World Affairs

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

World Affairs uses round table discussion model where students actively engage and question each other, using their collective experiences to form and understanding of their various subjects presented through out the course. Student will regularly address “Big ?”s related to a central theme but they will also be given time to present unrelated news so that they are regularly updating each other on the changing global stage. Another important aspect of the course is the focus on thinking reflectively. Students will not only need to be able to summarize main ideas but also give their opinions on them, question them and offer conjecture as to what will may happen because of them

As World Affairs is a current events based class the students do not use a text book but instead read series of articles covering a central topic from varying veiwpoints. The following are a few sites that have been used but the use of a variety of sources is key to development of the students broad global view.

http://www.reuters.com/
http://www.ap.org/
ww.guardian.co.uk
http://www.lemonde.fr/
http://edition.cnn.com/
http://www.worldjournal.com/
http://www.washtimes.com/
http://www.indianexpress.com/
http://actuniger.com/