22 Elisabeth (Ellie) Martin – TPAS (Teacher Performance Assessment System)

Elisabeth (Ellie) Martin (She/Her/Hers) is a graduate student in the Transition to Teaching program from Connersville, IN. Ellie’s paper is part of the TPAS (Teacher Performance Assessment System) which is a portfolio that exhibits decision-making and reflection within the classroom as part of her graduate program. This work was prepared for Jamie Buffington-Adams’s EDUC-S512, EDUC-P516, EDUC-X530, EDUC-J538. Jamie states, “Ellie’s work was insightful, well rooted in research, and spoke eloquently about her students and the work she does with them.”

TPAS (Teacher Performance Assessment System Overview)

The unit that my focus week falls under is titled The House on Mango Street. For this unit, the students read and engaged with Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street, a realistic novel that details the life of a young Mexican-American girl living in an impoverished neighborhood in Chicago that is inspired by the author’s own life and experiences. The novel itself is written as a series of vignettes. The focus of the unit was to both engage with the content of the novel and apply to a new medium of writing (vignettes). The first couple of weeks were spent primarily on reading comprehension while the final week and a half was focused on the vignette structure as well as reading comprehension.

Focus Week Overview

Prior to this section of the unit, I solely focused on reading comprehension. This was about half of the novel (vignettes 1-23 out of 44), and I wanted students to get a grasp of the material as a whole before focusing on skill building. The content of the novel can be confusing if one has no experience with reading vignettes, so it was essential to ensure they had a good grasp of the content before moving on to skills. My focus week was then geared toward the components of vignettes, using the text frequently as an example. As this is a new medium, I wanted to make sure that they understood the make-up of vignettes, especially as students were preparing to write their own vignettes the succeeding week. During their focus week, each day focused on a separate component of a vignette. Specifically, we discussed themes, figurative language, and descriptive language as well as the idea that individual vignettes will solely focus on a singular topic and contain separate yet connected stories when in a series. Luckily, many of the components are ones that they were already familiar with (themes, figurative language, and descriptive language), but were instead framed in the style of a vignette. The overall structure of reading the vignettes remained the same throughout the unit to ensure consistency, but the assessments and topics changed from mere reading comprehension, as it was the first two weeks of instruction, to specific skills during the focus week. Furthermore, much of the focus week was a series of identifying and applying these skills. Students would evaluate how Cisneros applied the topics that we were covering, and then they were made to practice using these concepts themselves. For instance, students would analyze a vignette in order to recognize uses of figurative language. They would then produce their own sentences containing figurative language, using the text as a model to inspire them. Much of the other concepts during the week followed this method.

Following this, they learned a plethora of vocabulary terms both relevant to skill building and to the reading content. For instance, they learned about antithesis, euphemism, oxymoron, and paradox when discussing figurative language. These words were written on a word wall located at the front of the classroom to reaffirm learning. We also went over words that were central to the culture of the main character. For instance, some words were written in Spanish such as “los espíritus” while others were cultural terms like “cumbias” and “rancheras.” These words were also written on the word wall. The word wall was divided into two sections to ensure clarity.

Students presented their work in a variety of ways. For instance, they had to construct themes based on the vignettes we read, answering various constructive response questions. Some assignments asked students to be creative and artistic by drawing a picture or creating photo collages. For their daily journals, a few prompts required them to engage with various mediums within the English field including letters and poems (specifically biopoems). Their final assignment required them to write their own vignettes, a new medium to them all.

Their summative assessment in particular required students to create two vignettes based off of their answers to two of their daily journals. For their final submission, they had to turn in their two completed vignettes as well as the two daily journals that they based their answers on. They were graded on how well they were able to apply the skills they learned pertaining to vignettes to their own renditions.

