US History Regents Short Essay "Constitutional Foundation 5" + Video Lessons

This product is a short essay task in the format of the new New York State Regents examination in US History and Government. 

The updated New York State Regents examination in United States History and Government, part II, is a short essay task designed to measure students’ ability to work with historic documents. It is a mature version of the “CRQ” found on the tenth grade Global Regents. Students are called upon to understand text, engage it with historical context, and assess a text’s reliability.

In document set 1, students describe the historical context surrounding two documents and identify and explain the relationship between the events and/or ideas found in those documents (Cause/Effect or Similarity/Difference or Turning Point).

Document set 2 asks students to describe the historical context surrounding two documents and (for one identified document) analyze and explain how audience, or purpose, or bias, or point of view affects the document’s use as a reliable source of evidence. [Read more about teaching this at the Innovation blog]

If you are afraid to assign your students this as a test because they are not likely to do well at first and don’t want to bother their GPA, I recommend using standardized scoring. You can use the z-score calculator here at Innovation Assessments. Use 78 as your standard mean and 14.8 as your standardized standard deviation. Read more about standardized scoring here and where I got those figures. The beauty of this system is you can apply this to their grades every month and as the class improves, as the class average approaches the standardized mean (78 in this case), then the algorithm affects their scores less and less.

Product includes:

• Set 1, 2 documents

• Set 2, 2 documents

• Scoring rubric

• Passcode to video lessons students can use to prepare the task.

Documents:

Excerpt from the United States Constitution, 1789 

Excerpt from the House Debate on Amending the Constitution, 21 August 1789 

Excerpt from Washington's Farewell Address, 1796 

Excerpt from Alexander Hamilton's REPORT TO CONGRESS ON THE SUBJECT OF ON THE SUBJECT OF MANUFACTURES December 5, 1791  

Passcode Lessons:

• Constitution part 1 (14 min)

• Constitution part 2 (22 min)

• Leading to a Bill of Rights

• The Three-Fifths Compromise

• Electoral College

• The Washington Administration

About Innovation Passcodes

Passcodes let your students access selected lessons in my own virtual classroom at InnovationAssessments.com. No registration is required. Use the codes at InnovationAssessments.com/TestDrive.