"Do you have any standard aligned tests that I could show to teachers?"
(DM from a teacher friend earlier today)
(DM from a teacher friend earlier today)
That seems like a simple question, but I have not given a "normal" test for about 5 years. I just spent fifteen minutes searching my hard drive and GoogleDocs, but I still can't find an example of an old Social Studies test to share via link or screenshot. Sorry!
I just don't do the multi-page assessments to fill the blanks, label a map, write short answers, construct an open-response essay, choose the best answer on multiple-choice items, etc. ... all from memory during a full class period. My eighth-graders got a lot of that last year, and I doubt it made them love social studies more than before. These assessments are also brutally difficult to modify appropriately. (I teach heterogeneous classes with 20-40% who have a diagnosed disability.)
This rubric took about 3 years to develop through trial and error, but since 2017 it's been my go-to tool for assessment and differentiation. In certain cases, I use in-between grades like A/B (90%) when portions of the student's response fit the criteria of Advanced, and other parts are Fine. Grading is much faster and feels much fairer than ever before, because the descriptions work pretty well for any task. Of course it's still subjective but so are many (most?) higher-order tasks in any discipline.
I just don't do the multi-page assessments to fill the blanks, label a map, write short answers, construct an open-response essay, choose the best answer on multiple-choice items, etc. ... all from memory during a full class period. My eighth-graders got a lot of that last year, and I doubt it made them love social studies more than before. These assessments are also brutally difficult to modify appropriately. (I teach heterogeneous classes with 20-40% who have a diagnosed disability.)
This rubric took about 3 years to develop through trial and error, but since 2017 it's been my go-to tool for assessment and differentiation. In certain cases, I use in-between grades like A/B (90%) when portions of the student's response fit the criteria of Advanced, and other parts are Fine. Grading is much faster and feels much fairer than ever before, because the descriptions work pretty well for any task. Of course it's still subjective but so are many (most?) higher-order tasks in any discipline.
I find this rubric does a fine job for assessing students' performance on content standards. (I use something different for skill mastery, but that's beyond the scope of this blog post.)
Here is an example:
In December, I devoted about 2 weeks to this important content standard: Analyze the weaknesses of the national government under the Articles of Confederation; and describe the crucial events (e.g., Shays’ Rebellion) leading to the Constitutional Convention. I also wanted to address the overarching K-12 Civics standard Analyze the purpose and point of view of each source; distinguish opinion from fact and embed the CCSS Literacy standard Write arguments focused on discipline-specific content: Support claim(s) with logical reasoning and relevant, accurate data and evidence that demonstrate an understanding of the topic or text, using credible sources.
I made a single-question test for students to answer during a class period, although many students didn't take the full 45 minutes. (screenshot below and GoogleDoc link here)
Here is an example:
In December, I devoted about 2 weeks to this important content standard: Analyze the weaknesses of the national government under the Articles of Confederation; and describe the crucial events (e.g., Shays’ Rebellion) leading to the Constitutional Convention. I also wanted to address the overarching K-12 Civics standard Analyze the purpose and point of view of each source; distinguish opinion from fact and embed the CCSS Literacy standard Write arguments focused on discipline-specific content: Support claim(s) with logical reasoning and relevant, accurate data and evidence that demonstrate an understanding of the topic or text, using credible sources.
I made a single-question test for students to answer during a class period, although many students didn't take the full 45 minutes. (screenshot below and GoogleDoc link here)
Here is the modified version that I made for students with language-processing disabilities. It looks longer because I broke down the task into sub-questions. [GoogleDoc link]
Honestly, this assessment kicked some kids' butts. The average score was 84% (B) with a wide range of performance. I believe the data (1) mainly validate the fairness of the task, because this is a challenging standard so the assessment shouldn't be a 'freebie', (2) indicate some ways that I can teach the material more effectively next year.
I should mention that students were allowed to use a small prewriting outline that they made in class the previous day. This was not primarily a test of recall, but rather of synthesis and analysis. I had previously checked students' comprehension of essential knowledge (like "What are the Articles of Confederation?") with formative assessments of the video lessons. That's an important and supremely helpful element of flipped-mastery!
I should mention that students were allowed to use a small prewriting outline that they made in class the previous day. This was not primarily a test of recall, but rather of synthesis and analysis. I had previously checked students' comprehension of essential knowledge (like "What are the Articles of Confederation?") with formative assessments of the video lessons. That's an important and supremely helpful element of flipped-mastery!
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