Make History Matter at 8am Tomorrow at NCSS
Frank McCaughey and I will be presenting tomorrow morning at 8am sharp at NCSS. Hope you can join us physically or virtually. For those who can’t, our presentation and a link to our materials are below.
“If I Don’t Grade My Students’ Regents, Who Will” at the New York Times
I submitted a piece to the New York Times SchoolBook section that was submitted today on Regents Grading:
The New York State Board of Regents recently decided to change grading regulations to ban teachers from scoring their own students’ state exams. They said it was to prevent cheating.
To any outsider, this seems like a simple decision. However, like too many educational decisions, it is actually a reactionary decision to a relatively small problem that will hurt a large number of students.
Read the rest here, and please join in the conversation in the comment.
Student Essay Reflection #1
My new school has an school-wide interim assessment process for all classes where students are assessed on the same skills three times a year to track growth and inform instruction. Unlike most “data-driven” initiatives, teachers at my school collaborate together to design the assessments and determine levels of performance. The “data” we get from these assessments then is actually valuable in identifying areas where students need support. The Social Studies assessments focus on creating arguments using evidence from documents. My first essay in my government & economics course asked to students to agree or disagree with the statement, “Identities are created by marketing.” The documents I used are here. My reflection follows, with some of the data below it.
Based on the students’ essays on marketing and identity, there is a range of development on different skills. The majority of students write in a way that shows they are college ready, and most of those who do not are close. However, students are showing they are not ready to make valid arguments. Most students know to make arguments, but their generalized claims need to be supported by concrete and specific evidence. They also need to recognize that making a good argument involves recognizing shades of gray and opposing opinions.
The largest area of growth for my class is in sourcing information. Nearly all students presented all or most information carelessly as facts, rather than showing that the information represented perspectives, or worse, came from advertisements. Additionally, students need to learn to group evidence from multiple sources to support their claims, rather than letting the sources dictate the organization of their arguments.
Both needs are already being addressed in my class. We are now practicing sourcing together with every single piece of information that is set forth, be it reading or video. As this concept seems to be entirely new to students, I expect quick improvement. In order to help students learn to group relevant evidence together, I am having them write individual paragraphs where they need to use multiple sources to answer a question. These sources offer differing views, so it also helps students get in the habit of recognizing the multiple complexities or sides of issues we discuss. Just for one example, students this week saw a video showing how direct democracy is being used to make decisions as Occupy Wall Street, but also read an op-ed decrying the state of California’s ballot initiative process.
As we move into looking at politics, students will have even more practice with looking at issues from various sides. The class will rarely focus on what is the right policy stance, but rather, how a policy should be “sold” to different constituencies. Students will participate in a couple of simulations from the Buck Institute where they take on the role of politicians trying to appease various groups on both sides of the aisle.
Notes: Standard areas are in all CAPS, followed by the indicators of that standard. 4=Excelling, 3=Succeeding, 2=Developing, 1=Beginning
| ARGUMENT | Controlling Idea | Supporting Evidence | Multiplicity | USING EVIDENCE | Connections | Quoting | SOURCING | CONTENT | Outside Info | Validity | WRITING | Organization | Intro/Conclusion | Thesis | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Average | 2.01 | 2.26 | 2.27 | 1.60 | 1.69 | 1.67 | 2.03 | 1.27 | 1.99 | 2.21 | 1.99 | 2.47 | 2.50 | 2.46 | 2.54 |
| Standard Deviation | 0.71 | 0.72 | 0.85 | 0.77 | 0.67 | 0.63 | 0.68 | 0.51 | 0.75 | 0.81 | 0.73 | 0.77 | 0.76 | 0.81 | 0.74 |
| Count: 4 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 3 | 2 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 5 |
| Count: 3 | 15 | 23 | 28 | 9 | 5 | 6 | 14 | 2 | 10 | 23 | 12 | 30 | 31 | 31 | 33 |
| Count: 2 | 38 | 36 | 24 | 21 | 35 | 35 | 41 | 15 | 40 | 30 | 39 | 28 | 28 | 25 | 27 |
| Count: 1 | 16 | 9 | 15 | 39 | 29 | 29 | 14 | 53 | 17 | 14 | 17 | 7 | 6 | 9 | 5 |
Announcing a Great Opportunity for Students: Along the Color Line Video Contest
Please share this with any teachers you know. Dr. Marable was very important to me, and I can think of no greater tribute to him then to share his work so that it inspires new social critics. I have written a curriculum to to support the project, which you can find here.
