Illinois Professional Teaching Standard Eight | Assessment

The competent teacher understands various formal and informal assessment strategies and
uses them to support the continuous development of all students.

Description:

This course assignment from an assessment class required an overview of a social studies unit
(for another course) and an analysis of an assessment from that unit. The assignment required
me to describe the unit and context in which it would be presented, what assessments would
be given (a hand out for a lesson involving watching a film), how I would grade the
assessment, how I would modify the assessment for a student with special needs, and what I
expected the student to be able to do.

Meeting the standard:

This artifact requires me to thoroughly evaluate and reinforce my assessment strategies in

order to support the development of my students. The assignment ensured that my
assessment is focused on particular curriculum or standards and that it is also valid, reliable,
and fair to students. Additionally, it requires me to address the levels Bloom’s Taxonomy,
which explains what kind of thinking I am requiring the students to do while taking
assessment. This will hopefully tell me that students are improving in terms of their reasoning
skills and understanding of the material.

How this demonstrates my development as a teacher:

This artifact explains that I am able to create an assessment which challenges students and
addresses important concepts within the curriculum being taught. In my experience as an
aide, I was often tasked with creating assessments, but I never actually understood what I was
creating or the purpose behind having an assessment in the first place. I now understand that
in order to have an effective assessment, issues like the ones addressed in this artifact must be
considered.
 EPSY 485 Course Assignment

1. School and Class Context:

School Population: 640 students

6th – 8th Grade
90% White
14% Special Education (Designated by IEP)
33% Low Income (Designated by students with free/reduced lunch)

Grade Level: 8th Grade

Content Area: Social Studies (History)
“Team” Population: 110 Students (No Special Education, 20 Students Designated for Title 1 Services)
Academic Level: Reading: At grade level.

2. Unit of Study

Unit Topic: American Slave Narratives1

The American Slave Narrative Unit focuses on the history and origins of slave narratives spanning from
colonial times to the beginning of the Civil Rights movement. The unit focuses on the use of primary source
documents in the form of narratives and oral history. Throughout the unit there will be days where we will teach
students using lecture. Other days will be spent with the actual words of the slaves through primary sources.
These "Lab" days will be a time that students will analyze primary source documents and apply those readings
to various activities. We also want students to expand their understanding of slavery as a social and political
phenomenon. Too often, slavery is told from the perspective of white historians and students are not exposed to
the emotions and experiences of the slaves themselves. Lastly, there is a correlation between the evolution of
African Americans in the United States and their cultural narrative and oral traditions. As the status of African
Americans has changed over time the African American traditions and oral histories have been transformed as
well.

Essential Questions2:
 How and why are people or groups in a society treated differently based on race?
 How does religion, language, literature, the arts, architecture and traditions contribute to the development
and transmission of slave culture?
 How and why did America’s popular opinion change about slavery over time? What changes occurred that
reflected over this time period?
 How do slave narratives compare and contrast with other works written about slavery from a white
perspective?
 What types of support systems were in place for slaves and freed slaves in the United States?
 What were the realities of slave life?
 What is oral history, and what is its role in African American culture?
 How do the perspectives offered by slave narratives change our ideas about the history of slavery?

Selected Essential Questions to be evaluated using Bloom’s Taxonomy:

 What is oral history, and what is its role in African American culture?

1
This unit was constructed by myself and a group of my peers from CI 402T in the Spring of 2010. The website is included here if
you’d like to take a look: http://americanslavenarratives.blogspot.com/
2
The essential questions from that unit are posted here:
<http://americanslavenarratives.blogspot.com/p/essential-questions.html>
 This essential question addresses knowledge as it is asking for a recall question to answer what is oral
history. It also addresses comprehension because oral history is a very complex issue with no one clear
definition, so students are tasked with applying prior knowledge with new information to form their own
understanding. Finally, it addresses application because it ask students to apply their understanding of oral
history and connect it with its impact on African American culture.

 How do the perspectives offered by slave narratives change our ideas about the history of slavery?

This essential question addresses application because it asks students to take the information they already
know about slave narratives and use to it understand how perspective plays an important role in how history
is written. It also addresses analysis because it asks students to see trends and patterns in slave narratives
and other oral histories to determine the underlying meaning behind the text. Synthesizing also comes into
play because this question wants students to think critically about slave narratives and combine it with their
prior knowledge of slavery and the slave trade in order to make new connections about the issue. Finally,
this also wants students to evaluate because part of reading oral history is to determine if the information
contained in a source is reasonable, reliable, and factually true.

3. Assessment during Instruction Activity

In-class Assessment (See attached):

This assessment is a worksheet that is provided to the students during a film about slave narratives called
Unchained Memories. All information (except the question below) for this section will be listed on the
handout. The required answers will be in bold.

Provide evidence (or propose how you will gather evidence) that this will be a valid, reliable, and fair
assessment.

Validity: This assessment will be deemed valid when the students sufficiently complete the activity
after watching the film. If this is not a valid assessment it will be clear that students did
not understand the meaning of film, and their answers will reflect that. If this is a valid
assessment, almost all (hopefully all) students will have complete, ample answers that
make sense and relate directly to the material in the film and correspond with the learning
standards.

