For this second assignment I developed a short multiple choice pre-assessment. the pre-assessment served as a quick reference tool for myself so I would know what was known and what needed additional explanation. The students I worked with were part of our high school home school cooperative. There were a few students that participated this time that were new to me so I was not aware of what they actually knew in relation to what was to be discussed so this was a good thing. We have there are about 200 k-12 kids in the home school group we participate in.
I designed the pre-assessment to cover some basic information I would like students to walk away from an actual lecture and/or reading regarding the content. The assessment pre-supposes the students have not recently had a class on the material and is designed to gather data about pre-existing knowledge: the expectation is they try their best and attempt to rule out obvious wrong choices.
Some obvious wrong choices had the Klingons migrating to America as part of a more correct sounding answer. Unfortunately two kids chose this as a correct answer. This was part of question three (3) which nine (9) of ten (10) kids did respond correctly too. Several kids chose the next best correct answer but the most correct answer included early Colvis people in the list of peoples migrating to the new world. Question three demonstrates that in an actual class I would have to spend some time covering the land bridge and sea people migration theories for the arrival of early Colvis homo sapien-sapiens (modern man).
Other questions related to the Mayflower Compact being an example of social-contract theory. Most everyone understood the Mayflower Compact was an example of working together and choose that answer which was above social contract theory demonstrating that they did not read all answers first and stopped at a correct sounding answer. Here the kids will need to be taught test taking strategies - read all answers before answering - to ensure a more correct answer is not ruled out. this question was deigned to see if they would read all answers. It was a commonly missed question.
Most kids knew who Squanto was and why he was important so that would be an area that would be touched upon but not necessarily requiring much instructional time. Of more importance would be discussing the difference between the Iroquois, Wampanoag, Cherokee people during the Native American cultures discussions.
One question I added in as a bonus asked what holiday do we celebrate today based of a harvest feast shared with the Pokanokets: I expected pretty much everyone to choose Thanksgiving as the most correct answer but two (2) of the ten (10) choose Black Friday and one chose the 4th of July.
The rubric was based upon number of questions answered correctly which I did not feel comfortable with. As this was a pre-assessment I would not feel comfortable assigning a grade as I am seeking what is known not what has been taught and retained. I included a rubric in assignment 2A but in actuality I would not grade a pre-assessment. In an actual classroom I would be more interested in knowing how the scores changed after a lesson so that I could measure knowledge gained and then taking it a step further measure knowledge retained at a later date.
Upon further thought the rubric might have better been based off tactics such as lining out obviously wrong choices, etc, to demonstrate test taking skills.
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