Samples of student work

An example of a student's completed homework for the lesson U.S. Power in Latin America.  (The student's name is redacted.)  This work shows how an answer that contains plenty of true information related to the topic still isn't necessarily the information the student's being tested on.  In this case, while the student's answer to question 3 is a very good description of the Panama Canal's purpose, it doesn't explain why the canal was built on an isthmus (the answer is that an isthmus is by definition narrower than the surrounding land, allowing the canal to be shorter).  In my classroom, homework is checked live by the teacher, which requires other students to wait while the teacher goes around the room.  This poses a challenge to time management and forces the teacher to choose between grading for accuracy or completion.  In this case, students were graded on completion.  This student received full credit.  On a test, this answer would be marked incorrect.

An unsigned copy of a station activity worksheet.  This work shows the wildly varied accuracy of answers students turn in.  For instance, the student gives concise and correct answers to some questions, such as 4A and 5C, but completely off-base answers to others such as 1C and 2C.  I believe some of this is due to my writing in the station texts being confusing or not at an appropriate reading level, and some being due to students running out of time and writing down whatever they guess to be the answer.  Station activities always face the problem that some students finish quickly and then stand around getting bored while others take their time.

An exemplary piece of classwork.  In this assignment, students were asked to examine a handful of primary and secondary sources, classify/describe them, and explain how the sources helped them understand the topic by describing what conclusions they drew from each.  Here, the student lost only a single point for misclassifying a source.  Most of my students haven't written research papers yet, and as you can surmise, this was a challenging assignment for many.  I gave points whenever a student drew a conclusion that a person with no prior knowledge could reasonably draw from the source.