Current Events Quiz on the Egyptian Revolution

Click here to take the quiz on Google Docs over the revolution in Egypt.

Parents - you're welcome to take the quiz as well! 

Current Events quiz on Google Docs

The Social Studies standards ask if students can "demonstrate an understanding of the people, events, problems, ideas, and cultures that were significant in the history of our community, state, nation, and world."

Whoa - if you're thinking what I'm thinking, that's a huge statement. The standards do narrow this idea down a bit in a sub-benchmark that asks them to "discuss current events to better understand the world in which they live."

That's still a lot, isn't it? We watch the news everyday, and we cover a ton of topics. I don't think it's reasonable to ask students to know every fact from every news story that we talk about. The more I think about it, the standard isn't that they KNOW current events - it's that they DISCUSS current events.

That's one thing that we do quite often in our Social Studies classes - we discuss what's going on around state, country, and world. If I could, I would use our discussions as a way to assess how well students comprehend the news. Unfortunately, that's not entirely possible. Some students are skilled at classroom discussion, but quite a few aren't. Some kids are shy. Some don't have the same background knowledge to understand what's happening. And some kids talk too much and don't let everyone have a fair say ...

That's why I created this quiz over the CNN Student News podcast that we watch in class. Instead of asking students to recite facts about all of the events we watch and discuss, the quiz asks them to pick one topic of their choice. They'll then answer 8 - 10 questions on that particular current event. Some of the questions are

•  factual knowledge (where is this country?), 
• some check to see if they understand the current event (why did this happen?), 
• and some go deeper to ask if they understand how the events around the world may impact their life (why does this matter to us in Buffalo, WY?).

So - while this quiz isn't a discussion, it comes close. It's not used to grade kids, score kids, or label kids - really, it's just a way for me to see what each individual student knows about the news, and how well they understand how these events impact their lives. Which, really, is what a discussion does - it allows to people to share ideas and learn from each other.

Enough said ... Click here to take the quiz on Google Docs. (BLUE DAY)
                       Click here to take the WHITE day quiz on Google Docs. (WHITE DAY)

Understanding Political Differences

During the next few weeks, students in the 6th grade will be learning about the basic principles of the two major political parties in the United States - the Democratic and Republican parties. With the mid-term elections coming up next week and dominating our current event headlines, I thought it would be important for students to understand the basic differences between the "right" and "left", Republicans and Democrats, "liberals" and "conservatives," etc.

Once a student has demonstrated that they have a solid understanding of the differences between the two parties, they'll move along to another project (more on this in another post). Those that need extra help will continue working with me until they know the basic differences between the parties.

To judge how well the students understand these differences, they'll be taking an online quiz that I created. If you're curious on what the students will be quizzed on, or if you want to test your own knowledge, click on the link below or click on the link to the left to take the quiz!

https://spreadsheets.google.com/a/jcsd1.us/viewform?formkey=dFM5LURCN252UnJ4czVTMmRUREd2TWc6MQ

Google Docs

Last week, our district gave our students Google Docs. In my opinion, Google Docs is the most useful piece of technology that has been offered to students and teachers.

Google Docs isn't a flashy piece of technology - it's really just a web-based version of Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. This doesn't sound like that big of a deal, but it is - students are now able to open and access their documents from any computer. This means that students won't have to worry about printing assignments at home, bringing documents on a "jump-drive" or disk to school, emailing their assignments to teachers, etc. Using their Google Docs account, students can access their computer files anywhere that they can get on the internet. (Click here to see a short video on how Google Docs works.)

Google Docs is also a collaborative tool - this means that students can work together on the same documents at the same time. Teachers can also "share" files with students - teachers can give students copies of school assignments, lecture notes, presentations, etc.

Students can access Google Docs to the link on the right. To login, they use their Powerschool ID and password.