History Geek Week Day Three: Beyond the Bubble and the new world of social studies assessment

Okay. I know that it’s 7:45 am on a Saturday morning but perhaps the best session of the day is ready to go and there’s maybe 20 people here.

Joel Breakstone and Mark Smith from the Stanford History Education Group are here to talk about their awesome new assessment tool called Beyond the Bubble. (SHEG is the group started and led by the history superhero, Sam Wineburg.) I know that it’s new and maybe people haven’t heard enough about it yet. But seriously. This is what assessment should look like in the world of the Common Core, C3 national standards, and the new Kansas state standards.

I was wrong. 8:00 am and it’s standing room only. Which is a good thing. Because Beyond the Bubble is perhaps the best place I’ve found for really measuring historical thinking.

Kansas State Social Studies Standards in home stretch

I had the chance to spend some time this week working with the Kansas social studies standards review committee. Our task was to begin and finish the final review process of the state standards.

We’ve talked about the new state standards before. It’s been an exciting year and we’re getting close to the final state board presentation. The document is very different than our current set of standards with much of our work focused around the philosophy and thinking of people like Sam Wineburg. We also worked to incorporate the ideas embedded in the Common Core literacy standards for Social Studies.

The result?

A document that encourages the teaching of social studies process rather than social studies content. It’s this shift of emphasis that makes the new standards such a cool document for me. After 10+ years of focusing on specific and minute details measured by a multiple choice test, we’re moving in the opposite direction – asking teachers to focus instead on helping kids to analyze, investigate, evaluate, justify, construct, and create.

What does it mean?

Two things. A totally different type of test and some uncomfortable classroom teachers. Both will require perhaps more work to fix than it took to create the new standards document itself.

Test creation is already in the works. Using an online writing tool, we will bank a ton of primary and secondary documents available to teachers and students throughout the year. A series of writing prompts will be created for each standard and course unit. When taking the test, students will select a prompt, access the documents, and create a pre-writing outline highlighting which documents they plan to use and how they will be used. This outline will be scored with a rubric. Students will then write a formal response to the prompt, using their pre-write document. This response will also be scored with a rubric.

The cool thing is that while these tests will be used at the state level, teachers can also score them at the classroom level. It’s this ability to have both summative and formative data that I really like. Obviously much work is needed on that piece – selecting documents, writing rubrics, creating prompts – but this is so much better than a multiple choice test.

The second thing about uncomfortable teachers is a whole other issue. We understand that asking teachers to teach this way will cause some problems. We know that a few teachers may choose to continue to teach in a “traditional,” stand and lecture style. But we also know that many teachers are more than ready for this sort of document. They will require some serious professional learning to help them understand what all of this looks like in the classroom and how to go about putting the document’s ideas into practice.

The good news is that the pendelum has shifted. Memorizing content is not good enough anymore. We’re moving in the right direction.

We didn’t finish our review, by the way. We had some great conversation and we made some changes. But more work remains.

Wanna help? Download the Mission Purpose and Standards. It’s the series of Benchmarks listed under the Standards that will be tested. Get a sense of the philosophy of the document. (This document does not reflect changes made this week. Some serious editing still remains.)

Then download the 8th grade Instructional Narrative and Content Outline. Every grade and course has one. These outlines provide guidance to teachers only and do not include any content that teachers are mandated to teach. The 8th grade has been edited and gives you an idea of the look and feel of what other outlines will look like.

Finally, download the course or grade you teach. These are much rougher and do not include any of the changes made this week.

Tell us what you think. A little extra help is a good thing!

(Sorry. The 1st grade draft is not ready to share yet!)

	Download	Kindergarten
	Download Download	2nd Grade 3rd Grade
	Download	4th Grade
	Download	5th Grade
	Download	6th Grade
	Download	7th Grade Geography
	Download	7th Grade Kansas History
	Download	High School Geography
	Download	High School World History
	Download	High School U.S. History
	Download	High School U.S. Government
	Download	High School Economics
	Download	High School Psychology

Socrative – Very cool mobile student response system

What was it? About ten years ago that the clickers came out?

You know . . . clickers. Those cool handheld devices that you passed out to kids so they could answer questions during class, take quizzes, complete exit surveys, and respond during lectures.

Clickers. Every school seemed to have one or two sets of them at about $1500 bucks a pop. And they were very handy. Kids loved them. You got nice feedback on student knowledge. But they were expensive so you had to share the kits with other teachers and setting up the quizzes was kind of a pain in the butt.

Then along came iPods and iPads. We got something called eClicker Host. eClicker Host was, and still is, a junior version of the bigger, more expensive clicker systems. It didn’t have all the bells and whistles of the $1500 kits but at just $9.99 for the teacher mobile app, well . . . I can live without the bells and whistles.

And now?

Now along comes the next best thing. Called Socrative, this new student response system is easier to use than eClicker Host and is free. Yup. In ten years, we’ve gone from clunky, $1500 kits to something slick, easy to use, and free.

Of course, kids still need devices to access your questions but these devices can be any smart phone, mobile device, laptop, or desktop computer. With Socrative, there’s just a lot more flexibility in how kids can you get to your stuff than clicker kits or even eClickers.