“Along the Color Line” Video Contest: Teens Speak Out About Current Events
“Along The Color Line”, written by the late historian Dr. Manning Marable, was a public educational and information service dedicated to fostering political dialogue and discussion, inspired by the great tradition for political event columns written by W. E. B. Du Bois nearly a century ago. This video contest provides high school students with the opportunity and incentive to use scholarly research to analyze and pose solutions to some of the social issues that Manning Marable addressed in his writings such as sexism, racism, imperialism, and poverty. It continues the spirit of “Along the Color Line” by fostering critical analysis on political issues and public events that had special significance to African Americans and to other people of color internationally; allows students the creative license to translate the rigorous research that Dr. Marable used in his “Along the Color Line“ columns into a creative and accessible video medium; and empowers students to speak out about the material conditions of their lives to an audience of teachers, activists and community members at “A New Vision of Black Freedom: The Manning Marable Tribute Conference” sponsored by Columbia University’s Institute for Research in African-American Studies from April 26 – April 28, 2012.
Curriculum Connection: An adaptable weeklong curriculum developed by a NYS certified HS teacher is available free for educators. It provides educational units and background reading for teachers of Civics, Government and US History to connect this contest to their classroom while meeting several Common Core writing (1,4,5,6,9) and reading (1,2,4,6,8,9,10) standards.
Contest Requirements: After becoming familiar with Manning Marable’s column “Along the Color Line” style of blending scholarly data with political analysis to address social issues, students will create a 2-3 minute long video presentation that features their research and analysis of a social issue that is important to them and their community.
Criteria: This contest is limited to students currently enrolled in high school anywhere in the US. Submissions will be judged on depth of knowledge of social problem being discussed, originality, and creative expression. Students can submit individually or through their teacher as part of a class project.
Submissions: The due date is February 17, 2012 before midnight. Submissions should be sent to marablevideocontest@gmail.com. Only one submission per email and per student. Students must include their name, age, grade, and full contact information as well as the name, address and phone number of their high school. Videos longer than 3 minutes will not be accepted.
Finalists: The top finalists will be special guests of the conference, where their videos will be screened. The first place winner will be announced at conference.
Prize: $250 Prize, one of Dr. Marable’s books and the video featured on the conference website.
For more information or questions contact: askmarableconference@gmail.com
Implementing Standards-Based Grading in my Social Studies Class, Finally
This year, I am going 100% SBG in my senior Social Studies course, which combines government and economics.
Background
I wrote a whole series (scroll down to the bottom) on my plan to do a form of Standards Based Grading in my history class last year. It sort of happened, sort of didn’t. I was thinking about SBG, but the experience for my students did not change: they still saw grades for individual assignments, though there were performance standards attached to writing assignments. There were three major problems, two of which I knew going in, one which I realized very quickly:
- In a survey history course that ends in a high-stakes, content-based exam, it is necessary to track how students do with all content, and one is never going to be able to write standards for, let alone reassess, 200 different pieces of content.
- As I wrote last year, the history skill standards that I was aware of at the time are not written with performance in mind, and were very difficult to assess.
- The problem that emerged immediately was that I hadn’t planned my course with SBG in mind, so the standards I planned on using were not really useful for assessment. They were also the wrong standards/enduring understandings for what I ended up teaching, because I never went back and made sure the Stage 1 stuff from UbD aligned with the Stage 3 stuff (see this recent post on that issue)
Changes for This Year
This year, there are four factors which are game changers and make me know I can actually do this right this year:
- I started working on a project with the brilliant Daisy Martin, who does the Reading Like a Historian work out of Stanford, who gave me a ton of clarity on what historical skill standards should look like so they can be used to assess student performance.
