Assessment

Students skills in Social Studies will be assessed in an a variety of ways 

Projects 50%
Home Work 10%
Participation and qualitative observation 5%

Assignments 10%
Tests 15%
Quiz %10

This is a common grading scale used across the middle and high school classes that reflects a renewed emphasis on authentic assessments that emulate activities from the world beyond school. Students will be charged with completing problem solving activities that utilize the skills that they have learned and mimic the type of activities they would have to do as an adult, consumer, or professional. Examples in Social Studies would include building dioramas to explain landforms, creating color-keyed maps to demonstrate demographic data or comparing and contrasting cultural elements from different locations throughout the world. 

Projects are typically long term in length and will reflect numerous revisions and edits. Homework activities are short daily reinforcement exercises where errors will not be penalized. Assignments are medium length and will corrected to measure student progress and determine whether or not reinforcement activities are needed. Participation and qualitative observations is a reflection of how actively students communicate with each other in discussions and group analyses. The primary focus of the class is to improve their collective world view so it is vitally important that each child add their perspective to the mix. 

Plagiarism and academic dishonesty are not acceptable behaviors and are contrary to both our academic and citizenship goals. Students will be taught when to pull information directly from the source and how to properly cite it. All inappropriately completed assignments will be redone at a penalty.

Methodology

The course will integrate case studies, student debates/presentations, simulation games, software and local field trips that highlight a particular element of the issues and make broad concepts more tangible. Students will be assessed based on group assignments, short papers and problem sets, two client projects, a document based question, a 15-page independent research paper of their own choosing, and a final exam.

The class will be conducted with the following methods:

-Lectures (powerpoint, videos, etc.)
-Debates 
-Case studies/student-led discussions 
-Stimulation games 
-Guest speakers
-Field work/trip
-Independent and guided research
-Client workshops