There will be various forms of formative assessment used throughout this unit. As learning groups are working on activities, teachers will walk around and engage in conversations with students and provide formative feedback. Other forms of formative feedback, or assessment as learning, that will be used throughout the activities are entrance and exit cards, checklists, thumbs-up/thumbs-down checks for understanding, and other such checks. Each of the activities before the final project is used as a tool for both formative and summative assessment. For formative, teachers will constantly provide feedback, as well, students will actively reflect and assess on their own progress and group collaboration in feedback loops that involve self and peer assessment. In this way, students can build upon their own learning, improve their critical thinking and make improvements to their assignments. Online Trello boards where each learning groups posts intermittently throughout the unit on how they have acted democratically as a group also serves as a form of formative assessment for each group to consider how they can improve their decision making strategies and group cohesion. Other students and the teacher may also comment on these boards to leave constructive feedback.
Summative Assessment
Each activity within our interdisciplinary unit is assessed summatively using rubrics that will have been previously discussed with the students so that they are cognitive of the requirements while progressing through the activities. These rubrics are combined for the final summative assessment. The final Settlement Proposal Design project is a complete settlement proposal plan made by each learning group. Each activity in this interdisciplinary unit are interconnected and scaffolded so that students can collect artifacts from previous activities and combine all materials in a coherent manner, present them in a portfolio along with a digital presentation. This piece of assessment of learning evaluates all important aspects of this unit, including content objectives, skills and attitudes competencies, self-assessment and reflection, group collaboration, and application of knowledge to solve real world problems. Another element of summative assessment for the final project is a reflection submitted individually by each student where they consider how they interacted within their group and made decisions democratically. Students will draw from the online Trello boards where they have left posts throughout the unit to help them pick out examples of where they have acted democratically.