My seventh grade students have at long last finished their final assessments on Rome, and upon reflection, I see that it was quite successful. I am currently experimenting with new methods of designing assessments. In an effort to make my assessments more student-based, I am handing the reins of what the final assessment will look like over to the students themselves. In essence, I am asking the students to create their own individual assessments and the rubrics by which they will grade themselves. My role is to simply give them the following three components: the essential question as laid out by my team and documented in our curriculum; the Standards and Benchmarks I am expected to assess; and a list of verbs from Bloom’s Taxonomy.

The object was for the students to design and implement a project that would demonstrate their understanding of this essential question-

1. What are the lessons from the Roman Empire and have we learned from them?

While also illustrating mastery or at least proficiency in the following benchmarks:

1. Use cause and effect to identify patterns of change.
2. Demonstrate how knowledge of the past can help explain current events.
3. Examine how different types of government gain, use, and justify power.
4. Use appropriate sources and tools to create, change, and understand information.
5. Describe ways that human events have influenced, and been influenced by, physical and human geographic conditions.
6. Can identify and clarify a problem or issue
7. Can construct, support and begins to evaluate arguments

After spending time in class discussing and defining the list of skills above and translating them into “student friendly” language, the students where asked to use Bloom’s Taxonomy to lay out a list of seven steps they would have to complete in order to prove understanding of each benchmark.

Example of final product: One of the final products the students came up with was to organize and plan a debate discussing the positive and negative impacts slavery had on the Roman Empire and connect some of those arguments to the use of slavery today.

Example of instructions:

1. Use cause and effect to identify patterns of change. Argue and Defend whether the slave trade had a negative or positive impact on Rome
2. Demonstrate how knowledge of the past can help explain current events. Compare and Contrast slavery form the past and slavery today.
3. Examine how different types of government gain, use, and justify power. Restate four ways the slaves affected government authority and power.
4. Use appropriate sources and tools to create, change, and understand information. Identify sources and list them in a bibliography
5. Describe ways that human events have influenced, and been influenced by, physical and human geographic conditions. Indicate how the expanding geography of Rome increased the need for slavery.
6. Can identify and clarify a problem or issue. Discuss five ways the growth of slavery was a problem for the Plebeians and Patricians.
7. Can construct, support and begins to evaluate arguments. Argue negative and positive factors of the statement above.

After each group had designed a project complete with instructions and rubrics, they exchanged the project with another group and completed the new project. The group who had originally designed the project would than grade it based on the rubric they created. Overall, I think the students learned more by designing the projects than actually doing them.

Here is a list of all the projects:

1. Plan and organize a debate that argues about the positive and negative impacts slavery had on Rome and the lessons you have learned from them.
2. Compose a song that shows what lessons were learned from the spread of the Roman Empire and what we learned from them.
3. Create a Rap song about the lessons you have learned from Roman Laws.
4. Create a puppet show that explains the lessons about Roman daily life and whether or not we have learned anything from them.
5. Perform a skit which dramatizes how religion was used in Rome to consolidate power and whether that is being done today.

All of these projects were conceived and implement by students. I simply guided them on their journeys.