PERFORMANCE TASK
Students were involved in freewrites, text analysis, and discussion on resilience in the face of change.
This task was one part of a larger summative assessment. We were reading The Bomb by Theodore Taylor at the time, and used the My Hawaii poetry contest prompt to push students to make deeper personal, text, and real world connections.
Directions: Use your free writes and webs made in previous classes to compose a poem that demonstrates:
Topic: Resilience in the face of change
Audience: My Hawaii Contest Judges
Purpose: To highlight the need to protect our island home. To connect, to share, and to care for our natural land and ocean resources.
ANNOTATION
The idea is developed throughout the work.
In the first sentence of the essay, the writer clearly the author clearly wants his audience to
understand that Hawaiʻi was once a beautiful place that is no longer being taken care of as it should be. He also finds a way to address the idea of resilience. That “yet where so much has been taken, there is still life.”
To be advanced it needs additional insight as to how to make it better, or what should be done, or why this is important. The imagery used could also be extended or elaborated upon to make his ideas “exceptionally clear.”
Information is applied accurately to communicate new understanding.
Information can be seen strung throughout the poem in phrases like “defiled springs.”, “once elegant mountains now carved”,“where kanaka appreciated the life and righteousness of the ʻāina”, etc.
The understanding that the author would like to convey is that “while there is so much gone and so much has been taken, there is still life.ʻ
To be advanced, more depth and specificity is needed in the information provided. Maybe give specific mountain names, Native birds now extinct, etc.
Organizes ideas clearly
You will also notice that each stanza is broken up to describe different examples of all that was lost.
The last stanza, then ties it up into the idea that although everything was taken, there is still life.
To be advanced more transitional words or phrases could be strung throughout to make the ideas connect more seamlessly.
Demonstrates awareness of audience and purpose through appropriate use of tone and voice.
The poem generally addresses the topic, audience, and purpose. It is written about Hawaii and included imagery about Hawaiʻi and its resources.
The student composed phrases like “stolen lands of an almost muted ancient people” and “defiled springs covered in concrete” to give off a tone of loss. ʻ
To be advanced stronger verbs, images, could have been used throughout the poem to extend the metaphor to show a more “skillful application of audience awareness.”
Uses mechanics accurately throughout so that the message is at the forefront.
As far as conventions, the student seems to have a basic grasp of punctuation and capitalization. But nothing in this poem demonstrates that the mechanics were manipulated purposefully to enhance communication.