RUBRIC FOR POSTER & PRESENTATION – U.S. HISTORY
Rationale for Formative Assessment Tool
The assignment for the rubric I have designed is a poster and presentation activity, which takes place during a unit on Reconstruction in an 11th grade U.S. history class. The poster and presentation activity focuses on comparing the goals of Reconstruction policy with what actually happened as a result of that policy. This activity forms students into six groups. Each group is then assigned one of the following historical events:
(1) Return to “white man’s rule” (the creation of terror organizations)
(2) Poll Taxes (Grandfather Clause) & Williams v. Mississippi
(3) Passage of Jim Crow laws; segregation
(4) Black Codes
(5) Plessy v. Ferguson
(6) Amnesty Act & the Stolen Election
Students are instructed to create posters illustrating how their particular historical event impacted African Americans as well as Congress’s goals for Reconstruction. Students will have read about each of these events for homework before class, and will be allowed to refer to their textbooks and primary documents during this activity.
At the end of the period, each group will have roughly 2-3 minutes to present their poster and teach their event to the rest of the class. Students will be instructed to describe the nature of their particular historical event, and explain the significance of that event to Reconstruction. During the presentations, students will be encouraged to take notes and ask questions. The class will also be encouraged to comment on how accurately or inaccurately they think the posters reflect the impact of the particular historical events on African Americans, or Congress’s Reconstruction goals. In addition, the teacher may ask leading questions and fill in the blanks if presentations fall short of communicating essential information to the rest of the class.
The poster and presentation activity concludes with a debriefing period where students will be asked to hypothesize about the emotions African Americans might have felt during the period of Reconstruction. Then, students will begin a quick-write exercise that addresses the following question: In what way could African Americans consider the Reconstruction amendments a failure? Unfinished quick-writes will become homework due on the following class session.
The rubric that I will use to assess the poster and presentation activity contains three evaluative criteria, which I have labeled poster, historical content, and delivery. For the poster, I am looking for a clear, accurate, and appropriate illustration of the problems that freedmen faced as a result of a particular historical event, and how that event countered Congress’s goals for Reconstruction. Historical content refers to the information given in the presentation. Here I expect quality presentations to accurately and thoroughly explain the historical event, link the event to specific congressional Reconstruction efforts, and use the event to explain the failure of Reconstruction as a whole. For example, poll taxes kept blacks from voting even though black male suffrage was a goal for Reconstruction as evidenced by the ratification of the 15th Amendment. Poll taxes helped contribute to the failure of Reconstruction because they prevented the improvement of African American political power and civil rights. Finally, I am assessing the delivery of the presentations to see that the presentations are organized and paced in a way that promotes learning for the audience since the presentations will be teaching material back to the class. This is consistent with the listening and speaking English-Language Arts (ELA) standards for education in California. Exceptional presentations will be structured to facilitate note-taking, participation, and retention for the audience.
The evaluative criteria in the poster and presentation rubric are based on the following standards and objectives:
U.S. HISTORY CONTENT STANDARD 11.1.4 Examine the effects of the Civil War and Reconstruction.
Evaluate Congress’s goals for Reconstruction and their results (reunify the nation, rebuild the south, elevate the status of African Americans).
Analyze views of how to effect political and social change for African Americans.
Assess the problems that freedmen faced during Reconstruction and whether their freedom was a reality or merely existed on paper.
Develop a hypothesis for why Reconstruction failed to elevate the status of African Americans in terms of citizenship, civil rights, and political power.
ELA Standards for grades 11-12: LISTENING & SPEAKING
1.6 Use logical, ethical, and emotional appeals that enhance a specific tone and purpose.
1.8 Use effective and interesting language, including: informal expressions for effect; standard American English for clarity; technical language for specificity.
2.1 Deliver effective presentations: explore the significance of personal experiences, events, conditions, or concerns, using appropriate rhetorical strategies; draw comparisons between the specific incident and broader themes that illustrate the speaker’s beliefs or generalizations about life; maintain a balance between describing the incident and relating it to more general, abstract ideas.
