Introduction
Students will be assessed in a variety of ways including formative, on-going, informal, formal, and summative.  Students' performance will be matched with provided rubrics that correlate with learning goals and standards, and facets of understanding for this unit. Products of learning are varied depending on student interests, goals, and ability.  

Students’ performance will be assessed using the GRASPS construct (Williams & McTighe, 2011).  GRASPS Overview:
 
G- Goal: Students will work towards their understandings of leadership, government, and they will grapple with the essential questions of the unit.
R- Role:  Students will become participants in government through role-play, writing, speaking, and debate. Students will have an opportunity to participate in student government.
A- Audience- Students will share their debate with teachers and parents.  Peer audience will be used for writing and presentation of ideas. In role-play, the audience would be elected officials and voters. During student government, younger students will be the audience.
S- Situation- Students will debate over a hypothetical school problem and come to a decision through many stages of the democratic process. In the meantime, they will learn how the United States government works and compare democracy to another form of researched government in the world.
P- Products- Students will write an opinion essay to practice bringing evidence and reason to their arguments.  They will also review the writing process including peer editing and revision for a five paragraph essay. Students will create an artifact of choice (technology, chart, model, etc.) to show what they have learned throughout the unit.  Students will play a role in our student led debate to practice oral communication, collaboration and cooperation, and constructive argument.
S- Standards and Criteria- Students will be provided with a road map to complete learning tasks. Rubrics and reflection activities are included in the unit. 

 

The student version of the GRASPS task is outlined in Lesson 1 of Strand 1.  The GRASPS performance rubric is located in the Materials, Tools, and Resources page. 

Pre-assessment:
 
All students will attempt to answer the questions on this Google Form.  This is attached to each students’ Google Classroom account. Click this link to see the Pre-assessment. https://goo.gl/forms/n0uqZ6vB6Blaa0wn1

 
On-going assessment:
 
Students will align their work to learning goals and rubrics to reflect on different aspects of this unit.
 
Students will also work on writing an opinion essay in Language Arts, which has its own set of rubrics and assessments.
 (under construction)

Culminating Project- Students will:
 

1. Complete a project of choice to show their learning

2. Submit a final draft of their opinion essay

3. Prepare and participate in Great Debate.