Through my classes, I have learned many new ways of assigning summative assessments that will address the needs of all students, however, I can be a little old school and like the old research assignments that were assigned when I was in school.
In order to help students use technology in order to learn about race and racism, I would be interested in doing a form of "online scavenger hunt" with my students where they work on a research project and do a presentation based around the information they are required to find as part of their "online scavenger hunt"
For example...I might have students draw from a hat or pick one of many different events, movements, or people they do a project on. If I wanted to do a unit on different women through history, I may choose people such as Katherine G. Johnson, the Mirabal sisters, or Ruby Bridges. Students will then begin research on these women to see who they are/were and what impact they had on the world. Though students will look for information such as who they were, where they were from, and when they were born, students will also be expected to find out what impact they had on society. They will be asked to take deeper looks into what some of these women were fighting for and/or against or what they stood for during their time. I would be interested in what students would say about Ruby Bridges, who was only six years old when she became an icon in the fight against segregated schools in the 60s.
Students will be asked to do a presentation to the class on the person they researched, but they will also be asked to think outside the box. Not all presentations need to be the student standing there and talking. They can use whatever resources they would like to express themselves and to educate their classmates on their subject.
Students will also be asked to take a more critical look at how these people, events, or movements are still relevant to today. Some may still be current events that may inspire students to join in to stand up for what they believe is right. By doing this I hope that students will become interested in social justice issues and see that this is a struggle the world has been fighting with for a while, but that doesn't mean it isn't worth fighting for.
Scavenger hunts are great because they are so engaging and it motivates students to work quickly and efficiently so they'll keep up with their classmates. I also think it's really important to examine recent history because in most elementary and secondary schools, there's very little coverage of things that happened in the last century which has so much more direct relevance than something that happened hundreds of years ago. I didn't know anything about Katherine Johnson and what a major role the women of NASA played until Hidden Figures came out and I know that I'm not the only person who just wasn't aware because no one explicitly taught it.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to second what Katie said regarding bringing attention to recent history. In high school, we barely scratched the surface of the last century in our history classes -- instead of making connections between then and now, each period was treated as an isolated event, a block of info to study. A scavenger hunt activity breathes new life into a history that is often treated as though it were dead, and can really have a positive impact on our students (and ourselves). Something to consider too is that much of recent history is still being documented, turned over, "figured out"... but having students take part in this review of history carries the idea that they, too, are part of it -- because they are. Really cool possibilities here!
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