Pros And Cons Of Internment Camps

a.I used academic content language to promote student learning by pre-teaching era specific vocabulary to students so they would understand major concepts of World War II, the Cold War, and the 1950s. There are specific vocabulary words that students wouldn't necessarily know much about on their own, such as internment camp. This word and the conditions of these camps had to be taught before students could make and evaluation on FDR's decision to intern Japanese Americans. In order to achieve the learning goal and carry out the assessment, the students had to know that vocabulary word, and this is evident through the student work samples. Without knowledge of internment camps, the students wouldn't be able to achieve the learning goal at all. …show more content…
Using higher level and document based questions, students were forced to think about events more critically and reflectively. This requires students to take an in depth and critical approach to big events and decision in history and make a personal evaluation of them. In the second assessment on the pros and cons of the atomic bomb, students had to not only look at the pros and cons, but they make an evaluation on their importance and justify their individual ideas and decisions on them. They had to think beyond the basic layer of things (the US dropped the bomb to end the war) and actually look at what that meant for the US and how things would have been different. Then they had to make decisions based on those evaluations. This pushes students to expand their thinking and widen their capacity for learning and …show more content…
In accordance with questions for critical thinking, all of my assessments requires students to take a stance on something by looking at the different sides on an argument. For instance, write a letter for or against the decision to intern Japanese Americans, make justifications for pros and cons of the atomic bomb, and which was more effective, the Truman Doctrine or the Marshall Plan. All of these assessments require students to look at different sides and different elements. They have to explore and question different angles of historical events and make educated decisions. My assessments are all about questions the facts and the status quo, and that helps students in a variety of ways. These questionings skills instill the habit in students of looking at multiple perspectives and the various facts. Questioning allows students to expand their minds and they have to really explore all options before making a decision. Having these questioning skills not only aids in learning about controversial or tricky content, such as the decision to drop the atomic bomb, but it also sets students up to get in a good practice of looking beyond the one-sided