Authentic Assessment

Standardized tests are a reality of our educational system. Regardless of how teachers may personally feel about the effectiveness of such testing programs, there is no way around them. But it does not follow that teaching to the test is the best way to educate our students, or even to help them achieve top scores. I believe that the best teaching and the best learning happen when you teach to a student, not to a test.

This Teachers Guide does not include quizzes, multiple-choice tests, or standardized essays. Instead, every activity is organized around the idea of authentic assessment. In authentic assessment, students are asked to demonstrate their language arts skills through meaningful and relevant tasks; teachers, meanwhile, monitor the strengths and needs of their students as they progress from activity to activity.

The Teacher’s Guide employs multiple forms of authentic assessment:

• Visual graphics: The graphics associated with each activity provide an immediate way of measuring the level of student engagement.

• Open-ended questions: Activities include open-ended language exercises that allow students to employ imagination, creativity, and critical thinking skills.

• Language arts assessment: A range of writing assignments, including interviews, letter writing, and a feature story, provide opportunities for evaluating student progress in reading and writing.

• Portfolios: We suggest that all assignments be collected in portfolios as a way of tracking students’ developmental progress and showcasing students’ work at the end of the unit. Portfolios welcome multiple audiences, including the student, classmates, teachers, and even parents. (We recommend that students use a three-ring binder to organize their portfolio.)

• Self-evaluation: An integral component of authentic assessment is self-evaluation, giving students an opportunity to review their academic progress.

It is my firm belief that authentic assessment does not compete with, but rather enhances student performance on mandated tests. By honoring their reading, writing, and communication skills through meaningful activities in which they are fully engaged, students develop critical thinking skills that serve them in testing environments and in the world at large.

Now It's Your Turn

Within the engaging, enlightening, and empowering lesson plans in the Teacher’s Guide, you will find the key ingredients for cooking up success in your own classroom. We want to emphasize that The Freedom Writers Diary and the accompanying Teacher’s Guide are not intended to serve as a substitute for your mandated curriculum, but rather as a means of enhancing that curriculum and encouraging your students to perform at the highest level. There is no one perfect model for every classroom, so we look to you as independent educators to implement our lesson plans as you see fit.

As a teacher, I was inspired by my students’ hearts, minds, and voices, which reverberate within the pages of The Freedom Writers Diary. In that spirit, I have tried to honor the hearts, minds, and voices of your students as they read The Freedom Writers Diary and engage in the activities contained in this Teacher’s Guide.

Mandated Reporting

You must make your students aware of the fact that teachers are “mandated reporters” and therefore obligated by law to report cases of child abuse or neglect when and if they become aware of such instances through their students’ communications (oral or written). This does not mean students are prohibited from such communications, only that they must be made aware of possible repercussions.

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ENGAGE YOUR STUDENTS

The Engage Your Students lesson plans allow students to forge new friendships, create a community, and establish the foundation for a nurturing and collaborative learning environment before they begin reading The Freedom Writers Diary. Most students, especially those in their teens, tend to be reluctant to share their anxieties and vulnerabilities. These activities challenge students to get out of their comfort zones and utilize all of their learning modalities. In doing so, a wealth of information about your students is revealed. This information will enable you to tap into your students’ experiences, sensibilities, and learning styles as a starting point for their explorations of literature and language. I highly recommend that you teach the lessons in the order presented: first you engage your students as individuals, then as partners with other students, next as collaborative groups, and finally as a cohesive community within the classroom.

• Visual Graphics: Each activity has an original visual graphic designed to promote student participation while enhancing the particular theme of the lesson. For best results, have students clear everything off their desks except for the visual graphic and other materials integral to the activity. While students write or draw on their graphics, you will have an opportunity to walk around the room and assess their level of engagement and understanding.

• Vocabulary: Each activity contains vocabulary words that were inspired by the specific activity. The words are brought together at the end of the section in a culminating activity called Freedom Writer Bingo. These words will familiarize your students with concepts and terms useful for reading The Freedom Writers Diary.

• Journal Writing: After the inaugural What Makes Me Unique assignment, the journal writing prompts in this section are listed under the Assessments that conclude each activity. Journals serve as a way for students to reflect and expand upon their increasing awareness of themselves and their classmates. At the same time, teachers can use the journals to evaluate how much understanding and insight their students glean from each activity. Encourage your students to write in their journals every day about their experiences, thoughts, and feelings. This out-of-class “free writing” may yield some of your students’ best stories, which they can then revise for the Class Book, the culminating project for the Enlighten Your Students section.

• Primetime Live DVD: Although this activity is optional, I have learned that teachers who use this video with their students have found it to be an exceptional motivational tool. (To order this DVD, please visit www.freedomwritersfoundation.org or www.films.com.)

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LESSON PLAN FORMAT

The lesson plans for the Engage Your Students section of the Teacher’s Guide are presented in a consistent format for ease of implementation. Each contains the following components:

• Objective: Describes the overall goal of the activity.

• Backstory from Room 203: Provides context, background, and pedagogical reasoning behind the activity derived from my classroom.

• Ms. G’s Tips: Provides anecdotal advice from my personal experience.

• What You’ll Need: List of required materials.

• Process: Step-by-step explanation of how to do each activity.

• Visual Graphic Instructions: Brief summary of how to use our student-generated visual graphics.

• Vocabulary: Lists of words that we suggest embedding into each lesson.

• Assessment: Journaling topics that assess student comprehension.

• Taking It Further: Explores ideas that go beyond the activity for further understanding.

Each lesson in the Engage Your Students section also has a sidebar that contains comments from The Freedom Writers Diary, the Freedom Writers themselves, and the Freedom Writer Teachers.

• Freedom Writer Feedback: Comments from the Freedom Writers recalling the impact these lessons had on them.

• Freedom Writers Diary Quotations: A passage from the book illustrating the Freedom Writers’ experience.

• Teacher Talk: Comments from our Freedom Writer Teachers in the field who have implemented these lessons with their students.

• National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Standards: At the end of each lesson, you will find a list of the NCTE standards that are met by each activity.

Excerpted from The Freedom Writers Diary Teacher's Guide by Erin Gruwell and The Freedom Writers Foundation. Copyright © 2007 by Erin Gruwell and The Freedom Writers Foundation. Excerpted by permission of Broadway, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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