Week in Class: Week Twelve 2013 – What’s the Question?
My previous post looked at a badly done task via Common Core. To cleanse my palate and focus on the positive, I’d like to share some of the questions that I’ve heard and asked, in my classroom as part of formative assessment.
I’m going to focus in on a unit the class is doing on Esperanza Rising and human rights. We’re now at the point in the story where Esperanza has lost her father, her family home in Aquacalientes, Mexico, and has fled with her mother to the United States (with a false birth certificate — their originals had burned in the fire) to work in the fields of the Central Valley as the Depression descends. Students have also been exposed to the plain text version of the UN Declaration of the Rights of the Child. Here are two questions, how they came about, and the types of responses I got.
Does Esperanza have a country? A lot of our analysis has focused on how Esperazna’s life has changed since before and after her father was killed. I cannot recall exactly how this question came about but we were looking at rights and privileges she had lost (and understanding the difference between the two being something you should have vs.