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Relate To Their Own Lives
Relate To Their Own Lives
Relate To Their Own Lives
Formative Assessment
Fall 2017
2. Title of class (e.g. 11th grade American Literature, AP History, French II)
3. Context of instruction.
Students have been studying the different types of governments, which include: dictatorship,
direct democracy, communism, autocracy, theocracy, oligarchy, among others. I have been
teaching them for duration of this unit, and the formative assessment came right after my
short lesson and activity on oligarchy. The formative assessment was simply just a writing on
assignment which reviewed the different types of government that they were learning about,
and focused on oligarchy. It also focused on how the terms (different types) could be used
interchangeably, and how they’re similar. After reviewing student’s answers on the
assessment, we will likely reteach concepts and things that seemed unclear or not well
understood by the students tomorrow and the next day. They will also be learning about
Learning goal: students will understand the different types of governments and how they
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Claims-Evidence-Reasoning for HIT4:
I. Consulting the rubric for this HLTP—Identify a strength of your enactment, then:
4. Make a claim about the strengths you’ve identified in your effort to enact this HLTP:
The assessment that I crafted provided me with useful conclusions and information in determining
whether or not students understood material clearly and coherently, and from there I was able
to reteach in more effective and efficient ways. Even if they were mostly memorization-
based questions, it was telling, especially with the 12-13 kids who got every other question
correct or answered strongly, and couldn’t make the connection between an absolute
monarchy and oligarch. It made it apparent to me that I didn’t explain oligarchy clear enough
to them, or provide them with any useful analogies or modern examples that they could relate
to. From there, I improved my instruction. What was also telling is that most of the students
20-21 out of the roughly 30 kids got 5/6 of the questions correct, which tells me that I
What was also telling is that most of the students 20-21 out of the roughly 30 kids got 5/6 of the
questions correct, which tells me that I probably explained things clearly to them in previous
lessons. Most students understood what a democracy/republic is, along with constitutional
and absolute monarchies. They also seemed to understand the basics of an autocracy, which
nearly all but 3 students got the questions on autocracy correct. In the video (3:45), when a
student asks “what do we mean by rule by a few for monarchy”, I clearly clarify that it could
be more than just three or four wealthy people, and that it could be a limited number of
powerful individuals in comparison to the rest of the general populous. Kids seemed to
generally understand that an oligarchy is “rule by a few” and 20-21 of them got this correct,
6. Explain your reasoning. That is, explain how your evidence supports your claim.
The fact that the students were able to recite and understand that an oligarchy is merely rule by a few
powerful and often wealthy leaders, nearly 70% of them, is evidence that I explained this
clearly and provided useful content that helped them understand at least what the definition
and foundation is. They were unable to transfer the knowledge to other types of government,
but without the basic definitional knowledge, the students will struggle with transferring the
term to other types of government that we learn about in class. Although the aforementioned
student question (3:45) is just one example of me explaining to one kid, perhaps other
students listened in and that helped clarify the term for them as well. For this, I would rank
myself as developing, because I was able to gain useful insight from my assessment of
II. Consulting the rubric for this HLTP—Identify a limitation of your enactment, then:
7. Make a claim about the limitations you’ve identified in your effort to enact this HLTP:
Throughout the duration of the lecture, and made evident by the student work on the
assessments, the conflation of absolute monarch and oligarchy was more confusing than
an oligarchy and who holds the power?” nearly 12-13 of the students who answered that question
either answered the question: “is it possible to be an absolute monarch and oligarch?”
incorrectly, or left it blank, or filled it in with a question mark. Throughout the duration of the
video, I make misleading references to Kim Jung Un and Donald Trump as potential candidates
for being oligarchs. Political opinions and hear-say aside, the “textbook” and simplistic
definition of the term oligarch does not include these men. I never provided the students with a
clear, objective and coherent answer of what a modern oligarchy looks like, or who might be a
figure that represents such. In trying to make this relevant to their own lives, to match the
learning goal, I instead confused the kids and conflated irrelevant things or potentially too
This makes it evident to me, that I didn’t do a good job of explaining thoroughly how an
absolute monarch could also be considered an oligarch. Beyond that, in the lecture, I
conflate Donald Trump with being an oligarch throughout because “he’s rich” (5:00) and
it’s misleading. What’s also misleading is my reference to Kim Jung Un, Dictator of
North Korea, never clarifying to the students that he is in fact, not an oligarch, but an
autocrat and dictator. When a student asks if Kim Jung Un of North Korea could be
considered one because he’s rich, I didn’t correct the student, I merely just said that we
don’t really know how wealthy he is, but it is true that is probably much wealthier than
the general populous of North Korea (3:15). As far as Donald Trump goes, I hint that
some people believe that the U.S. has become an oligarchy, but never telling whether
that’s right or wrong (1:52). Without a clear example of a modern oligarchy, kids will
never understand any potential ambiguity or nuance of an esoteric term. The assessment,
as a whole, was mostly based on memorization “what is this term? What is that? Etc.”
and provides little room for creative thinking. Therefore, because of its heavy (yet
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9. What other people/resources helped you think through and plan this formative
assessment; if any?
Dr. Jackson provided me with a “mentoring minds” resource that is used to generate analysis,
synthesis and evaluation questions and terminology when crafting lessons or assessments.
This helped me craft some of the questions and the direction that I took. Beyond that, my
cooperating teacher insisted on focusing on the basic, foundational stuff and the rote
memorization first. Without that, we wouldn’t be able to help them transfer knowledge or
10. Reflect: What did you learn from your efforts in HIT4? Come into everyday with
clear, coherent and useful analogies and examples of things. Just because Bernie Sanders
claims the U.S. might be an oligarchy, or that Chris Hedges’ book that I just read, the fact of
the matter is that sixth graders real-life and useful examples that they can comprehend. With
vague notions that North Korean leaders and Donald Trump could maybe be oligarchs, kids
will only be confused. I need to be abundantly clear and fully prepared with examples!
Beyond that, when trying to get students to see the comparisons between two terms, they
need clear examples of each, and why these examples are relevant and important. Saudi
Arabia would have worked as a useful example. Beyond that, if a student is clearly confused,
like when the student asked if Kim Jung Un was an oligarch because he was rich, it
should’ve been made clear to that student that he is a dictator and isn’t considered an
oligarch. Without this clarity, the terms all get muddy and mixed up in the student’s mind
and they will confuse different types of government with each other.