Transcript Historical Thinking Skills & Assessment

Historical Thinking Skills
& Assessment
September 2013
Session Goals
 To recognize the connections between historical thinking
skills and content
 To recognize the connections between learning and
assessment
 To evaluate assessments and student responses as a
means to improve how you assess your students
Agenda
 Penny Debate
 How students learn overview
 Barton framework/HT Skills
 C3 Framework and proposed VA Teacher Prep Regulations
 Review general assessment strategies/challenges
 Essay Exercise
 Debriefing….importance of feedback, productive failure
 Assessment review and development activity
Penny Debate
 Historical thinking primarily
encourages students to gain
a deeper understanding of
the content and see the past
as it truly happened (“wie es
eigentlich gewese”…Leopold
von Ranke).
 The essential benefit of
getting students to think
historically is that they learn
the skills and processes of
“doing history” and can
apply those skills to novel
situations.
The Power of History
 “My claim in a nutshell is that history holds the
potential, only partially realized, of humanizing us in
ways offered by few other areas in the school
curriculum” (Wineburg, 2001, p. 5).
 Why is “humanizing” an important part of learning?
 Why is assessment such a critical piece of unlocking that
potential?
Learning Theory
 What is learning?
 A process that leads to change, which occurs as a result of
experience and increases the potential for improved
performance and future learning
 Types of knowledge
 Declarative
 Procedural
 Contextual
 Assessment is observing and measuring student learning
Learning Theory
 Needed: A shift in focus from How we Teach to How
Students Learn
 Seven Principles of Learning: Susan Ambrose
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Prior knowledge
Organization of knowledge
Motivation…value and expectancy
Goal-directed behavior
Mastery….novice to expert
Students’ current level of development
Self-directed learning
As Applied to Historical
Thinking
 Barton’s Framework:
 Perspective
 Interpretation of Evidence
 Agency
 What are the challenges of getting students to produce
artifacts that demonstrate historical thinking?
C3 Standards
 C3 (College, Career and Civic): Focus on Common Core
 Inquiry at the heart of social studies
 What does this mean for history assessment?
 Deeper connection with literacy skills
 Kathy Swan: “The next conversations will need to be
around assessments. Without thoughtful, realistic and
ambitious sets of assessments, the C3 efforts might be in
vain” (interview from September 2013 Social Education,
p. 223).
Effective Assessment
Review
 With a grade-level partner, discuss some of the tenets of
quality assessment.
 How do we get our students to go from “beginning” to
“advanced proficient”?
 How do these categories mirror those of the types of
knowledge discussed earlier?
 How can a deeper understanding of student learning
facilitate more effective assessment?
Assessment Activity I
 In pairs
 Review the attached essays, assess them
 Share your feedback with your group members
 What is the power of feedback for students?
 What learning conditions must teacher create to unlock
that power?
Assessment Activity II
 Organize into groups of 2-3
 Review the questions and develop a brief/rudimentary
rubric to assess skills and knowledge
 For the final part of this activity, review the two images
on the last page. With your partner/group, develop 1-2
questions and the associated rubric
Finale
 “I used to think…and now I think.”