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Alex Boswell
Professor Sawyer/Professor Hickey
Secondary English Education Seminar
12/5/2012
Instructional Study
Artifacts A­M are from a unit on characterization and essay writing for 7th
graders at Beacon
Middle School. The construction of this unit serves as an example of my advocacy for students and
democratic citizenship within the classroom by providing multiple modes of learning and an environment
in which all students can participate. Students are encouraged to participate on a level in which they can
actively construct knowledge, rather than solely reproduce knowledge; make an argument and
substantiate it through the use of examples, details, facts, and reasons; and find meaning in class
activities beyond earning grades.
My baseline assessment for the students was a compare and contrast essay (See Artifacts H1 &
I1). The baseline was conducted after the students read two stories and had practiced applying basic
characterization methods to the two stories through homework and class activities, in order to compare
the characters from each story by assessing their similarities and differences. I also reviewed the parts of
an essay in class, using a Promethean board and student participation. The students started their essays
in class and were asked to complete them as homework. This essay served as my baseline assessment,
specifically, of the students' ability to write an essay and to analyze characterization.
My final assessment was an essay re­write after a week and a half of further instruction (See H5
& I5). I found that the most noticeable and consistent weakness within the baseline assessment essays
was a lack of evidence for supporting details. For instance, in “Sample H1,” the student, in his first
essay, wrote “they both enjoyed the attention given to them for their lies and rudeness” to support the
idea that the two characters he was comparing were similar; however, he did not provide any examples.
The student seemed to understand that he needed three supporting details to back up his topic sentence,
but he did not understand that he needed to follow through with his supporting details by providing
evidence. In the student’s final essay, “Sample H5,” he edited and developed his idea by writing:
“The final reason they are similar is they both wanted attention for their lies. An example
of Great Grandma wanting attention was when she lied to the news crew and reporters
about being in the Hindenburg and several other events. She did this so the reporters
would put her in the newspaper. An example of Laurie wanting attention was when he
spilled his baby sister’s milk, he did this so his parents would listen to him.”
The final essays, compared to the baseline assessment, were not perfect, but they marked ample
improvement in students’ ability to use evidence to support their ideas. This also enhanced their ability to
more fully demonstrate their aptitude to assess characterization in the story by writing more specifically

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about the characters, instead of in generalizations.
In order to develop and scaffold students’ ability to support their claims with specific details and
examples, I facilitated several activities that guided students through going back into the text to support
their ideas and connections to their reading. A general overview of the lessons I created between the
baseline assessment and the final assessment are provided in “Artifact J,” and three sample lesson plans
are provided in Artifacts K­M.
First, I introduced an annotation method that I had tried out for the first time with a class of 11th
graders at my previous student teaching placement. The annotation method encouraged students to
re­read specific passages in a story and to draw a symbol when they thought something in the story was
surprising, important, confusing, or funny. They could also draw a symbol when they disagreed with an
aspect of the story or when they could make a connection to a part of the story in a personal way or
through something they had learned in the past. In addition, they were asked to underline each line of the
passage with different colors in order to indicate when and where a particular character was speaking
(See “Artifact A”). I modeled the activity for the students on a Promethean board and modeled my
thought process for the activity by thinking out loud. I then allowed the students to use the annotation
method in groups. The annotation method was meant to help students make connections to specific
passages in a story and to encourage them to practice re­reading. The underlining with different colors
helped students to visually break down the presence of each character in the passage and to assess
what a character actually said, in comparison to what other characters said about or in reaction to that
character. After the students annotated a specific passage that was assigned to them in their group, each
student was assigned a specific character to analyze in their particular passage (See B & C). This was
meant to help students focus on linking their analysis of characters to specific evidence provided in the
text. Then, the next day, all of the students gathered together and turned their passages of different parts
of the story into skits that they performed. Each student played the character that they were assigned to
analyze. They used their character analysis to play their specific character in their passage of the story.
The groups also used their annotations to more carefully plan how they were going to interpret and act
out their passage. This was one way of giving the annotation and character analysis more of a purpose
for the students than just monotonous note taking on worksheets. It also helped students to demonstrate
their ability to pay close attention to specific points of evidence in the text through experiencing and
acting out their knowledge, instead of just writing it.
Secondly, after performance day, students read a new story and practiced finding examples
from the text to back up a few key ideas. Then they re­read a passage of the story and made
annotations on it; however, this time they annotated the passages silently, as well as individually, and
they had to write an explanation for each annotation symbol (See D­G). I, also, once again, modeled
the annotation for them before they did the activity on their own; however, this time I asked the class to
act as if they were one collective brain that was annotating a passage from the story on the Promethean
board. We came up with annotations for the model passage in a unique and organic manner by allowing
everyone to participate. Students stated what annotation symbol they would use, where they would put
it, and why. Then they were able to come up to the board and draw their annotation symbol on the
passage. Next, the students started their own individual annotations of a different passage in class and
finished it for homework.
After practicing the skills to reread, make connections to specific passages in a text, and
provide evidence through using quotes to back up one’s claims about a story, the students were given

