Classroom-based Assessment (CBA)
About this Resource
The Kansas Social Studies Classroom-Based Assessment (CBA) is designed to measure student understanding of the five History, Government, and Social Studies (HGSS) standards and four associated benchmarks that support the discipline-specific application of content in authentic situations. The standards, benchmarks, and skills allow Kansas school districts, classroom teachers, and students the opportunity to develop their own assessment that best supports local decisions concerning content, sources, and products. To prepare learners for the state-level CBA, the KOHP has developed several compelling questions, frameworks, a multi-disciplinary crosswalk, and instructional activities for use by classroom teachers.
Compelling Questions
The Teachers Advisory group to KOHP developed a series of compelling questions as examples of how to use them with the oral history interviews. Other resources for compelling questions will be added in the future.
"If we're going to help our kids become knowledgeable, engaged, and active citizens, they need to be solving problems and addressing questions."
Kansas History, Government, Social Studies Standards
The Kansas Standards for History, Government, and Social Studies prepare students to be informed, thoughtful, engaged citizens as they enrich their communities, state, nation, world, and themselves.
--An informed citizen possesses the knowledge needed to understand contemporary political, economic, and social issues and the skills to locate and utilize credible sources of information.
--A thoughtful citizen applies higher order thinking skills to make connections between the past, present, and future in order to understand, anticipate, respond to, and solve problems.
--An engaged citizen communicates, collaborates, contributes, compromises, and participates as an active member of a community
Speaking and Listening Skills
One powerful technique that provides students the opportunity to grow these skills is a
mock congressional hearing summative assessment. During this process students use the
compelling questions offered by the Kansas Oral History Project to dig into the world
around them, finding research and resources to help answer their questions.
Standards Crosswalk Materials
Students learn to write, speak, read and listen appropriately in all disciplines, to use knowledge gained from literacy experiences to solve problems or seek to understand diverse perspectives.