Yulia Bezriadina EPSY 485 Gannon Fall 2011 Assessment During Instruction 1.

Context I am teaching in a rural high school (9-12), somewhat near a larger city. There are 26 students in my class. There are two students with special needs in my classroom. One student is on the autism spectrum, and another student has ADD. The school is 73% white, 18% Hispanic, 5% black, 3% Asian, and 1% multiracial. About 40% of students qualify for free or reduced lunches. My students are in 11th grade, and they will start learning about U.S history in depth. They should have already taken a World History class that teaches them Western history up through the founding of the United States. Most of my students are achieving at grade level, but a few students are struggling with reading comprehension. 2. Unit of Study The unit we will be covering is The Great Depression, which is a unit on the 11th grade level. The essential questions for the unit are: what factors and events caused the Great Depression and how, if it all, could this have been avoided? who was affected by the events of the Great Depression and were all people affected equally? What were the lasting impacts on the U.S policy from the Great Depression?

There a variety of learning objectives within this unit, including: 1. Students will compare and contrast the impact felt by various groups in society by the Great Depression by creating a poster with both visual and textual information. (comprehension, analysis, synthesis) 2. Student will analyze the impact of the Great Depression on U.S economic policy by looking at primary sources and creating a short written response based on these sources. (application, analysis, synthesis)

To accomplish these learning objectives, I plan to use a variety of strategies. I will present interactive power points to the students, as well as assign them informative texts to read. Students will also be working with primary sources related to the Great Depression, including photographs, personal accounts, and written laws. They will work in groups occasionally, including when they compare and contrasts impacts of the Great Depression. They will also work individually on assignments such as written responses. Students will be expected to use the primary sources, informative texts, and the information in the power point presentations in order to complete their learning objectives. 3A. Assessment During Instruction Activity with answer key DIRECTIONS: Answer each of these questions using the information you have learned in class today.

(1) From the information you have read and seen in the primary sources, how would you classify the impact felt by people from the Great Depression? A. While some people suffered from the effects of the Great Depression, many others got through this time period relatively unaffected. B. The effects of the Great Depression were felt immensely and equally by all institutions and groups of people in the United States. C. Although almost all people felt some of financial pressure that the Great Depression brought, the impact was not always felt equally.

(2) What was one of the most powerful economic effects of the Great Depression? A. Record high inflation rates in the United States B. Record high unemployment rates in the United States C. Record low U.S GDP

(3) Look closely at the image below. In two to three sentences, explain what the image can tell us about the effects of the Great Depression.

(4) In two to three sentences, explain how the New Deal changed U.S economic policy.

(5) Take on the role of one of the following: a single mother, a wealthy business man, an African-American factory worker. In a 4-6 sentence paragraph, describe how you have been affected by the events of the Great Depression. Instead of a written paragraph, you can also sketch a series of 3 images that illustrate these same ideas.

Rubric/Checklist for Written Responses Proficient (Check Plus) Student directly answers question, draws on primary sources, and has no inaccurate information. Adequate (Check) Student directly answers question but may need to draw on primary sources more. Needs Improvement (Check Minus) Student does not accurately answer question or use primary sources as evidence.

Analysis of Items Item 1: This item relates primarily to the first learning objective, and involves the cognitive process of comprehension. It requires students to understand and classify the effects of the Great Depression that they have learned about in class. In addition, this item also relates to the second objective in its reliance on the information gleamed from primary sources, which also brings the cognitive process of application into play by requiring students to interpret the sources they have read and looked at. Item 2: This item is linked to the second learning objective of analyzing the impact of the Great Depression on U.S economic policy. It requires students to take the information they have learned from primary sources on the economical aspects of the Great Depression, such as personal accounts about struggling with unemployment, and analyze and apply it to the question at hand. Item 3: This item relates to both of the learning objectives. It asks students to look at the way the Great Depression impacted society, as well as how it affected the nation financially. Students must use the information they see in the picture, apply it to a new context, and synthesize a response. Item 4: This item goes hand in hand with the second learning objective provided. It asks students to analyze how a certain set of economic programs changed/affected the national economy as a while. It also calls on students to apply the information they have gotten from their primary sources to this question. Item 5: This is an item that is linked to the first learning objective of producing information on how various groups of people were impacted by the effect of the Great Depression. Students are asked to apply the information from the primary sources in a new context again. Along with this, they are asked to synthesize a narrative or visualization that reflects how a group of people was affected by the Great Depression. Lots of space is given for students to respond so they can brainstorm and draft ideas in the space provided. I consider this to be a fair assessment because it allows all students the opportunity to succeed in completing it. The instruction provided in class serves as a sound foundation for completing the items in this assessment. Students of all abilities are addressed in this assessment. Students with low reading comprehension, for example, can use images as well as class discussions and group work in order to complete the tasks. The visual materials provided in classwork, as well as in the assessment itself, benefit both students with ADD and students on the autism spectrum, as visual expressions of information are often more accessible to them. This assessment is also fair because it does not include in biases in the questioning. In order to make this a reliable assessment, I will grade each of these items individually. I will look for potential gaps for understanding within the multiple-choice items, as well as the short answer and extended response items. A rubric will be used for the last three questions in order to further ensure reliability. Regarding validity, I believe this to be a valid assessment because I