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back their graded essays that had acted as my baseline assessment. First, the class was asked to
discuss the importance of knowing how to win an argument and knowing one’s audience, as a “Do
Now” activity, and then they applied this discussion when looking over the rubric that was used to grade
their essays (See H2 & I2). Then students were given an essay graphic organizer that broke down each
part of an essay and included an extra step to provide evidence for each supporting detail (See H3 &
I3). We reviewed the parts of an essay. I modeled for them what a supporting detail with evidence
looks like and then we came up with a few examples collectively as a class. Next, the students were
finally asked to start a second draft of their essays on the essay graphic organizer. They could work in
pairs for about ten minutes in order to ask each other for help or brainstorm with a friend, and then they
had to finish their second draft for homework, with the knowledge that they would be trading papers
with a classmate for a peer edit the following day (See H4 & I4).
The eleven days that it took to work up to an effective re­write was not initially planned and
there were a few changes I made in my instruction along the way. First, when I started looking at the
essays and noticed a similar weakness in all of them, I set aside my previous plans and decided to focus
on building the skills to make direct connections to quotes, to more effectively reference texts, and to
back up one’s ideas with sufficient evidence. The students still did not write perfect essays but the
improvement in all of the essays is visible. Secondly, one piece of advice that I took from my supervisor
was to allow the students to participate in the modeling of the annotation process, rather than being
passive spectators. I did this when I modeled the annotation method for a second time and I noticed
that the students were more astute and lively. They were motivated to participate with the knowledge
that their ideas could be taken into account and that they would be able to write on the Promethean
board. Thirdly, I had not planned on discussing the importance of knowing one’s audience when essay
writing until the students started to answer the question, “How do you win an argument?”, as their “Do
Now” activity. I assumed that the question would smoothly lead into how important it is to back up
one’s ideas with evidence to win an argument and that this would then lead the class into comparing the
structure of an essay to the real world by thinking about how they could use that structure to win an
argument. To my surprise, only a few people said that they would use evidence and facts to win an
argument. Most of the 7th
graders in my classroom believed that they could win an argument by
confusing the other person, making them feel bad, or overpowering them by talking loudly or being
physically intimidating. I responded to these assumptions by asking the students to think about how they
were using psychology to win an argument and to focus on how they assess a specific audience to know
how to belittle, confuse, or overpower their specific audience in order to win. I added comedy to the
conversation by asking the students to imagine trying to win an argument with me by attempting to
confuse, belittle, or intimidate me. They would probably need to reassess their strategy with me as their
audience and come up with a more effective tactic. This was an unexpected turn in the lesson but it
worked out well because I was able to then use the rubric as a way for the students to assess their
audience when essay writing.
If I were to adjust my instruction for the future, I would extend the duration of the unit and
include more structured writing throughout. Students could practice substantiating their ideas in both
creative and formal ways through various given structures. This would more effectively establish their
skills to be able to demonstrate the expected intellectual quality of their essays and, in addition, prepare
them for becoming more college and career ready in the future.

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