1. Name some of the effects of poverty, both long-term and short-term.
- "Short term: no information = killed by a volcano."
2. How can we put an end to poverty?
- "I don't think poverty will end. Like Poe's raven, it will be forevermore!"
- "Stop fining that much for speeding!" (I wonder if his parents get pulled over a lot...)
3. Is there anything else you learned that you would like to add?
- "I learned that all these people in poverty need our help and that we are so much more fortunate than I ever thought."
- "70% of people in poverty are women, I personally think that the reason for that is that girls are so stubborn."
Also, I've been using wordle.net to create visual representations of my students' prior knowledge and then post-assessment results. It's a pretty cool site! My pre-assessments are usually stream-of-consciousness word banks. For the poverty unit, I asked my kids to write down everything that they already know. My personal belief is that by giving them the freedom to record everything that pops into their head, I'm not constraining their knowledge OR guiding them in any particular direction. I then took my students' pre-assessments and input every single word into the text box on wordle.net, and this was the visual representation of my students' knowledge about poverty BEFORE we began the unit:
What I see is a collection of words indicating that my students' understanding of poverty is quite basic. Poverty has something to do with money and homelessness, right? (Note: the larger the word, the more often it was mentioned by my students on their pre-assessments.)This is what they know, now:
Now I'm seeing more of the detailed understandings I was hoping for. They've included the seven aspects of poverty, and many of them were able to discuss the poverty cycle and ways that we can help. I'm impressed!
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