Instruction Rationale: Student Needs

When preparing unit materials and instruction, it was assumed that students would not know what vignettes are. This was proven correct at the beginning of the unit when students expressed that they were not familiar with the term. As understanding vignettes and their makeup was essential to both engage with the novel and prepare to write their own, this became a focus of instruction. As such, this was specifically addressed during my focus week as it occurred at the end of the novel. This way, students were able to engage with the content first and familiarize themselves with the structure of a vignette before learning how to do it themselves. The different facets of a vignette would also be more fresh in the students’ minds since they learned about the various components the week before they were asked to create vignettes themselves. As stated previously, the specific components that were discussed included themes, figurative language, descriptive language, focusing on a singular topic, and the separate yet connected nature of a series of vignettes. The one component of a vignette that they were not taught explicitly to use as a skill was that vignettes will often manipulate standard grammar mechanics and sentence structure. This was deemed to be too complicated for students as it requires an intimate understanding of language arts in order to correctly and intentionally use it. Such things were pointed out to the students (Cisneros never uses quotation marks in The House on Mango Street, for instance), but they were not instructed to do it themselves; however, when they were asked to create their own vignettes, I did not include a section that graded grammar mechanics intentionally so that they had the option to attempt manipulating sentence structure if they so chose.

While we were reading the novel, I made it a point to talk about each vignette after we were finished reading it. I would ask them questions and give clarification and guidance on how to break down each one. When we read horror short stories in the previous unit, a few students mentioned that they were confused about the content of the short stories. Because of this, I wanted to emphasize their understanding of the story by explaining more of the content after we read each vignette. I also had them complete guided notes during reading to further emphasize different key moments in the story. From this, some students expressed that the guided notes helped them understand the content better while others said that they struggled to focus on both reading and completing the worksheet simultaneously. Responding to this, I gave them the option to complete the guided notes for homework and spoke for long lengths of time after each vignette to ensure that students would have time to finish assignments. Because of this, I did not assign students homework aside from finishing what they did not complete in class. I also wanted to give students the opportunity to ask questions in class if they needed to. Additionally, there were times where I did not assign guided reading notes so as to give students that might struggle a break from the workload. To also ensure understanding, I took it upon myself to read the novel to my students.

When reading The House on Mango Street, I read all but two of the vignettes to them (two they read silently to themselves due to possibly triggering content, which will be detailed later). This was intentionally done for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the structure of vignettes can be perplexing and confusing to those who are unfamiliar with how these vignettes are structured. As mentioned previously, vignettes are an entirely new medium to the students. Because of this, they would presumably struggle with understanding the content simply due to how it is structured. With me reading to them, it provided more clarity. In addition to this, the students themselves expressed a preference for me reading to them. On September 4, I gave the students a reading poll asking them about their reading preferences for class. 32% of students’ first choice was to have the teacher read to them with 26% preferring an audiobook. 23% said that they preferred reading in groups while only 16% said they would rather read alone and 4% liked popcorn reading. From the same poll, 33% of students expressed that they would rarely or never do readings if they were assigned for homework. For this reason as well as the complexities of vignettes, I did not assign readings for homework and instead read them to the students in class.

With most of the assignments for this unit, the students were all given paper copies. With the previous unit, I had problems with many students choosing to play games or watch videos during class. I knew that the content was complex, and thus I wanted to diminish distractions as much as possible. In addition, I knew that I would be reading at the front of the room for sometimes a significant portion of the class period, and so I would not be able to monitor Chromebook use during this time. I thus made the decision to have them do paper copies. This is not my preferred method as I like the students to be engaged with using technology and also like to give them the choice of how they will submit assignments (I usually will allow them to either turn in a paper copy or submit online), but this seemed the best course of action to get them to focus on the material.

Though A House on Mango Street was a required unit of instruction for all sophomore teachers, I am nonetheless grateful that this was the novel chosen. Without even addressing the fact that this is a breathtaking and esteemed novel, the content fits well with my students. Firstly, the stories followed a young girl of hispanic descent. I currently have two ELL students who also are of hispanic descent, and I am hoping that they connected to the content of the novel because of this. Just as an example, the story would often liken the sound of English to metal in times of the main character’s frustration with the language. This presumably would relate well to students who are also learning and becoming frustrated with English. Even if they would not make the same comparison, they would relate to how English simply sounds different than their home language and can be frustrating as a result; however, the novel does not just relate to these two students. The main character lives in an impoverished community. As stated in the Context for Learning, many of the students in my classes come from impoverished backgrounds. Through this, they would relate to the main character’s financial struggles and dreams for wanting more in life. The book also covers the complex emotions that come up with growing up, which is another feature that the students could relate to. A big motif in the story is about being at the “in-between” age of around 12-13 years old: no longer a child, but also not a teenager. If nothing else, this should be something that most of the students relate to. This is also one of the reasons why I focused on identity building.