a bit disappointing for him to hear.

The students were interested in learning about Old English (the language), crime and punishment of that time period (torturing), basic cultural concepts, issues of the time and how the monarchy affected wars/uprisings in that time period.

Overall, the student's level of knowledge was lower than I expected, which will force me to modify my presentation to be a bit more basic.  I also noticed that third period (right before lunch) seems to be an energetic time for the students, so I will need to make my presentation very interactive to keep their attention.  I am also planning on bringing in candy to help inspire the students to participate.  This is generally pretty effective in encouraging participation, as I have no final exam or grade that they are worried about.

The Pre-Assessment was a effective in gauging the student's knowledge of the subject matter, however I did not have an effective rubric in place to annotate student's participation in the activity.  I also did not have access to their seating chart to annotate who seemed to be lost/advanced in the subject area as well.  This data would have been helpful during the lesson to develop groups and draw out students that need extra time.  

Other than incorporating a different video, I wouldn't change this warm up activity much.  However, looking over my lesson plan, I did not have a clearly identifiable rubric for this activity, so I have created one below:

CATEGORY	4	3	2	1
Participation	Student routinely volunteers answers to questions and willingly tries to answer questions s/he is asked.	Student volunteers once or twice and willingly tries to all questions s/he is asked.	Student does not volunteer answers, but willing tries to answer questions s/he is asked.	Student does not willingly participate.

Students will receive a 1-4 grade on the their seating charts for participation in the Warm-Up/Pre-assessment.