After downloading the Socrative Teacher app, you create an account which can be accessed both through the app or online via a browser. Once in your account, you have lots of options to create, edit, and manage your quizzes and surveys. You can download reports following quizzes and even import quizzes from other teachers. Very easy to use and designed for multiple platforms.

Students can access your questions, surveys, and games via all sorts of web-enabled devices. There are specific apps for the different mobile devices and Socrative is web-friendly so even without the mobile app, kids can access your stuff on any browser, on any computer.

The Socrative folks have a handy blog with videos, user’s guide, and helpful articles.

• In a social studies classroom, use Socrative the same way we’ve always used clickers for real-time formative assessment. You’re discussing the causes of the Civil War and want to see want kids or thinking. Grab your laptop, iPhone, iPad, or cell phone and quickly create a question and see live results come back. Your questions can be multiple choice, true/false, or even short answer.
• Have kids work in groups to address a series of questions at the end of a lesson or class period. Create a unit quiz of MC and T/F and have Socrative grade it automatically and send you a Excel  or Google Docs spreadsheet report with scores, answers, and grades.
• Ask kids to create question sets as a review activity and make those available to other class sections.

Free and easy to use. Access anywhere / anytime. Instant feedback to kids and almost instant reports to you. What’s not to like?

Focus on the kid, not the assessment

With state assessment time rolling around, I thought I would re-post something I wrote a year or so ago that fits here.

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It’s a story many of you already know. But perhaps on a Monday late in the school year with state assessments staring us in the face, it bears repeating. I was reminded of the story while browsing through an old teaching strategy article from the Organization of American Historians.

Charles Francis Adams, grandson of John Adams and son of John Quincy Adams, served as a Massachusetts state senator, a US Congressman and ambassador to Great Britain under Abraham Lincoln. He was also very conscientious about keeping a daily journal and encouraged his children to do the same.

Henry Brooks, fourth of seven children, followed his advice and began journaling at a young age. A particular entry written when Brooks was eight has continued to catch our attention. Following a day spent with his father, he wrote

Went fishing with my father today, the most glorious day of my life.

The day was so glorious, in fact, that Brooks continued to talk and write about that particular day for the next thirty years. It was then that Brooks thought to compare journal entries with his father.

For that day’s entry, Charles had written:

Went fishing with my son, a day wasted.

Now it’s possible that Charles was upset that they came home empty-handed, having caught no fish. But even so, he seems to have forgotten that the process is sometimes more important than the product. That the time spent with kids is usually more important than what we do with them.

It’s easy to forget the powerful impact we can have with our students just with the time we spend with them. So a gentle reminder during the assessment season . . . make it about the kids, not just their test scores.

Tip of the Week – Sit Down Quiz

As part of our Teaching American History grant, I get the chance to hang out in the classrooms of some great teachers. Last week, it was lessons by Nathan McAlister and Keil Hileman. Both teach middle school and have been recognized for their ability to motivate students.

And it was during my time in Keil’s class that I saw a very cool strategy that I hadn’t really seen before. Some of you may already do this but since it’s new to me, I’ll just call it Sit Down Quiz. Keil used the strategy as a way to review past material and assess student knowledge at the same time.

It’s pretty simple.

Give kids time to prepare for the quiz. Keil told his kids:

You have to share one thing from the reading, from the video we watched or something you saw / heard / read outside of class that connects with our topic. You’ve got 60 seconds to get ready. Go!

He used the 60 seconds to take roll and get organized. Keil then had every student stand up. He proceeded to  select students one at a time to share what they knew. Once a kid had shared their content or had answered a question, he allowed them to sit down. This made it very easy to see who had contributed and who hadn’t. It also ensured that everyone participated.

And because kids shared stuff from all over the place, the content was completely and totally random. But as the teacher who knew the content, Keil was always directing the discussion back to the specific topic. While some students were allowed to sit after sharing a minimal amount, Keil used the Sit Down Quiz with other kids as an opportunity to focus on higher order questions. He asked kids to make connections with what was shared by students before them, to refer back to prior knowledge, to compare their information with the text or to predict how their information might tie in with other content.

Keil also used the Quiz as an opportunity to share mini-lectures on specific topics, especially if it seemed kids weren’t making proper connections.

I like this. Kids clearly knew that they were expected to take part and to have something ready to share. Because kids never knew who he would pick next or what question he might ask, they all stayed engaged. Keil didn’t do this but if you need more documentation, ask kids to write a quick summary paragraph that outlines what they shared and how it connects with your topic. They should also include new content from the discussion.

The day I was there, Keil used this activity with 31 eighth graders and 32 seventh graders. Both times, he spent about 15 minutes with the strategy.

Sit Down Quiz seems like a quick and easy way to check for comprehension, review content and activate prior knowledge. And with practice, it would be fairly easy to do but remember that underneath there’s a lot of stuff you’ll need to stay on top of – classroom management, review, assessment, thinking skills, content presentation. But it’s all stuff that’s good for kids.

Have fun! Let me know how it turns out.