In order to evaluate the effectiveness of daily instruction using primary source documents, both Blye and Markham used formative and summative assessments to gauge student understanding and skill level. Daily document analysis handouts were collected, then analyzed by both teachers for a number of qualities, depending on the lesson. Sometimes, Blye and Markham looked to see if students had developed a basic understanding of the document based on those questions. Other times, a question synthesizing meaning from multiple
documents would be used, such as with Blye’s DBQ during the lesson observed. In interviews, both Blye and Markham emphasized that their instruction using primary source documents would grow more in-depth and complex over the course of the year as students grew more confident in their skills, and thus the lessons I observed at the start of the school year would be more simplistic than their lessons toward the end of the year.
In both Blye and Markham’s classroom materials, questions were provided along with all reading assignments to help provide scaffolding and guidance to students. These questions varied based on the document itself. For example, Blye’s documents were shorter, so they often asked students to summarize the document in their own words. Blye interpreted his students’ work on several levels. Blye does not always use the grades students earn on their assignments as data to support whether his lesson worked or not. To Blye, the numbers provided by grades do not show him enough information. He said those numbers provide a “yes or no, right or
wrong, a simple percentage. For me, especially when you’re dealing with lexile levels, it’s so much more complex.” Blye graded the papers with a number as a way to provide the feedback that is both necessary for student success and required by the Morningside Schools, but those grades were not the stopping point. After grading the DBQs students did in class, Blye then broke down each class using several criteria to determine his next steps in instruction. Because Blye attached questions to the documents for the lessons observed, he first looked to see simply whether students had come up with a logical answer for the questions to ensure basic
understanding. Additionally, Blye wanted to know “how many students were able to answer using their own words and how many used the words of the documents” to determine whether students were actually analyzing the documents or simply parroting the text in creating the answer. Blye also used anecdotal data about whether students worked independently or with others to see if students were coming up with answers on their own, using the ideas of others, or reaching incorrect conclusions as a result of a group misunderstanding of the documents.
To determine whether a lesson has been successful, Markham evaluated the documents students looked at daily to gain an understanding of their skills and growth in terms of reading and understanding the documents. When students were nearing the end of a unit of study, Markham created a performance task to answer a question using the documents from class as their evidence. For the Industrial Revolution unit, Markham asked, “How did the Industrial Revolution affect people’s lives?” Students could use any of the documents provided by
Markham throughout the unit, allowing them to use “sources they are familiar with…that they’ve seen and touched and grappled with a little bit” to answer the question. Markham also expected students to use other information they learned in class, synthesizing documents with prior knowledge to create a product in the same way a historian might.
Blye and Markham also both used DBQs to assess students at the end of each
instructional unit. In Markham’s classroom, she developed a unit-wide question before beginning to plan the unit that she wanted her students to be able to answer. Throughout the course of the unit, students read and analyzed documents, and as the unit ended, they combined documents from class to create an essay using primary source evidence to support their answer to
Markham’s unit-wide question. For Blye, students would be given a set of documents with some documents from class, others new, to answer a unit-wide question in a similar way. As students became more comfortable with document analysis, he planned to reduce the number of
documents students were familiar with and increase the new documents. Blye’s method was adapted from his AP US History courses in an effort to prepare students for further classes.
Reisman (2012) and Smith, Breakstone, and Wineburg (2013) analyzed the assessment of student learning using primary source documents. Reisman’s work suggests that repeated
instruction in primary source documents and frequent feedback of formative assessments can help students to grow and determine success of a lesson on a daily basis. Smith, Breakstone,a nd Wineburg discuss SHEG, Wineburg’s primary source document pedagogy think tank, which includes their Beyond the Bubble program. Beyond the Bubble advocates for Historical Assessments of Thinking (HATs). HATs are brief formative assessments that assess students’ ability to use an historical thinking skill from class and transfer it to an unfamiliar document, and Beyond the Bubble has been crafting HATs and researching their effectiveness for over five years. Blye and Markham’s formative assessments at the end of class are in the line of repeated instruction and frequent feedback, as both teachers, like Reisman, use a similar lesson plan daily and assess a portion of the lesson to provide feedback for growth.
However, the formative and summative assessments used by Blye and Markham do not demonstrate transferability of skills. Their formative assessments asked students to draw conclusions from their documents rather than ask students to use the skill in a new way, and the conclusions reached were often more of a summative nature than an analytical nature. For example, Markham wanted students to determine how the Industrial Revolution affected people. Students could use a line of text from the historical context section of the primary source
documents used to determine that children suffered as child laborers without reading the primary source itself at all. Similarly, their summative assessments often used the same or very similar documents and questions that were used in class, rather than asking students to try their new historical thinking and primary source document skills in a novel situation. Blye and Markham may be able to determine whether students participated in the lesson, whether they learned any of this historical content, or whether they read or made sense of the documents, but student ability to use any of the knowledge or skills from the lesson is not assessed.
Question 3: How do World History teachers perceive their effectiveness of their instruction