Week 7 - Evaluation and Assessment

Use in Classroom
My lesson for this week focuses on the differences between Federalists & Anti-Federalists and the creation of the Constitution as a replacement for the Articles of Confederation.  This is a topic I cover in both my 9th grade civics/government class as well as my AP Government class.  I have decided to use project-based learning as a tool to help students work with the content and produce a representation of their understanding of the concepts I want them to know.  I will have also used a google forms as a way of quizzing my students and formatively assessing their understanding of the big ideas at the end of the project.

Learning Objective: The learner will analyze the major differences between the federalists and federalists and create a propaganda poster representing the federalist or anti-federalist position on the Constitution.

Step 1: students will watch a quick 5 minute video that conveys the important content for this lesson.  In order to ensure careful watching and comprehension of the video students will take a brief quiz before moving on from this step.  I decided to exclusively use google tools for this project - forms for the survey and quiz, docs/slides/drawings for the student project, and docs for the project description and rubric.
Link to assignment description and rubric

• Kahoot - provides teachers with four different tools for review and/or formative assessment.  The most popular tool is a bar-trivia style quiz game.  After each question the teacher is given an item-analysis breakdown for the question and can take a moment to clear up misconceptions and explain the correct answer.  At the end of the game the teacher can access an excel-style spreadsheet showing results for every student on every question.  Kahoot also provides the option of a review game called Jumble, a tool to give surveys, and a tool to facilitate class discussions.

• Go Formative - quiz style website.  Student workspace for each question lights up green or red depending on whether they got the question correct or incorrect.  Teachers can also individually access student "workspace" for subjective questions.

• Segmenting - the instructor breaks the lesson/tool down into learning paced parts.  By breaking up my above lesson into different steps I am accomplishing this.  Using the video quiz and the formative assessment at the end allow me to check on my students and give them remediation if needed before moving on to the next step.  The ability to break up google forms into different sections also is an example of the segmenting principle.

• Pre-training - present characteristics of key concepts before lesson.  The video in step 1 as well as the assignment description in step 2 meet this principle.

• Modality - use spoken words rather than printed words.  The use of video as an introductory tool fulfills the modality principle.

I do most of my online quizzing on a website called Socrative.com.  It provides instant feedback for each question to both the student and the teacher.  It also allows for each question to be tied to an individual standard or target so a teacher can see what topics need further review or clarification.  For simplicity's sake I stuck with google forms for today.

Step 2: Students will create a propaganda poster representing the Federalist or Anti-Federalist position on ratification of the new Constitution.  Here is the assignment description complete with an assignment rubric.  Students will create these posters electronically and then share with the class.  Even though each student is only working on one side of the debate, the presentations will guarantee that all students get a significant amount of review about the opposing viewpoint.







Step 3: Students will complete the following survey after completing steps 1 and 2.  This survey presents students with a metacognitive exercise that will also provide me with useful data points.  Is there something specific I need to review?  Did one resource prove to be more useful than another?  I wanted to try using something other than google forms, but ultimately decided that keeping things simple by staying in google was the way to go.  I did play around with a couple of different tools outside of google.

Link to Survey

I have used PBL (project based learning or problem based learning) units on a limited basis in my classroom.  I do three PBL units in my economics class and use several smaller PBL lessons in my other classes.  PBL develops a variety of skills while allowing students an opportunity to practice and work with content.  Students learning to role play, empathize, analyze, and develop products for real-world audiences.  Students also learn the value of collaboration, communication skills, and how to create interdisciplinary connections.  There has been a big cross-curricular collaborative push at my school and elements of PBL lend themselves to this cross-curricular emphasis.  For example our school created an "edible schoolyard" where science classes work on the development and growing of the garden, English and Social Studies classes work on grant writing to secure funding for further development and expansion, Geometry classes design the layouts of plant beds, and shop classes build the actual flower beds.  The eventual goal is to create a garden that allows for a CSA (community sponsored agriculture) farm run by students and different classes.

Application

The three multimedia instructional design principles I am choosing to focus on are segmenting, pre-training, and modality.

Reflection

This week's project has opened my eyes to how many tools truly exist for formative assessment.  It is so easy at the end of a lesson to have students quickly complete an exit ticket that can be used to guide instruction for the next class period.  These are tools that are easy to use and provide quick and easy data that can inform teacher reflection and future instruction.