Artifacts

Not only has our school finished our first project, the Earth Science/Photography collaboration, we are also most of the way through our Poetry Map project, with all field trips for that project also completed. We have a lot of different classes involved, with a lot of different goals, and that means a lot of different assessment strategies! Great ideas and conversations are swirling around our school lately.

For Earth Science, we have tried to be as direct as possible. The task was broken down into small steps, each of which were assessed individually. This allowed students to feel small successes along the way to achieving a larger goal. When it came to the end of the project, students compiled their small steps and had all of the information needed to produce a quality product. 

Photography students had a much simpler task for the GeoTour project; working as a photographer, they produced images to meet the goals of the client, the Earth Science class. Students were assessed using a rubric and reflection form (pictured above) that they were familiar with. This made for really valuable discussion about how the assignment was similar and different from previous ones, and how the client relationship effected this. 

The Poetry Map project is in the final stretch with students from grade 8-11 at our school. This has meant a variety of assessment tools and strategies as expectations increase through those grades; above is an outline and rubric that a teacher used with Grade 9s. Using different criteria and assessment strategies with different grades has allowed us to include much of our school in the activity and produce different products from one experience. Seeing the variety of interpretations has been enriching for our whole school. 

Lots of learning has happened and been assessed in different ways through these projects, touching almost all students in our school.