Unit Leson Plans: How I Might Evaluate Students

There would be many ways I would want to evaluate
students during our News Media unit and for our final Newspaper project.

First, I think each column or article the students compose
should be evaluated before they write it in their final project.
I would probably use a combination of peer review, individual
revising and drafting time, and a checklist or rubric score sheet
to assess how well the students wrote each section. Also, I
would want some way to evaluate that students understood
the "background" knowledge about the history of journalism,
how its changed, and the differences that exist among different
sources. This could be done with a traditional quiz or short
answer questionnaire, but I would also like to ask students to
write a reflection on the similarities and differences they notice
between two different newspapers they are familiar with. Finally,
after students have created their final projects, I would evaluate
their newspapers on a set of pre-determined criteria. I'd ask my
students what they think are the most important elements of a strong
final product, and I would take their suggestions into consideration
when creating a rubric or checklist. Then, I'd also like to get
feedback from students-- this kind of evaluation wouldn't be graded,
but I'd ask students to write a reflection that answers the questions:
What did you learn about print media? What kind of article was
easiest for you to write? What the most difficult? Why do you think
that is? This way, the students are allowed a chance to reflect on the
writing process, voice their opinions, and I'll have some idea about
how to tweak or adapt the unit in future classes.