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

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.”