Getting ready to go into elementary education, it is essential to realize what kinds of assessment would be appropriate for a social studies lesson. Seeing as how different grade levels would need different kinds of assessment. For this post, I will take inspiration from the class I'm getting my practicum experience with, a 5th grade class. For informal assessment, I would use a question/answer session during the lesson to make sure that the students were following along and understanding as I teach. I would use questions like, "So what year was X?" so that the students would have to feed back the answers. The second type of informal assessment I would use would be to have the students each read a little something out of the section in the book we were in. This would allow me to tell whether the students were following along in the lesson and also allow me to measure their reading skill outside of the time set aside for specific reading purposes. Another way I could assess their knowledge would be to have them create a timeline as we go through our lessons each week, monitor the classroom to see if they had any questions, then take it up at the end of the week to serve as both an informal and formal assessment. There would also need to be a written test at the end of the section to assure that they students have retained their information. I would also like to use things such as history-related poetry, and story-writing assignments as formal assessment. I would use things such as having the students situate themselves in a particular moment in history and writing as if they are keeping a diary of everything that is happening around them, maybe do something like having certain groups of students be situated in certain times of on different sides of a particular war to see what kind of emotions I could bring about from them.There are many questions you could do with facts about the presidents and also states and their capitals. Any of these assessments could be used for any of the different lesson topics with the Social Studies curriculum.
Vanessa, these are great ideas for teaching reading and social studies. I wonder if you could push it further and have the students draw comics or show cause and effect, or do other projects to demonstrates both social studies and reading comprehension.
I really like that you focused on Social Studies because I think it gets overlooked a lot in our classes. One of my favorite things about Social Studies is that there are so many creative ways for it to be assessed. I really liked your idea of having students write a diary from the perspective of a historical figure because it allows students to be creative and gives them an opportunity to really relate to and gain a deeper understanding of the material. Just as you said in your PLE, I really want use a lot of projects and writing assingments like the diary to assess my students' social studies skills and incorporate reading when I become an elementary teacher.
Vanessa, these are great ideas for teaching reading and social studies. I wonder if you could push it further and have the students draw comics or show cause and effect, or do other projects to demonstrates both social studies and reading comprehension.
ReplyDeleteI really like that you focused on Social Studies because I think it gets overlooked a lot in our classes. One of my favorite things about Social Studies is that there are so many creative ways for it to be assessed. I really liked your idea of having students write a diary from the perspective of a historical figure because it allows students to be creative and gives them an opportunity to really relate to and gain a deeper understanding of the material. Just as you said in your PLE, I really want use a lot of projects and writing assingments like the diary to assess my students' social studies skills and incorporate reading when I become an elementary teacher.
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