The Week That Was In 505

This is the first time I felt this way all school year – what a loooooooong week. The infamous week before winter break. We used this week to finish our unit on the Constitution. I was hoping to cover more content – how a bill becomes a law and electoral college stuff, but I never made it that far. As a result, I focused on covering the basics really well. By basics, I mean: popular sovereignty, federalism, individual rights, separation of powers, checks and balances, and judicial review.

My plan for this week was to have everything finished by Thursday. The reason for this being that Friday is a crazy day with a potential for many absent students. Three weeks ago when we started this unit, I started with a citizenship test. The goal with the citizenship test is to answer 12 out of 20 questions correctly. When we began the unit a grand total of 4 students received a 12 or higher. I looked to Thursday as the day to finish the unit with the citizenship test and hoped more than 4 students would get a 12 or higher.

Monday – Finish separation of powers superheroes and/or begin checks and balances.

Tuesday – Finish checks and balances.

Wednesday – Finish checks and balances, review for citizenship test.

Thursday – Citizenship test.

Friday – A day for missing assignments and games.

Monday

When I begin most weeks, I kind of, maybe sort of, have an idea of what to do. I have some things ready to go, but I let the day begin, get a read on the room, adjust, and adapt from there. Today was a perfect day to finish the separation of powers superheroes and possibly begin the checks and balances choice board.

I’ve had many people ask me for directions on the branches of government superheroes. The directions are simple:

1. Choose a branch of government (Legislative, Executive, or Judicial).
2. If your branch of government was a superhero – what would it look like? What powers would it have?
   • Give your superhero a name
   • Include 3-4 symbols to represent the power.
   • Label those powers. 
   • Write a brief paragraph explaining your superhero and the powers they have.

That’s it. I kept it simple to let students show some creativity and these students knocked it out of the park this year! Amazing, creative work compared to past years. I think the major difference was making the superheroes assignment an application activity after students went through a choice board. They went into the project with good, solid background knowledge on the branches of government and their powers. Another great thing from this year was the mix of government branches. Students did a great job of balancing out their branch choices. In past years I would get a TON of the executive branch. However, not this year. I got a lot of legislative and judicial branches. Here are some awesome examples:

Tuesday

Naturally, checks and balances should come after the separation of powers. When I introduce checks and balances I do two things:

1. We have a rock, paper, scissors tournament. I follow this up with an explanation of how that game relates to checks and balances.
2. I also explain to the students that checks and balances is related to the superheroes using their powers to prevent or help other superheros from doing their jobs.

These ideas seem to help students connect with the abstract idea of checks and balances. This year I put together a choice board for checks and balances. Instead of students choosing how to obtain background knowledge (separation of powers), they could choose their assessment. I gave each student this graphic organizer showing the directions of checks and balances. Students could choose to read, watch, or study checks and balances to help them fill out the organizer.

For the assessment choices, students had 4 options:

1. Sketch and tell.
2. Rewrite a song about checks and balances.
3. Find a news article and create a Thick Slide.
4. Walk around the classroom, read checks and balances scenarios, and decided which branches are involved.

Most students chose a sketch and tell because this is what they are familiar with. The second most popular option was walking around the classroom and reading scenarios. Here is some of the work submitted by students:

Wednesday

Wednesday was a day to finish the checks and balances choice board and do some review for the Citizenship test. With some students finished and some students still doing checks and balances, the best solution is the Fishtopia Gimkit. This mode works best in this scenario because Fishtopia is better when it runs for 30 or more minutes. This amount of time gives students a chance to finish checks and balances and still join the game for review. Plus, the Fishtopia game mode is super engaging. However, beware of the law of diminishing returns – students will get tired of it if you do it too much. After doing some review the class averages from Gimkit were as follows: 72%, 75%, 75%, 80%, 71%.

Thursday

Today was the big day of the Citizenship test. The goal was to answer 12 out of 20 questions correctly. I ask the 20 questions out loud and students write their responses on a piece of paper.

The first time we did this test 4 total students answered the necessary 12 questions to pass the test. I asked them if they knew it and they all responded with, “I’m a good guesser.” Here are the results from the first time:

As you can see the class averages ranged from 20 to 30% and as I stated before, 4 students passed. After 3 weeks of Eduprotocols, choice boards, and hands on activities, we were ready for the test again. Here are the results:

The class averages ranged from 63% to 85% and this time 70 students passed with 12 or more correct answers. Here is a quick breakdown:

1. 20 students answered 19 to 20 questions correctly.
2. 12 students answered 17 to 18 questions correctly.
3. 11 students answered 11 questions correctly and obviously missed 12 correct questions by 1.
4. Ultimately, 70% of my students passed compared to 4% the first time.

Going from 4 students passing to 70 students passing is a significant increase. However, I don’t know if this is good compared to how students should do on tests.

Friday

Honestly, there is no sense in talking about Friday. I will offer up this advice – have games in your room. Invest in simple games such as:

1. Uno
2. Jenga
3. Bananagrams (my favorite)
4. Operation
5. Apples to Apples

The best days are the game days. Put away chromebooks. Interact with other humans. Have fun.

Happy Holidays.

My Messages for the Week