have aligned test items with learning objectives for the students, as well as with the cognitive processes associated with the learning objectives. I plan to use this assessment to gauge how well students have been taking in information from my lessons, as well as to address gaps in understanding and using student responses to more effectively plan my next lesson. 3B/C/D Conducting the assessment and grading: I will conduct this assessment at the end of class after the students have spent the last few days looking at primary sources and receiving information from various secondary sources as well. Students will be asked to complete the assessments quietly and individually. Students will have 15 minutes at the end of class to work on this, but they will also be expected to take the assessment home in order to finish it, allowing them the chance to think more in-depth about their responses. After the assessments are handed back, I will evaluate all of the items individually using an answer key and a rubric for the responses. This will be done at home or during a planning period. No accommodations are needed for the students with special needs for this exam, as their reading comprehension levels should not interfere with their performance, and enough visualizations are provided for them to have the opportunity to succeed. I would also walk around to ensure students stay focused on the task, especially any student with ADD. I would not grade this activity but I would hand it back to students with comments and feedback. The reason I would not grade this is because the objective of the assessment isnt assigning a grade but allowing students the chance to articulate what they have learned and giving teachers the chance to check for gaps in understanding. Performance Criteria: The performance criteria I will use on the assessment include correct responses to the multiple choice items, as well as thought-out and accurate responses to the rest of the items. In the first two items, if students answer correctly, this will mean they have understood the material at hand. In the last three items, if students bring up information looked at / discussed about in class, use this information in the context of the item, and apply it correctly without any inaccurate information, this will show me that they have learned what they needed to learn during the lesson and that they can successfully complete their learning objectives. Essential to this for students will be bringing up the primary sources they looked at within their responses. If the majority of the student exhibit this performance criteria, I will believe that my class as a whole has understood the lesson and succeeded in their learning objectives. If less that 75% of people do well on the assessment, this will signal to me that I may need to change my instructional strategies. Next Steps If my students succeed at this assessment and demonstrate the necessary performance criteria that will show me that they understood the lesson, then that will tell me that I can move on to my next lesson and begin covering World War II, which occurs around the same time as the Great Depression and has a lot of links to this event. However, if a some of my students seem to struggle, I will have to address their gaps in understanding and work with them on the required tasks of the assessment. If a large amount of student do poorly, I will most likely work with them

on interpreting primary source more explicitly and in depth. If students seem to be struggling with writing skills, I would change the items on the test to require less proficient writing skills and will work with students on how to express ideas through writing.

4. Self Reflection This piece of work helped me learn a lot about conducing effective assessments. It made me think about the objectives that I am assessing, as well as the objectives of the assessment itself. It also motivated me to think about ways I could make my assessment accessible, valid, reliable, and useful in the classroom. I definitely think that these assessment methods are effective in helping students learn because it requires them to analyze and apply the information they learned about in class, making it more memorable, engaging, and applicable to them. If I had had more time, I would have included a more in depth rubric to assess written student responses on. A very detailed rubric could even further ensure the reliability and fairness of my test, as all students responses will be graded identically and by the same set of detailed expectations. However, for the time that I had, these rubrics are effective, informational, and still manage to provide a fair and reliable assessment. Other strengths of the assessment include that it has been differentiated for a variety of different learners. It has also been created with the needs of students with disabilities in mind. Some area of improvement, however, are the complexity of the multiple choice items as well as the previously mentioned component of rubrics. If I did this over again, I would most likely spend more time researching effective multiple choice questions. One of my biggest obstacles in creating this assessment was deciding on what multiple-choice items to include. It is often very difficult to make engaging and relevant multichoice problems on history assessments that actually require the students to do any critical thinking. I think that this issue could be overcome if I had spent a much more lengthy amount of time researching multiple-choice items that promote critical thinking in social studies. The most important aspect of this assessment to me was making it engaging and having it incorporate critical thinking skills. This way, the students find the assessment relevant and can learn from it, making this assessment a part of instruction rather than only an assessment of instruction.