Education and Early Childhood Learning

To evaluate critical thinking and citizenship, refer to the K – 8 general indicators for that category and to the learning outcomes in the S-300 group (Critical and Creative Thinking Skills), the Citizenship outcomes (KC and VC codes) and the Skills for Active Democratic Citizenship (S-100 group). Based on the targeted outcomes, assessment tasks and descriptive criteria may be customized to the relevant grade level content. Teachers may propose assessment tasks that engage the students in the application of their social studies learning, such as action-research projects, conducting interviews or surveys on a social question, participating in a debate or writing an informed critical reflection on diverse perspectives of a social issue related to the prescribed grade level content. Students may also present a critical analysis of the national or global repercussions of a local issue they have studied. Note that some of the Skills for Active Democratic Citizenship may also be used as criteria to observe learning behaviours (social responsibility).

The starting point to describe achievement levels would be the descriptions for each of the three categories (appendix of the report card policy and support document) along with the general description for each achievement level . Teachers may use these as a starting point to develop more specific descriptive criteria for assessment tasks in relation to the prescribed grade level content, which in Grade 7, for example, is societies and cultures of the contemporary world. Over time teachers may wish to collaborate within their school or division to share samples of student work at level 4 particularly as exemplars of attainment of learning in the three categories.