A Day in Your Life

Formative Assessment: Assessment for Learning Opportunity

State and Support a Position

Involve students in a peer review to provide and receive feedback on the persuasiveness of the support for their position regarding globalization. Use the feedback prompts below to provide structure in guiding students through this formative assessment opportunity.

Feedback Prompts:

• Have I stated a position, rather than simply restating previous information?
• Are my reasons convincing?
• Have I provided specific examples?
• Do my examples support my position?

These feedback prompts can be posted on an interactive white board or bulletin board, or incorporated into a feedback tool that can be copied for student use. Samples of tools created for a similar skill within a different formative assessment context may be found in the Social Studies 10-4 Formative Assessment Summary .  

Linking to the Summative Assessment Task

• As students state and support their position orally or in writing through the suggested activity Stating and Supporting My Position, they will have completed the second portion of the Summative Assessment Task: A Day in Your Life .
• Students should consult the assessment task and the assessment task rubric  to ensure that they have provided the information required.
• Encourage students to use the feedback received during the formative assessment opportunity to make enhancements to their work in progress.
• If necessary, continue to use the feedback prompts from the formative assessment opportunity to coach students toward completion of a quality product.
• If student performance does not yet fall within the three levels described in the summative assessment task rubric, work with the student to formulate a plan to address the student's learning needs.

Setting the Context for Learning

• Invite students to revisit their analysis of the opportunities and challenges of globalization that was completed in the previous suggested activity.
• Involve students in a discussion of how they might make a decision regarding whether or not the positive consequences of globalization outweigh the negative consequences. Students can be reminded of the question on which they are asked to take a position:
  • To what extent do the positive consequences of globalization (e.g., easily available and affordable goods, profits for companies) outweigh its negative consequences (e.g., working conditions, effects on the environment)?
• Students may suggest that they could consider the following:
  • the number of positive versus negative consequences
  • which consequences have the greatest impact on the environment
  • the degree to which globalization is helping or harming people and their language and culture
  • which consequences affect the greatest number of people, and so forth.
• Point out that there is no one "right" way to approach this process but that the emphasis is on students being able to state the reasons that explain why they believe they have made the right choice. 

State and Support a Position

• Once students have determined the decision-making strategy they will use, they will need to look holistically at their information to state and support a personal position about globalization.
• Some students may benefit from a structured template and a model of how to state a position and select credible support for the position. For example:
  
  The positive consequences of globalization <do (or do not)> outweigh the negative consequences because ____________________.

• Brainstorm with students the qualities that make up strong evidence or examples to support a position. Students may suggest that strong evidence is:
  • focused on the topic
  • supportive of the stated position
  • convincing
  • accurate
  • specific.
• Post the list of qualities of strong evidence or examples in the classroom for students to use as a reference. If the brainstorming produces a different list than what has been suggested, incorporate the students' suggestions where applicable.
• Ask students to decide whether they wish to share their position orally or in writing, and then to determine the specific format that they will use. The list below provides some possible formats as a starting point for a discussion with students.
  
  

  Possible Written Formats	Possible Oral Formats
  Paragraph                                                                     Letter to the Editor Blog Personal response	Speech Video or audio recording Podcast

• Remind students that the emphasis in the summative assessment task is not on the position they take or on the specific details of the format they use to communicate their information, but rather on the persuasiveness of the evidence they use to support the position they have taken.

Textbook References

Student Basic Resource—Oxford University Press, Living in a Globalizing World:

• Pages 176–177 Implications and Consequences of Globalization
• Page 183 Understandings of Economic Globalization

Teaching Resource—Oxford University Press, Living in a Globalizing World:

• RM 0.3 Analyzing & Discussing Issues 
• RM 0.11 Critical Assessment: Plus-and-Minus Chart
• RM 0.12 Forming an Opinion Organizer Show more
• RM 0.22 Organizer to Present an Informed Position
• RM 1.1 Global Connections
• AM 1 Demonstrating Understanding Rubric
• AM 2 Generating & Organizing Ideas Rubric
• AM 3 Considering Multiple Perspectives Rating Scale
• AM 4 Considering Multiple Perspectives & Viewpoints Rubric
• AM 12 Defending a Position Rubric
• AM 15 Discussing Issues Rating Scale

Teaching Resource—Oxford University Press, Understandings of Ideologies:

• RM 3.6 Presenting an Informed Position
• RM 10.4 Skill Path: Analyzing Positions on an Issue and Developing Your Own Position
• AM 2 Writing in Response to Issues and Concepts: Informed Position Rubric

Web Resources

Knowledge and Employability Studio (Social Studies): 

• Self-assessment Checklist: 10-4.3 Globalization and the Economy 

Distributed Learning/Tools4Teachers Resources:

• LearnAlberta.ca: Social Studies 10-2 Module 5: Stewardship and Sustainable Prosperity

Critical Challenges:

• LearnAlberta.ca:
  • Creating Sustainable Prosperity
  • Globalization and Free Market Conditions
  • Transnational Corporations and the Interests of the Country Show more
  • The Tools of Economic Globalization
  • Judging Quality of Life