As a progressive, multi-age teacher in middle school, one of the things I have struggled with is figuring out how to assess, while still supporting my tests-are-bad-for-kids philosophy. The solution I found of course lies within the project based realm of my dreams. That is I had students create their own history books.
History books for K-12 are incredibly weak, and often leave out or edit critical info to appease the masses. We all know the story of Columbus being perceived as a benevolent explorer, but in reality was an incredibly brutal, seditious man. Much like society has heroified Columbus, it has also heroified nearly every other white man in history, which means that history of any other caliber is left to the side. This also means primary sources are virtually eliminated.
I had the kids create their own mini history books by providing them with multiple sources and asking them to acknowledge bias in writing, and pick apart what they truly felt was significant in the writing.
They did this, collected sources and rewrote important points in their own words, thus creating an annotated timeline of each important point in history.
It worked really well, boosted writing, studying and researching skills and created a project that they could truly see their progress in writing.
Overall an excellent alternative to the memorization that I remember from 7th grade.
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