NY State Social Studies Standards Addressed:
World History Key Idea 2: Establishing timeframes, exploring different periodizations, examining themes across time and within cultures, and focusing on important turning points in world history help organize the study of world cultures and civilizations.
Performance Indicator:
• Students will distinguish between the past, present, and future by creating multiple-tier timelines that display important events and developments from world history across time and place
World History Key Idea 3: Study of the major social, political, cultural, and religious developments in world history involves learning about the important roles and contributions of individuals and groups.
Performance Indicator:
• Students will examine the social/cultural, political, economic, and religious norms and values of Western and other world cultures
Sample Regents Questions:
Source: NY State Global History and
Geography Exam, June 17, 2004
View entire
test.
|
Assessment in Judson's class:
Students graduate after presenting a portfolio to a panel, and taking the English Language Assessment test (ELA). These portfolios each consist of projects in science and math, a research paper in the social sciences, a native language project, a creative project, and a mastery statement or a reflective essay about students' experiences in high school. The students are guided through the portfolio process by a mentor that they receive in September of their senior year, and they work to complete that portfolio throughout the year, then present it to a panel made up of teachers, a student and a community representative. Within the next year or few years, four New York State Regents tests are being phased in: the mathematics test, Math A, a science test, Living Environment, and the American Histories test, and the school is considering moving to a smaller portfolio, in order to make graduation requirements more manageable.
Like the other faculty members at the school, Judson has to work to balance the demands of the project-based approach and the Regents in his own class. He does this in three ways: one is making sure that the basic concepts covered in the Regents are covered in his class; second, he conducts a Regents Prep class for 50 minutes every week; third, for two weeks in January and June, he gives students preparation for the tests.
Judson on incorporating work on the Regents into projects:
"All the activities we do are devised from my study of what is on the Regents, in the sense that basic beliefs are on it--Jesus, Buddha, founders, the Bible, the Torah, the Koran, how religions spread, and conflicts they had--all these things are on the Regents. So these three activities that I designed, one of the goals was to meet the different topics that were on the Regents, and also to be engaging and interesting at the same time."
"The thing with the Regents is that it's a mile wide and an inch deep. They're interested in the basic beliefs, how it spread, a thematic essay about how it united or divided people, and conflicts connected to religion. I'm kind of working on that: the time line was the history of religion, the mapping was the spread , and the Powerpoint is about the beliefs . The time line works on that in the sense that it has historical events, so it addresses the Regents question."
"Regents essay questions range from 'Choose two religions, and explain two of their basic beliefs,' to 'Choose one religion and tell how it caused conflicts or united people.' I try to soup them up and make them more interesting and relevant. We did one document-based essay on Ancient Greece, and my question was, 'Out of Ancient Athens, your native country, and the United States , which one is most democratic? Put them in order, most democratic, second and least, and explain your answer.' And I gave them documents for that. So, I'm doing Regents Prep in a more substantial way. That was almost like a mini-research project. I'm often doing Regents Prep in the regular class time."
Judson on assessment in the Religion unit in general:
"It's good to think about how assessment drives instruction, and also how assessment is instruction. So what I mean is, for example, in the time line project, one of the criteria, for the timeline grading was overall design--do the colors go well together, are the events on the timeline written large enough and neatly enough so that people can read them from a distance, is there some coordination from members of the group? So I told them that's how they would be graded, but as you can see, that's also the instruction about how to make a good timeline. And with the map project, all maps have to have a key, use colors and different symbols to show different events, so I told them how they would be graded, but this is also, how to make a good map. Also, we learn from negative examples. We learn from our first efforts. Like our children do their work, and put it on the refrigerator, and we see how, many times, they're not so advanced, but in the classroom, they can do their first draft, and often they know , you know, "this part's really messy," and they can do it again . So in that process of creating it with feedback from the teacher and others, and looking at other examples, the examples that I provide them, maybe that I made, or from last semester, or the examples that are being produced, going around, they kind of learn from the examples."
Regents questions about religion:
"The Regents Global and the US History test has three parts: the first is 50 multiple choice questions from prehistory to nowadays, 2-3 questions each about all the major topics covered in the year; a thematic essay; and a document-based essay. For the thematic essays they give you a question on big social studies themes, like Women in History, Economic Systems, meaning capitalism versus communism, Conflict in Religion, they make these very broad questions. So the kids write two essays on the Regents. For the document-based essays, they'll give seven or eight documents, and ask one or two simple questions, and the students are to use at least four of those documents in their essay, as well as outside information."
|
