Teaching history in the public school system can present educators with a unique set of challenges that are not found in any other subjects or disciplines. Furthermore, the distinction between U.S. and World History course structure need to be identified in order to effectively incorporate textbooks, unit tests, state standards, and student prior knowledge into the class. U.S. and World History classes differ in many aspects; and the teacher needs to know how to separate the two distinct course structures. As a U.S. History teacher, various forms of accurate student assessment can be incorporated into my classroom which will provide information needed to adjust my teaching styles. I believe U.S History classes provide a more diverse selection of assessment tools because the material is narrower in scope compared to a World History class. I believe I can shy away from the large unit tests in my U.S. History assessments and take a more non-traditional approach such as incorporating group discussions, projects, and student presentations. I feel that U.S. History provides many more opportunities for active instruction as a means of assessment instead of unit tests. On the other hand, one of the many challenges facing World History teachers is the development of classroom assessments that are on the right scale. This is because the structure of World History units typically include topics on several regions; covering a timeframe of many centuries. In contrast to U.S. History assessments, I believe a good way to overcome this obstacle is to use end of unit projects. According to our class reading Managing the Laments of World History Teachers, having students figure out the story and make global connections is key to any successful ... ... middle of paper ... ...that U.S History provides many more opportunities to immerse my students in the personalities and spirits of the men and women of U.S. history. For example, a final project that requires students to dig deeper into a particular case can stimulate students. Also, it can enable me to assess how my students apply the case to larger patterns studied in a specific unit. I have observed this type of assessment in my field experience where the students assumed the role of a representative of a nation applying to the United Nations for assistance. Then the students researched the historical context and current conditions in the country that led to a specific economic, political or social issue. In doing this, students were able to show how they could connect what they have learned across a semester or year of World History to the current conditions in one specific country.
...History and World History, a professor only has a small portion of one class session to teach, for example, the Cold War. The devotion to a topic in such a large scale could become even more desperate because now teachers have to teach a whole new world of vocabulary along with the historical vocabulary that is necessary for students to succeed in future history classes.
History has many examples of these three themes, and to record them all, you would need to write a book. The three themes discussed in this paper have been used to inform and teach young students that history is important; Therefore, it is important to know your history; if you don't learn from history, then you are doomed to repeat
James Loewen’s, Lies My Teacher Told Me, criticizes the shortcomings of American education that is associated with inaccurate histories in textbooks. First, the fact that students do not have high regards when it comes to American history textbooks, proves how unreliable the education system is. In addition, textbooks are often to blame, because they are too dull, and are rather—boring (Loewen 384), which is why it has become a requirement for students to read books, because no one wants to read those uninteresting books. Even history textbooks, they cover redundant materials which make the subject more and more uninteresting to the students. It makes the students less motivated to learn. Moreover, he also argues that the problematic issues lie within the bureaucracy. They make the decisions on what the students will learn or which textbooks they will be reading. So far, they have not done a good job. At times, history textbooks were often censored and handpicked. It may even be completely different from the rest of the [history] textbooks. These censored textbooks, often keep the students in the dark when the controversial issues are removed (Loewen 389). It really undermines the freedom of speech and emphasizes that, often, key pieces are left out that is critical to the historical event, such as exemplifying that many of his college students have never even
I walked out of sophomore AP world history and human geography not only with greater historical awareness, but also the ability to utilize that awareness to engage with other disciplines. In pushing beyond mere identification and recall, APWH challenged me to shift away from passively accepting information at face-value, to understand how context and rhetoric framed knowledge. In constantly deconstructing the nature of historical and empirical evidence and the lenses in which objects of scrutiny are extracted-- especially those defined by conflict and transformations--, I learned to be conscientious of how authors’ material conditions and interests shaped the presentation of given narratives. In-class emphasis of making historical connections while reading became ingrained into my
Zinn, H. (2007). Why Students Should Study History. In W. e. Au, Rethinking Our Classrooms, Volume 1 (pp. 179-181). Milwaukee: Rethinking Schools.
The assessment I have created is for my eighth grade history class. My edTPA class contains 21 students. At this point in the school year I was teaching the students about the Constitutional Convention. More specifically, for this assessment, we were learning about the major debates that took place during the Constitutional Convention. Those debates being; whether to adopt the Constitution or stay with the Articles of Confederation, whether representation should be equal for states or based on population, and whether slaves should or shouldn’t count towards a state’s representation. The main learning objective for this assessment was that SWBAT analyze different viewpoints of the Constitutional Convention through a three paragraph essay following
Newman, John. UNITED STATES HISTORYPreparing for the Advanced Placement Examination. Second Edition. New York: AMSCO SCHOOL PUBLICATIONS, INC, 2010. eBook. .
