The impact of this case is for my Game Design II students to plan a WiiU Mario Kart Tournament as a fundraiser for a field trip to the Art Institute of Pittsburgh and 'Education Day' at PNC Park Pirates baseball stadium. Due to some new Javascript curriculum added this year, some Game Design II students are doing a JavaScript game, some are doing a Flash game and some have started a 3-D Unity Game. Additionally, there is a Game Design I student I and a MultiApps student (similar to Game Design III) who have been given special permission to join the class. We have two students with IEPs, one student in the National Technical Honors Society and one student who was a National Game Design Finalist for Globaloria. Although we work together as a team, this class is on many levels.
We have been planning a field trip to the Art Institute of Pittsburgh and 'Education Day' at PNC Park Pirate Baseball Stadium. We needed to raise some money for the trip so we decided to hold a WiiU Mario Kart tournament. This would take some planning and preparation.
I decided to have a Simulated Workplace Class Meeting. We determined all the tasks that need to be completed to ensure we would be ready for the tournament. Then the tasks were delegated to the students. Some students volunteered to take on certain responsibilities and some I nominated them for.
In the end, everyone was in agreement and it was very clear what each of them had to do. One student would make attractive flyers ensuring all pertinent information was included, one created the MC script with all important announcements for the players and spectators, one created the tickets with our company logo and ticket number, one communicated with the Woodworking teacher about the 'trophy' his students were creating for the winner, and so on.
I needed to be able to depend on the students to do all the many tasks needed correctly. I was not going to take it on myself and I was not going to let the tournament be a disaster. To ensure this, I decided to make this their mid term grade.
The challenge was to make each student have a task comparable to their peers when, most likely, it would be very different from their peers. I believed this wasn't really the case. There was no way they could be equally challenging.
Most of the students did a good job on their 'mid term'. Some had to make changes promptly to improve their work in order for it to go out into the public and I did not mind increasing their grade.
I was initially apprehensive that a variety of different 'mid terms' for different students could put me at risk of treating students unfairly. Although, in the end I felt like it ended up being a great way to put their specific talents to best use. I still wonder what a parent might think about what their specific child's 'mid term' was without knowing the context of the project and the assignment of duties but I have yet to hear a complaint. I do think this was a good group of students for this type of assessment and a teacher may need to make that judgement call based on the demeanor of the students and the classroom culture.
The tournament is this Friday, April 15 right after school! We will be serving bacon maple cookies and Mountain Dew Dorito cupcakes- best gamer food ever!
I think that there is absolutely nothing wrong with giving students a mid-term grade for completing different tasks. The goal was the same for all of your students, and as long as they put the work in that was expected of them, then they deserved the grade you gave them. I think this sounds like an awesome project you gave them, by the way!
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ReplyDeleteYour decision to use assessments that were tailored to the skills and interests of the students is a perfect example of what Lankshear and Knobel say in Chapter 9, "Rather, it is important to emphasize that standards tests and benchmarks could only ever be the baseline for a teacher. That is, effective teachers will always go beyond the standards and benchmarks to enact meaningful and richly conceived literacies in their classrooms." The parents and students most likely understood the effectiveness of what you were doing in a situation with such different skill level, so no complaints!
Like Julie, I am also going to quote from chapter 9, "Interestingly, however, a great deal of research shows that school literacy on its own--and as currently configured in most schools around the world--does not necessarily guarantee success in literacy practices for out-of-school contexts" (Lankshear 165).
ReplyDeleteBy using different assessment criteria for each student, and the nature of the project, you focused on out-of-school literacy...skills that would last with your students past the confines of a school. You taught organization and planning skills, along with other literacy skills that go beyond "school literacy".
"...learning something efficaciously is to progress toward a fuller understanding and fluency with doing and being in ways that are recognized as proficient relative to socially constructed and maintained ways of 'being in the world.'" Lankshear, p. 190. By tying into real-world applicability, you enabled your students to create things that would actually "be" in the world, giving them the opportunity for truly efficacious learning.
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