Thursday, October 24, 2013

Elementary Social Social Studies Unit Planning within an Inquiry Framework


As part of your third assignment due November 8th, you are asked to work with a partner to create an assessment plan for a long-term inquiry unit (6-8 weeks). As part of this process you should choose a grade specific topic to inquire into as well as a discipline or medium to guide the daily activities in the unit. As outlined by Amy Park in her presentation which you have handouts from and shown in this link, please include the following elements: 

  • Two big inquiry tasks that will guide this unit along with accompanying assessment criteria for each (min. 4) that you will use to evaluate your students. 
  • A series of at least five or six assessment tasks that will prepare students to powerfully respond to each inquiry task. Include how many one-hour classes you think each stage will take at the top. 
  • For each assessment task include 2-3 assessment criteria that you will use to evaluate student work. Make these tasks specific. See examples. 
  • For each assessment task and inquiry task include specific resources you would use to achieve these tasks including videos, articles, critical challenges from Learn Alberta, the Historical Thinking Website, or other sources, that you will closely follow or draw upon. 
  • Include the specific learning outcomes and competencies that you hope to address in this unit. Including a 200-250 words response to how this unit is an attempt to live out key elements articulated in the front matter of the Alberta Social Studies Program. 
  • Develop one lesson plan that could be used at one point in the inquiry. This assessment for this will follow the criteria used for your earlier lesson plan. This lesson plan should include a fully developed rubric of three criteria you will use to assess student work. However, you only need to include the upper end- well developed (4) and the lower end still developing (2).
  • Choosing two of the following areas to concentrate on in particular: Aboriginal and/or Francophone perspectives, infusion of technology, learner differentiation, and inter-disciplinary, write a short 300 word explanation as to how and when you would incorporate these elements.  
  • Include an APA reference list of all resources you draw on and plan to use. For example, if you borrow from a rubric or another lesson, please reference this.    

There will be no formative feedback loops for this assignment; however, I strongly encourage you to schedule a meeting outside of class to help flush out your unit and strategies how to overcome areas of difficulty. I have also created a blog post to help you through the process. 

For today, focus on creating your two inquiry tasks and accompanying assessment criteria.

My Guiding Inquiry Tasks/Throughline inquiry question/s:  

Assignment 1: Working in groups of three identify a *significant event in Canadian history that you feel Canadians need to learn more about. Then choosing a group perspective (i.e., an Aboriginal nation: Tecumseh and the Shawne Confederacy, Francophone community: Quebecois, Acadian), use the concept of **historical perspective taking to create a 500-700 word written script recounting this event from their perspective. 

Assessment criteria:

Script accurately and vividly recounts this event through the eyes of a particular perspective community. We will be using the following assessment criteria: 

  • account fully describes the event and is very specific; all historical facts are historically accurate and highly plausible 
  • Considerable historical detail is provided including: language and items used by people at this time, as well as ways of thinking unique to the historical period  
  • The entry offers a revealing and vivid account that helps in understanding the event from a particular communities’ perspective  
  • The entry richly imagines an historical character’s point of view. The perspective is very realistic and personal.

Resource: Snapshots of 19th century Canada journal writing critical challenge: http://tc2.ca/pdf/samplecriticalchallenges/Snapshots3.pdf

Assignment 2: Imagining that you are curator of the Museum of Canadian History set for opening in 2017, tell the story of this event from your group’s perspective in a way that would be engaging for a modern generation that demands to be entertained? Specifically, you can choose one of the following four mediums to present your script: 

1. Digital narrative/journal 
2. Artistic creation with oral podcast of your script 


Assessment criteria: 

  • All images are extremely vivid and clear. Each image strongly reflects the central ideas/events communicated in that portion of the script. The images are provocative and draw you in. 

The voice recording consistently demonstrates strong feeling about the event allowing for pauses and emphasis when necessary. The viewer can clearly hear the full speech without background noise or any static.