2.2 Deliver oral reports on historical investigations: use exposition, narration, description, persuasion, or some combination of those to support the thesis; analyze several historical records of a single event, examining critical relationships between elements of the research topic; explain the perceived reason or reasons for the similarities and differences in historical records with information derived from primary and secondary sources to support or enhance the presentation; include information from all relevant perspectives and take into consideration the validity and reliability of sources.
The poster and presentation activity connects with these standards and objectives because it allows students to use linguistic, artistic, and interpersonal means for developing a thorough understanding of the events that led to the failure of Reconstruction to improve the status of African Americans in terms of citizenship, civil rights, and political power.
The criteria for the poster and presentation activity will be made clear to students by providing them with a copy of the rubric in advance and taking instructional time to explain and clarify its contents and function. This is in line with Popham’s recommendation for teachers to make assessment criteria available to students to help them appraise their own efforts. I am aware that making assessment criteria clear to students can be facilitated by having them help determine the criteria for the rubric, and that this in turn can provide them with a sense of ownership over, and consequent motivation for, their learning. But due to the necessity to assess specific historical content, and the relative straightforwardness of the lesson, I feel that a student-devised rubric is unnecessary and potentially counterproductive for the nature of my particular activity. I do, however, hope to enhance student learning and performance by teaching my students how to use the rubric I designed to guide their own self assessment. As a class, we can assess posters created from previously completed poster-and-presentation activities so that students can practice applying the evaluative criteria of the rubric to actual student work prior to beginning their task. The evaluative criteria clearly outlines the expectations for the assignment and links these with the learning objectives for the unit. This lets students know exactly what they should strive to achieve and in what direction to channel their efforts. Before I return the rubrics to my students, I intend to write feedback on them that highlights the strengths of their assignments as well as areas for improvement. I will make sure that my comments refer to observable events in the actual performance so that the feedback is meaningful and verifiable. I can also discuss whole class strengths and challenges with students after the completion of the activity, and reteach the concepts and skills with which students may have had trouble.
The rubric is multidimensional, containing four performance levels and three independent evaluative criteria. Popham argues that many rubrics are dysfunctional because they are excessive in length and loaded with details. I wanted to avoid “splitting hairs” by using a rubric with too many grading levels, and I used an even number just to be safe since one theory argues that an odd number can result in a gravitation toward the middle when grading. Although the rubric contains multiple criteria that is scored independently, the independent scores are used to generate a single composite score, which corresponds with a standard letter-grade. The composite score ranges from 1 to 4 although a 0 is possible for students who fail to complete or participate in the assignment. These numbers correspond to a standard G.P.A. scale, where a 4.0 represents an A, 3.0 a B, 2.0 a C, 1.0 a D, and 0 an F. In addition, the historical content criterion is weighted twice as much as that of the poster and delivery criteria because it is the most important evaluative component of the lesson in terms of its proximity to the content standards and objectives.
I use clear and concise language, and establish consistency in describing what students can do at each performance level while walking a tight rope between specificity and generality. Popham warns against rubrics that are so task specific they end up measuring the particular display of a skill instead of the essential components of that skill. He also cautions against excessively general rubrics that offer little guidance on the key features of a tested skill, and no cues about what is genuinely significant in a student’s response. The best rubrics, according to Wiggins, depend on a clear and uncontroversial definition of exemplary performance. Thus, I listed particular measurable tasks that need to be accomplished for high achievement. I also avoided changing only adjectives across performance levels—known as “the rubistar problem”—by describe in detail what students can do to achieve the requirements of each particular performance level. This helped me avoid using deficit language, which has the potential to devastate those students who receive low marks.
I realize that after I conduct this lesson a few times and have the chance to examine a sufficient amount of student work, I may wish to adjust my rubric or develop new rubric language around the characteristics of my samples. Nevertheless, I believe that this initial version of my rubric will be effective for my poster and presentation activity because it possesses performance standards and evaluative criteria based on high expectations for students, and facilitates the assessment of student work by both instructors and the students themselves.
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