Student Response and Assessment Tools

Lesson Idea Name: Causes of the United States Civil War

Grade Level(s)/Content Area: 4th/Social Studies
Content Standard Addressed: SS4H5 Explain the causes, major events, and consequences of the Civil War

Technology Standard Addressed: Use technology to design and implement a variety of formative and
summative assessments that accommodate learner needs, provide timely feedback to students and inform
instruction.

Overarching Question: What are the causes of the civil war?

Selected Technology Tool:

X Socrative ☐ iRespond ☐ Quizlet ☐ Plickers ☐ Kahoot! ☐ Office365 Forms
☐ Other:
URL(s) to support the lesson (if applicable): https://b.socrative.com/teacher/#import-quiz/59506265 -Quiz
https://www.brainpop.com/socialstudies/ushistory/civilwarcauses/ - BrainPOP

Technology that student will use to respond to questions/prompts:

X Computer ☐ Hand-held student response system (like iRespond) ☐ Phone ☐ Tablet (such as iPad)
☐ Other wireless device (such as iPod Touch)
Type of session:
☐ Teacher-Paced X Student-Paced
Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy Level(s):
X Remembering X Understanding X Applying ☐ Analyzing ☐ Evaluating ☐ Creating

Levels of Technology Integration:

X Infusion Level: Students may work at a higher Bloom’s Level, but they do not have any “Voice or Choice”
during the activity and most of the decisions are made by the teacher.

☐ Integration Level: We would like to see ALL lessons/activities reach this level. The project is student-
driven. Students have “Voice and Choice” in the activities, selecting the topic of study and determining the
technology tool to demonstrate mastery of the standard. The teacher becomes more of a facilitator.
☐ Expansion Level: The projects created are shared outside of the classroom, publishing student work and
promoting authorship. This could be reached by showcasing the project on the school’s morning
newscast, posting the project to the classroom blog, or publishing via an outside source.

Describe the instructional activities that will occur PRIOR to the SRT activity and how you will introduce
the SRT activity:
Prior to the quiz, students will learn about the causes of the civil war. We will begin by creating a KWL chart
on the whiteboard- students will take turns coming to the board to write what they know about the civil war,
write what they want to learn and lastly we will revisit the chart to write what we have learned about the civil
war. After the first two columns of the chart are filled out, I will play the BrainPOP video as an introduction to
the causes of the civil war. After the video, I will divide the class into 3-4 groups to compete against one
another in completing the BrainPOP quiz. Each team will have a whiteboard, and I will give the class 1 minute
to answer each question and get their answer written on their team’s whiteboard. Whichever team gets the
most questions correct, wins. After the competition is over, we will review some vocabulary words related to
the Civil War that the kids need to know in order to fully understand the topic. After this vocabulary review, I
will pass out worksheets that the kids will work on in pairs or in groups of 3. On these worksheets, the kids

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 Student Response and Assessment Tools
will answer the questions, “why did the south want to secede?” and “why did president Lincoln oppose this
secession?”. After 10-15 minutes of brainstorming together and answering these questions, the groups will
informally present 1 reason why the south seceded and elaborate in detail, and 1 reason why Lincoln opposed
the secession (again, elaborating in detail). The teacher will keep track of what the students say, and we will
use this information to fill out the “What we’ve learned” section of the KWL chart from earlier. At the
conclusion of the lesson, the kids will take the Civil War Causes Quiz on Socrative.
Describe the purpose of the SRT activity (check all that apply):
☐ Assess prior knowledge ☐ Anticipatory set (Create interest in a topic) ☐ To illuminate common
misconceptions ☐ Formative assessment of content knowledge (for purpose of differentiation and
mastery for ALL students) X Summative assessment of content knowledge ☐ Test preparation
☐ Survey/Poll ☐ Discussion starter ☐ “Homework” collection ☐ Other (please explain):

Briefly describe what will happen DURING the SRT activity:

After the learning period is over, students will head to a computer and prepare to take the causes of the civil
war quiz that I created on Socrative. The students will not need any other materials other than the computer
they are working on. Students will silently and individually work on this quiz until it is completed, and once
they have completed the quiz, they may sit quietly for a few minutes while their peers finish up.
Type of questions/prompts used in this activity (check all that apply):
X Multiple choice ☐ Multiple select X True/False ☐ Yes/No
X Short open-ended response or fill-in the blank ☐ Longer open-ended response

If you are unable to provide a working sample of your questions, please list them below (7-10). If you
cannot provide one or two critical thinking questions in your assessment, please list a question or two you
would want students to provide an open response to below. Use your Bloom’s terms to design the
question(s):

Immediate corrective feedback: Will you pre-select correct answers to some of all of the questions and
display correct response to the class after the SRT activity?
X Yes
☐ No
Why or why not?
I think it’s important to display immediate feedback to students while the questions are still fresh on their
mind, if feedback isn’t provided until later, the student may not remember their train of thought that day that
caused them to answer incorrectly.
Describe what will happen AFTER the SRT activity? How will the data be used?
After the SRT activity is over, we will hold a brief class discussion over the quiz. Because I will have feedback
from students immediately after the quiz, we can go over the quiz as a class and have an open-forum
discussion over the questions and go over the questions that students had the most trouble with. The data
collected will help me facilitate this discussion and will go into the student’s records for me to reference later
to determine if I need to individually assist the student in this topic.
Describe your personal learning goal for this activity.
My goal is to facilitate a productive class-discussion of the quiz and certain topics that the kids may have
struggled with. This will give the students to respond to the response tool and further let me understand how
my students are doing with the subject. I hope that this discussion not only helps me receive feedback as the
teacher, but that the discussion between peers will help one another.
Reflective Practice:
I believe the lesson I created will positively impact student learning. I believe I have created an fun and
engaging lesson that allows the students to work together, compete against one another and learn from one

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 Student Response and Assessment Tools
another. I think the further implementation of technology from BrainPOP will help keep the kids engaged in
the lesson rather than just sitting at their desks, listening to their teacher drone on about a topic. The group-
work and competition helps to keep the lesson fresh, fun, fast-paced and effective. I believe the engagement
will be elevated through this lesson.

TFrazier, 2021