As educators and students, we should be able to trust that the truth about our past is what is being taught to today’s youth. The majority of our youth despises history; history is usually ranked last among the favorite subjects of students. American history textbooks all seem to follow the same storybook technique; therefore, students tend to take a snooze in class rather than learning about what has given them the freedom to sit in a classroom and learn. What if what is being taught in classrooms is not the complete truth, though? James Loewen dove deep into the true history of our past in Lies My Teacher Told Me. James Loewen has studied over eighteen American History textbooks over the years, and he discovered one common theme throughout each of the ...
American History as its taught today in the K-12th grades fits quite well with the Banking Concept of teaching. Teach, memorize, repeat. Even given that history books themselves are so big with so much information it leaves teachers unable to truly allow students the opportunity to do more than just get the facts and move on to the next and gives little time for discussion. There are many parts of history that aren’t often enough questioned or studied. Teachers are depositing history that is much closer to fiction than fact to our students and due to the governments involvement in whats taught it is not giving the generations younger than us the opportunity to comprehend how the US ended up in the condition it is in today, therefore missing
High school history textbooks are seen, by students, as presenting the last word on American History. Rarely, if ever, do they question what their text tells them about our collective past. According to James W. Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me, they should be. Loewen has spent considerable time and effort reviewing history texts that were written for high school students. In Lies, he has reviewed twenty texts and has compared them to the actual history. Sadly, not one text measures up to the author's expectation of teaching students to think. What is worse, though, is that students come away from their classes without "having developed the ability to think coherently about social life"(Lies p.4). Loewen blames this on the way that today's texts are written. This paper will compare one text, The American Pageant, to Lies.
Cohen et al. (2010) wrote that assessment can be a major contributor to raising standards in schools in terms of teaching, learning and student achievement. In addition, if assessment is properly handled with consistency, reliability, validity and rigour, it can have a possitive effect on learning and can improve students' own understanding of how can they learn more effectively and improve.
In spite of the importance of assessment in education, few teachers receive proper training on how to design or analyze assessments. Due to this, when teachers are not provided with suitable assessments from their textbooks or instructional resources, teachers construct their own in an unsystematic manner. They create questions and essay prompts comparable to the ones that their teachers used, and they treat them as evaluations to administer when instructional activities are completed predominantly for allocating students' grades. In order to use assessments to improve instruction and student learning, teachers need to change their approach to assessments by making sure that they create sound assessments. To ensure that their assessments are sound they need include five basic indicators that can be used as steps to follow when creating assessments. The first of these indicators and the first step a teacher must take when creating a sound assessme...
Assessments allow for teachers to monitor the progress and growth of his/her students, help engage students and help guide teachers as well as students in their decision making. Teachers should know that tests are not the only way to assess students in the classroom. It is important for educators constantly assess their students on comprehension and progression.Teachers can take use of both formal and informal assessments so that they can engage students in their own learning, as well as monitor their comprehension and progress.
Through assessment students and teachers are able to determine the level of mastery a student has achieved with standards taught. Both formative and summative assessment should be purposeful and targeted to gain the most accurate data to drive further instruction (Ainsworth, 2010). While this syllabus does a good job of identifying the need for both formal and informal assessments, the way in which this is communicated does not provide enough detail for understanding. Simply listing assessment types does not give any insight into how these assessments fit in the learning process of this course. While some of the assessments mentioned could be common assessments chosen by the school or district to gain insight into the effectiveness of instruction, the inclusion of authentic assessments is most beneficial to students and demonstrates learning in a context closer to that of a work environment (Rovai, 2004). Unfortunately, this particular course, according to this syllabus, relies heavily on quizzes and traditional tests and essays to form the bulk of assessment opportunities. While other activities, such as formative assessments, journaling and discussions are mentioned as possible avenues for scoring, they are given a very low percentage of the overall grade. This shows that they are not valued for their ability to show progression and mastery. If this is indeed the case, this puts the students as a
Prior to teaching a unit, I believe it is useful to incorporate surveys and diagnostic assessments to determine what your students understand before instruction.