Project Title: Wild Swans Poster. (Grade Level: 2)
Objective: I can read the story Wild Swans and work with my group to create a summary and answer who, what, where, why, and when questions about the Wild Swans using a poster .
Core Curriculum Objectives:
Ask and answer such questions as who, what, where, when, why, and how to demonstrate understanding of key details in a text.
Know and use various text features (e.g., captions, bold print, subheadings, glossaries, indexes, electronic menus, icons) to locate key facts or information in a text efficiently.
Identify the main purpose of a text, including what the author wants to answer, explain, or describe.
Description: Over the course of 2 days, we will read the short story Wild Swans. You will work with your group to answer and write grammatically correct answers to who, what, where, why, and when questions making sure everyone in your group is participating and understanding the questions. When you have finished, the fun really begins. You’ll be handed a poster, and it’s up to you how you want to create your question and summary poster. You can model my example or create your own format. But on the poster you’ll need:
1. A 4-5 Sentence Summary: You will write your own summary of 4-5 sentences about what happened in Wild Swans. Feel free to use drawings to compliment your summary.
2. Guided Worksheet Questions and Answers: You’ll paste pre-cut questions onto your poster. And then write neatly answers to the questions on your poster.
3. Decorations: Feel free to decorate with glitter pens, colored pencils, and more. Be creative with how you decorate your poster. Let’s explore Wild Swans together.
“Wild Swans”: Fictional Literature Analysis Poster Project for 2nd Grade Student Rubric
AND the Teacher Rubric
Monitoring and Feedback Plan
1. Assessment prior to the project: We will read the project goals and expectations. This will help the students focus on what’s important to understanding the story, and it should lead to less confusion and therefore frustration later on in the project.
◦ Students who don’t understand key words like summary or know the who, what, when, where, and why questions can be identified by looking around the room during rubric discussion for confusion. I can also check by asking quick review questions like: “What does who mean?” This allows me to identify potential misunderstandings early on.
2. Assessment during class reading: While we read the story, I will periodically check student understanding by asking similar questions to what will appear on the guided worksheet. This accomplishes two goals:
◦ I can check individual students’ general understanding of who, what, where, why, and when questions during this reading by asking them questions and expecting verbal responses.
◦ I can also build individual’s confidence in his/her ability to answer these types of questions by providing positive praise to students who can answer correctly.
◦ In addition, I also have the opportunity to gently guide students to correct answers and correct any misperceptions during this time. This should help clarify things before adding the extra dimension of collaborating with a group.
◦ These individual checks also let me know if the entire/most of the class is struggling with a concept. For examples if most of the class struggles to answer why questions, I know that I will need to reteach why and carefully monitor the class’s progress as a whole.
◦ Verbal assessment at this time should allow me to be more proactive in identifying potential comprehension issues that might lead students not to participate during the group project portion of the activity.
3. Assessment during guided worksheet: To give an example of the type of answer I want, the class will work on the first two questions together. Then, they will split into their table groups. During this time, I will walk around observing the table groups for assessment purposes.
◦ By walking around the groups, I can monitor who appears confident in the material. And if a group is having trouble working together such as stronger students working ahead of weaker students- I am able to talk to the groups individually.
◦ This also allows me to keep a watchful eye out for students who are having either confidence or comprehension issues. Usually, a student who is having confidence issues can be prompted to participate during the worksheet and once I have positively praised them usually the student feels more comfortable during group work.
◦ I am also checking for sentence structure and grammar during this time. They will need good sentence structure and grammar. And since many of the students are at varying levels. The group works allows them to learn about cooperation and also leaves me more free to help along really struggling students or groups.
◦ I also will mark any questions that multiple groups struggle with. This will let me know what to reteach or go back over in later lessons.
4. Assessment during individual poster creation: Each student will create their own project. I will post an example poster on the board for ideas, and I will point out that the guided worksheet completed the previous day has all the parts marked and check to complete the poster. I will walk around monitoring the students. I am checking for a couple of things.