Reliability: This assessment will be deemed reliable if students continuously answer the questions in
a similar fashion. With an assessment such as this, students should be able to come to
consistent conclusions about the questions asked. The information covered in this
assessment will have already been tested once before in the unit, and would be retested
before the end of the unit. If the students continuously after the questions in a consistent
manner, then the assessment is valid.

Fairness: All of the questions on the assessment should be able to be answered by all students. The
information being assessed is addressed in the film. If students are not able to answer the
questions (due to non-external factors: absent, sleeping in class, etc.) that will be
evidence enough that this is not a fair assessment. The assessment requires an additional
knowledge of recording history, but because this is part of an interdisciplinary, co-taught
unit, all students should be up to speed at this moment in time.
4. Answer the following questions based on your activity:

Would you grade this activity? Why or why not?

I would evaluate this assessment, but not grade it. It is an in-class assignment that will help students as they
progress throughout the unit. However, I will use the students’ answers to determine their understanding of the
topic of oral history and its relationship to slavery to see if they are meeting the learning targets.

How will you conduct this activity? Are there any assessment accommodations for students with special
needs?

This activity will be conducted during the watching of the film. The film would take two days to watch, and
there will be time after the film on the second day to answer the questions completely. I would conduct this
assessment in this manner because the information will be fresh in the students’ minds, so it only makes sense
to allow them to answer the questions during the film and immediately after.

Students with visual or auditory special needs would be accommodated by a personalized viewing of the film
(possibly a PC screen) and a version of the film with subtitles respectively. Students with difficulty writing
may be given an oral assessment and asked the questions by the teacher or an aide. Any other issues with
special needs would be handled accordingly.

What are your performance criteria for this activity?

My evidence that the student understands the material will be based on the similarity of the students’ answers to
the answers given in the key and also based on my own expertise of the subject. Since this assessment is not
scored, it is purely an evaluative tool to determine if students understand the key features of oral history and are
meeting the specified learning targets.

What are your performance criteria for the class?

I will be evaluating this assessment, and I will be able to use my expertise to determine if the students are ready
to move on. Questions like the ones that appear in this assessment provide me with subjective information that
will need to be judged on an individual basis. The hope is that all students answer the questions completely
with sufficient justification of their answers and observations. As stated before, this will not be the first or last
time the students will be assessed on the topics covered in the handout, so there will be ample evidence to
determine if students are ready to move on.

Based on their evidence of understanding, how will you proceed?

If the students “get” the material, the class will move on to an interview assignment in which students will
interview storytellers to explore oral histories on a more authentic level. If student’s do not seem to understand
the material from the film, it is clear that a day of review will be necessary followed by another in-class
assessment to determine if they are ready to move on.
 Unchained Memories Discussion Handout:

Please read these questions before we watch the film. While watching the movie, please fill in the handout. We will be
discussing these after watching the film and your participation WILL BE REQUIRED. This will help you when conducting
your interviews, and will be turned in at the end of class.

1. After watching the film, how do you define oral history?

Learning Objective: What is oral history, and what is its role in African American culture?

Level of Bloom’s: Knowledge & Comprehension: This question addresses recalling information from the
video and restating ideas from the video to create a definition from the student’s own
words.

Correct Answer: A correct answer for this question would be similar to the following:
Oral history means a type of history that is unwritten and passed down from generation to
generation within a culture to preserve the legacy of that culture. It can be passed down
through storytelling, song, dance, etc.

2. According to the video, how did slaves use oral history? How is still in use today?

Learning Objective: What is oral history, and what is its role in African American culture?

Level of Bloom’s: Knowledge: This question addresses recalling information from the video about the use of
oral history by slaves and African Americans today.

Correct Answer: A correct answer for this question would be similar to the following:
Because slaves were rarely exposed to education, they were not able to write their family and
cultural history into history books. However, they used oral history to pass information from
one generation of slave to another, often in the form of storytelling and song. African
Americans use oral history today as a way to honor their ancestors and to continue the
cultural traditions that have been passed down over the years.

3. After seeing this movie, have your ideas about how history is recorded changed? Why or why not? (Think about our
discussion last week on how history is written and constructed).

Learning Objective: How do the perspectives offered by slave narratives change our ideas about the history of
slavery?

Level of Bloom’s: Synthesis & Evaluation: This question asks students to establish new relationships between
the new concept of oral history to past understandings of recording history which will also
ask them to evaluate oral histories place among other forms of history.
Correct Answer: A correct answer for this question would be similar to the following:

If yes, something along the lines of:

Because I thought history could only exist in books, but now I realize that history can occur in
many different forms and that oral history is a real form of history that must be taken
seriously.

If no, something like this:

Because I think history is only written on paper and is books. How can you have history
without it being something everyone can know?
Or
Because my family practices oral history, so I already knew about it.

4. How did the oral histories of slaves differ from what we see in our history textbook?

Learning Objective: How do the perspectives offered by slave narratives change our ideas about the history of
slavery?

Level of Bloom’s: Evaluation: This question asks students to evaluate oral history by comparing its
perspective to that of the perspective found in the classroom history textbook.

Correct Answer: A correct answer for this question would be similar to the following:
Oral histories explain that slavery was a cruel, defeating enterprise that personally devastated
slaves through pain, torture, and even death. The standard textbook would gloss over these
issues without the personality and humanity of the oral histories.