Ghs Portfolio Standard 4

Standard IV: Teachers continually assess student progress, analyze the results,
and adapt instruction to improve student achievement.
Reflection is a key component to being a strong teacher. Upon assessing student work,
it is always necessary to reflect on what concepts your students have mastered and
what concepts with which they need additional support. Everything goes back to my
students and how I am helping them learn and achieve more in my classroom.
Throughout my year at Gaithersburg High School, I have assessed students in multiple

ways. These assessments included a variety of formal and informal techniques, such as
discussions during class, in-class writing assignments, group work presentations, end of
class Summarizers, and different forms of writing, all with rubrics that helped me track
their progress. While I have assessed students, analyzed their results, and adapted
instruction throughout both semesters, one particular assignment from the beginning of
Semester 2 exemplifies this teaching process.
The first common task of Semester 2 asked students to complete the following
assignment: Compare the techniques or purposes of two texts. Knowing that this
would be difficult, I decided to give two formative assessments before having students
complete this common task. Formative Assessment #1 (Artifact 4a) required students to
read the short story The Lottery by Shirley Jackson and to answer the following
questions: What is Shirley Jacksons purpose in writing The Lottery? What is the
deeper reason for her creating this piece of literature? How does Jackson achieve this
purpose? Use evidence to support your argument. Artifact 4a shows a period 4 Honors
student and his response to this question. Based on his writing, I was able to determine
that this student had good organization and thoughts about the story that we read, but
needed to improve on having a clearer argument with stronger textual evidence and
further analysis.Similar to this student, I had many students that needed additional
support with determining how an author achieves his/her purpose in their writing.
After reviewing each assessment, I was able to adapt my instruction and teach my
students more about how authors achieve their purpose. After reflecting on this first
formative as a class and re-teaching these skills, I decided to re-assess my students on
these same concepts, but this time with a different text entitled Things Fall Apart by
Chinua Achebe. After reading a majority of Part 1 of Achebes novel, I gave my students
another formative assessment with similar questions: What is Chinua Achebes purpose
in writing Things Fall Apart? What is the deeper reason for him creating this piece of
literature? How does Achebe achieve this purpose? Use evidence to support your
argument. Artifact 4b shows this same period 4 Honors student and his response to
this question. Based on his writing, I was able to determine that he had a clearer and
stronger argument with proper textual evidence. This was a great improvement from his
first piece of writing. One area that continued to need more improvement was his
analysis of his evidence in connection to his argument.
By assessing students on authors purpose of these two texts, I was able to better
prepare them for their final task: Compare the purpose of Chinua Achebes Things Fall
Apart and Shirley Jacksons The Lottery, analyzing the techniques each writer uses to
achieve his/her purpose. Artifact 4c shows this same students response to this
question. Based on his writing, I was able to determine that this student showed overall
growth in creating an argument, providing strong textual evidence, and providing strong
analysis of both texts. I was also able to determine that this student would need
additional support in providing a clearer comparison of how each author uses specific
writing techniques to achieve his/her purpose. Based on my analysis of these overall
results, I will continue to adapt my instruction and continue to help my students improve
their writing.
While this writing sample is just one of 21 in my period 4 class, the work is a strong
representative of my students growth and progress with this Common Task, as well as a
strong example of my ability to assess student progress, analyze their results, and adapt
instruction to improve student achievement.

Ghs Portfolio Standard 4

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Ghs Portfolio Standard 4

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Standard IV: Teachers continually assess student progress, analyze the results,

and adapt instruction to improve student achievement.

Throughout my year at Gaithersburg High School, I have assessed students in multiple

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