Analyzing Constitutional Convention Debates: An Eighth-Grade Study

The assessment I have created is for my eighth grade history class. My edTPA class contains 21 students. At this point in the school year I was teaching the students about the Constitutional Convention. More specifically, for this assessment, we were learning about the major debates that took place during the Constitutional Convention. Those debates being; whether to adopt the Constitution or stay with the Articles of Confederation, whether representation should be equal for states or based on population, and whether slaves should or shouldn’t count towards a state’s representation. The main learning objective for this assessment was that SWBAT analyze different viewpoints of the Constitutional Convention through a three paragraph essay following

From reading their stories and looking back at their grades I would say my students did a great job on this assessment. I only have one student in this class who has a disability. My first focus student is one who has a hearing disability. He has to wear a hearing aid and I must wear a device around my neck that helps him hear better. My second focus student has no special needs and is an overall good student. My third focus student also has no special needs and is a good student who sometimes needs a little more guidance with instruction. All three of these students chose to write about the debate reading whether slaves should count as representation or not. My first focus student received a grade of 9/10. The only reason he lost a point was because of grammar. He had three errors when it came to grammar. This is where he struggled the most. I left comments on his essay informing him of these errors and telling him how to fix them for next time. This way he doesn’t make the same mistakes

He had three facts for each argument. My second focus student also received a 9/10. Again, only missing points because of grammar. He, like my first focus student, had three errors when it came to grammar. I informed him of his errors and corrected him to help him in the future. He did a great job analyzing all the information of this debate and using these facts to support each viewpoint of the debate. He wrote a very organized essay and used more facts than anyone else in the class. It is easy to see that he understands how to use facts to support an argument. My third and final focus student received an 7/10 on her essay. She had a good amount of grammar and spelling errors which lost her two points. Then she also lost a point for failing to going into detail with some of her facts. I pointed out her grammar and spelling errors so she can work on those for next time. I also gave her an example of how she could go into more detail with the information. The information she gave with enough detail was very good and proves that she can support an argument. She just needs to make sure that she goes into enough detail with all her