◦ I am checking that the students are individually practicing writing in full sentences. Many sentence structure rules need to be internalized particularly by English as a second language learners. So, I am checking if they can look at their checked guided worksheets and write down the corresponding answers with the question. Some students still struggle to use resources like an index or dictionary. So, the goal is to see which students can use a resource like a cheat sheet instead of asking me for help.
◦ I am also assessing whether the students can create a summary in their own words of what happened. This ability to identify key elements of a story is really important, but it is something many of my students struggle with. So by walking around and checking summaries, I can assess whether the student has correctly picked out key details and guide students struggling with creating a summary in their own words to the solution.
◦ Finally, I am assessing whether the student can stay on task apart from the group. That lets me know who is more engaged in the story, and who might be frustrated by the difficulty of the writing or reading comprehension and/or bored by the project. Boredom can come either from something being too difficult or too easy.
▪ Students who are frustrated by the task can be helped usually with guided questions which can help them focus on what feels like an overwhelming task.
▪ Students who think the task is too easy can be given additional requirements to their poster. Or I can push for more creativity in the form of artistic expression.
5. Assessment after poster creation: The students and I will quickly fill out the scores on the rubric that we feel he/she has earned during the project.
◦ If there is a big discrepancy in teacher scores versus student scores on the rubrics in any of the categories, I will talk to the student after class. This gives the student a firmer idea of what type of work I’m expecting from them.
Remediation Plan
Once the students have completed the project. I will check to see whether there were any students that had the following difficulties listed below and create remediation plans for them:
1. Students that didn’t learn
I will be checking during every phase of the project whether the students are learning. However if by the end, the student is still struggling particularly in comparison to his/her peers with understanding. I would usually keep the student back and talk to them about what we learned. Then throughout the week during review rounds, I would usually make sure the student has more opportunities to answer questions that he/she has struggled with in the past. In addition, I sometimes give cheat sheets to certain students to help them with understanding if they are far behind their peers. Or I give them extra attention during guided and/or individual activities to help them work through a problem on their own. If several students struggled with a key concept, I would teach a remedial review lesson to better explain the concept before moving on.
2. Students that didn’t participate
Students that don’t participate are particularly difficult to manage. I would first identify why the student didn’t participate. Reasons could include: being bored because the assignment is too easy, frustration because the material feels too hard, being tired or exhausted from home or personal life, and/or trying to get attention. Students who think a task is too easy will be given a more difficult or creative assignment. Students who are frustrated because they don’t understand can be assigned extra reading or be given extra help or instruction by me during or after class. I would usually keep students with personal issues like exhaustion or needing attention after class and talk to them about their issues. We would then set up a game plan for how to succeed and participate next time. In addition when designing future activities, I keep these students in mind and try to incorporate things of interest to students that don’t participate or don’t understand, so the activity feels more fun and exciting to them.
3. Students who did well in one area but not another
This depends mostly on what they did well in. If a student struggled with writing full sentences but he/she understood the questions, I would assign more writing folder assignments. This should help with writing sentences since many sentence structure rules require lots of practice. Also, this student might be more often assigned the role of scribe of their group. This would make sure that even when students are doing group assignments (where members other than the scribe don’t write) , the students struggling with writing are getting more practice.
If the student struggled with reading comprehension, I would make sure during guided reading time and group time, I would be asking more questions about those topics to that student. I might also assign or encourage the student to read more and complete the quizzes.
If the student struggled with creating a poster similar to the one on the board, I would make sure the student practiced modeling examples more often. This is a skill many students are learning. Next time I go over a project, I would also make sure to point out each section needed on the poster, and I would then stand with students having trouble setting up their poster and help them create headings for the categories needed on the poster.
4. Students that weren’t challenged enough
For students that weren’t challenged enough, I would usually either have a slightly harder assignment available with more in depth questions or more sentences required in the answer. During an assignment, I would usually add bonus round questions on the back of the poster. Bonus round questions are super hard questions that I don’t think most of my students are ready yet to answer, but a more advanced student might be able to manage.
Traveling in Eastern Asia 
Love this lesson plan – what a great time of year to be using this particular story.
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