Two Poems, One Theme Formative

Today I'll be checking in on my students to see how they're doing with finding a similar theme in two poems and then describing how the poems are similar and different in their approach. I created this formative using the poems "Allow Yourself to Fight" and "Still Here" because they have a theme that I think my students can relate to. Both send a strong message about persevering when things get tough. Both poems are also suitable for this age group in terms of complexity as well. 

Here is a quick video of what I'd like to see my students do with this assessment. 

While students are working, I'll be moving around the room to be sure students are annotating while reading. I will allow my students to have a copy of the graphic organizer for this assessment, so I'll be checking to see if they are at least thinking about the information on that organizer. I won't require that they fill the whole thing out. You could totally just use the organizer as a formative, as well. My students are struggling on their state assessments with specific question stems, so I've tried to work in opportunities for them to work with questions and for me to have an idea of how my students are progressing in this area. A number of my students still struggle with just understanding what the question is asking. 

As students finish up, I always call my students up so I can review their student interactive notebooks. See my lessons on interactive notebooks and conferencing for more information. This is just a nice time to work with some kiddos who were still struggling with theme of poetry or something I previously taught. Today I want to show a few students where I'd like them to spend some more time processing. I also want to take a closer look at some of the annotations students have been making while reading the poems.