4. Holistic Assessment

Multilingual Document Based Question (DBQ)

A common form of assessment found in secondary social studies classes is DBQs. Students read primary and secondary sources about a topic and then answer questions using the sources and evidence to support their responses. Questions can either be short answers or formatted as longer essay responses.

"Sparking the American Revolution"

Provide students with various sources to analyze the start of the US Revolutionary War. Excerpts from the Declaration of Independence, Paine's "Common Sense" pamphlet, the poetry of Phillis Wheatley, etc.
Provide bilingual translations/versions of the sources (Spanish/English) to allow students to use full linguistic repertoires to enhance comprehension and make cross-linguistic connections with new content (Garcia et al, 2017)
After allowing students to comprehend content in multiple languages, ask your students to answer the following prompt, or similar, in English: The American Revolution had many causes. Based on the sources provided, choose what you think are the 2 most significant causes of the war. Provide quotes from the sources to support your choices. Answer in a 5 paragraph, persuasive essay, graded on the following: [insert your rubric here]
Also, provide your students with a rubric and clearly stated expectations, along with examples of past work

***Advance Placement (AP) has standard rubrics for DBQs that can be used as a starting point for developing your own***

SAMPLE ML SLIDE

Hypothetical Example Slide

Multilingual Presentation

Presentations are a large part of the Social Studies classroom and present opportunities for all students to engage with content multilingually
Standard presentation protocols and rubrics will work great and just need some alteration!
This could be an inclusion as simple as "create one slide using another language", "create slides in English and present in your most comfortable language(s)"
You could also have the language inclusion for presentations represent the region or person being presented on, like the example to the left about Cesar Chavez created by me (Garcia et al, 2017; Stephanie's classroom example, p. 138)
Demonstrates that LOTEs are seen as assets and valuable to the classroom space, and more than worthy of inclusion (Garcia et al, 2021)

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