- Most importantly, my new school started a SBG pilot, that the 11th and 12th grade math and science teachers, as well as the art teacher, are participating in. They already had a structure in place which solves some problems for me, and keeps me from having to figure things out myself. The clarity provided by the design of the pilot makes my life easier.
- Because I knew of the pilot and had the structure in mind, I was planning as an SBG assessor from the moment I started conceiving my course, thereby correcting the second issue above.
- My unit plans, at least the first one so far, fully align Understandings, Assessment, and Instruction, the three stages of UbD.
What it Will Look Like
Everyone in the pilot was told to write learning goals that start as “I can” statements for students, along with teacher friendly indicators of performance. Examples follow below.
Supercharging the DBQ Essay
The Document Based Question Essay is one of the more ubiquitous secondary social studies assignments in New York, and I imagine, in the US. It is a requirement on both New York State Regents Exams in History, each a graduation requirement, as well as on AP History exams. It’s one of the few things on standardized tests I do not have a problem with, and would use even if there was no test associated with it. While not a truly authentic assessment, DBQs accomplish exactly what most timed assessments should: it simulates the real work of professionals in the field through inquiry. Given that authentic inquiry in social studies takes a lot of time, the DBQ essay provides an appropriate bounded inquiry experience which can be used both as a formative assessment to help students learn more information, but also as means to assess students’ abilities to critically read, construct written arguments, back those up with evidence, access and integrate other knowledge, and write in a clear, organized manner. For the couple hours it takes, DBQs give teachers a lot of bang for their buck.
Since becoming a part of the pilot for new assessments to be used as part of NYC teacher evaluation last January, I’ve been thinking even more deeply about the uses of DBQs. Starting from the brilliant Historical Thinking Matters, the DBQs from the pilot forced students not only to construct arguments based on evidence, but they also asked students to learn to think and read like historians, by presenting them with contradictory evidence about the causation of events. This is something the NY DBQs never do; all documents can be read and used merely as a statement of fact. It also pushes students beyond the thinking of most AP DBQs, which focus on obviously subjective evaluations of the effects of historical actions, as opposed to forcing students to take an objective stand on the causes of events in the face of unclarity and uncertainty. Still, with all sources being primary documents, a key component of the work of modern research was missing.
Last year, it dawned on me that I could use the DBQ structure to teach and assess students’ abilities to evaluate all sources. On a DBQ I constructed about the French Revolution, I threw in a “document” from Wikipedia. I did not want students to simply discard the information — there was really good stuff in there — but I hoped students would question the trustworthiness of the source in writing rather than just citing it as fact (some did). The most astute readers even picked up that there was evidence in another primary document included that contradicted part of the Wikipedia source.
This year, as I put together a senior course that deals with major questions and understandings from government and economics, I’m envisioning using DBQ essays in order to simulate two additional authentic tasks from my students’ lives. One of these uses is a little more obvious: students will have to take a stand on policy matters based on contradictory data, newspaper reporting, and opinion pieces. I’m currently accumulating documents for an essay about the effectiveness of the stimulus for later in the year, and additional ideas would be great.
However, in dealing with seniors, I’m also looking for a way to simulate the experience of a college course, and attempted to construct a DBQ experience to give me an idea of where students are in terms of being ready for that. My first unit looks at identity formation, media literacy, and the connection between the two. So I’m asking students to write a DBQ essay agreeing or disagreeing with the statement, “Individuals‘ identities are created by advertising” using these documents (sorry, it’s a big file). I think this task will simulate the experience of having to take an exam based on course reading. I don’t just want to simulate this experience, though. In order to simulate the lecture hall, I will deliver a formal lecture on models of identity formation, and students will be allowed to use their notes on their essay. The next day, I will attempt to simulate the social aspect of studying in college by splitting up the documents between students, having them read them over, and then share their reading with their classmates. Only then, will students get all the documents, and have a couple of classes to write their essays.
One of the shared practices of my new school is the use of three interim assessments throughout the year using the same rubric in order to track students’ growth and to be able to target instruction to the areas where it’s most needed. This identity essay will be the first of my interim assessments, so I’ll post the data and my reflection on it once I have it in early October, as well as continued reflection throughout the year about addressing these specific skills.
