B.A. Social Studies
In Missouri, we are seeing the first new state assessments being developed in the social studies in over ten years. I have been fortunate to be a part of the process in the two most recent stages by developing items and working in the content and bias review of those items. The process is difficult work and I can honestly say that I left each day ready to hit the pillow. With all of that said, I have been asked by multiple people to share some takeaways from the process and how it has helped me to prepare my students for the new assessments being piloted this year. Here are my tips: This process began when the state of Missouri evaluated and changed from the Course/Grade Level Expectations (CLE’s) of old to the new Missouri Learning Standards (MLS). This is where quality instruction begins. I encourage you to dive in, and I mean really dive in, to the new standards. In government specifically, I think that you will notice a major shift to include much more history regarding the development of the Constitution compared to the previous standards. This is a major challenge for us in the government classroom as the 9-12 standards do not address the history of the Constitution and Early Republic. There is a major void here that government teachers and schools will need to address. How will we fill in these gaps in the curriculum? I have started teaching more of that history directly into my class, and as a result of my students lacking exposure over the course of three years (8th-11th grade) to that history, I have to assume that that they do not have any background regarding that information. A ton of reteaching is involved, but is necessary if we want to work to be successful on that all important government EOC. With all of this being said, there is plenty of room for discussion pertaining to the processes and principles of government in both world and United States history courses, but this will need to be a serious discussion among departments and curriculum coordinators in districts statewide. In the end, we are asking social studies teachers and departments to prepare students for the government EOC as a result of it being the lone state assessment in the subject in K-12. As it does with any part of our students’ educations, it takes a team effort to ensure that students are prepared for success. Sitting through the process of both writing and reviewing items over the course of two different sessions, the most significant tool used to determine content was the item specifications provided by DESE (click here to find them). In the item writing portion, they were the starting point for development and then in the content and bias review items were compared with them. Specifically, the content limits/assessment boundaries were the most used resource in the room. You need to download them and have them easily accessible for each standard in order to best understand what you need to be providing for your students in regard to content. The specs also inform educators what types of items and stimulus (sometimes specifically) that students will need to be exposed to prior to the assessment. Gone are the days of the fifty item multiple choice test. The multiple choice option is only one of many that item writers have at their disposal. The options for assessment types seem to be endless and students can expect to label images using drag and drop, use drop down fill in the blank items, complete open-ended items, and hot text among others. We will need to prepare our students for this new wave of technology-enhanced questions in order to ensure that they have the highest opportunity to be successful. In order to address this concern, I have started using the Schoology (who I am in no way endorsing) assessment technology-enhanced items. There are other tools available with these capabilities (see this post from “The Techie Teacher”), but I would encourage you to be sure that you are finding and using one to best prepare your students. We need to be preparing our students with the same style of assessment items in order to best overcome what is a potential barrier for success. We do not want our students, our teachers, buildings, and districts to be labeled as less than proficient if the issue is assessment taking ability over the content and curriculum skills. Gone are the days of cramming facts into our students heads--knowing that the First Amendment contains the five freedoms is far from demonstrating an understanding of how they are protected and applied. A significant takeaway for me was that it will be necessary to expect students to move beyond the memorization of facts and concepts. Expect items to vary regarding Depth of Knowledge (DOK) level. In the past, the multiple choice items have reached to achieve level two, but you will see that some items, due to the technology capabilities will climb higher on the new assessment. There is a focus on historical thinking skills and how they can be assessed. Students will be asked to apply their DOK level one knowledge in order to address the items at a high level. None of this is to say that we can move to the higher orders without having the base knowledge, but there is going to have to be a focus in our classes on preparing past the basics.
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AuthorBrian Anton currently serves the Purdy R-II (Missouri) School District as the 7-12 Principal after working in the PK-12 Assistant Principal and Athletic Director roles for two years. In the 12 years prior to moving into administration, he served as an award-winning high school social studies teacher. Archives
September 2018
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