We came up with 6 big goals during the last two inservice days and i must say... I LOVE them! Furthermore we have discussed converting our grade 7-8 history courses into a broad based exploration in the social studies and making it about skills as opposed to purely content. Students would do a survey of things like how to units on critical thinking and studying history, anthropology, economics, political science and geography. Building these skills would make them more successful in later years and would facilitate growth in the big 6 we came up with.
If you are wondering the 6 skills are listed below. This is the way they are written for seniors leaving KHS. We tiered them back through kindergarten and are hoping to improve and adapt them throughout the rest of our training. I think these are a great start. Of course this list must be infinitely adaptable and remain a living document.
A Senior leaving KHS WILL be able to...
- Make logical decisions based on individual research.
- Evaluate the purpose of bias.
- Judge the causes and impact of personal and group decisions on worldwide issues and events.
- Evaluate the cause and effect of changes in society based on historical events.
- Make logical decisions based on primary source documents.
- Evaluate the impact of worldwide cooperation and conflict on historical and current events.
ok. that sounds all nice and wordy, but what does it mean??? For us as students??
ReplyDeleteExactly what is written must be accomplished as a guarantee--
ReplyDeleteIn class daily we work on one of these 6 skills
Can you research and make decisions that make sense and are thought out based on your research?
-- example a research paper that is more than a book report, dont tell me what happened make a choice using research you have done as support.
Evaluate the purpose of bias.
By this time you ought to be able to recognize bias... are you telling me the truth? the whole truth? nothing but the truth? Now we want you to begin recognizing and discussing why you never get the entire truth.
Judge the causes and impact of personal and group decisions on worldwide issues and events.
-- how do my actions, my political parties actions, my religious affiliations actions (church, sect or religion) my nations actions, etc. impact what goes on in my community, my nation or the world... are we thinking about outcomes before we act and do we act with intentionality?
Evaluate the cause and effect of changes in society based on historical events.
-- Why do things change? Why do they stay the same? Understand the nature of changes in society so you dont get left behind. If you understand why things change you can better adapt and predict change.
Make logical decisions based on primary source documents.
-- Can you work with what comes straight from the horses mouth? Can you understand what is being said to you by an ancient source or a contemporary politicians speech(among other options), recognize the bias, put it in context with events and cut to what matters? Can you make decisions that make sense based on what matters?
Evaluate the impact of worldwide cooperation and conflict on historical and current events.
--How does our ability to get along alter history? Are we working together to make things better? Republicans-Democrats, conservative-liberal, christian-muslim-jew, Sunni-Shi'ite-Sufi, gov't and the body politic... How does conflict or cooperation change the way things work?