Religious literacy: Assessment grid

After getting lots of help from commenters on my list of topics that should be included in religious literacy for Unitarian Universalist (UU) kids, I’ve taken the next step and created a “Religious Literacy Assessment Grid”.

This grid lists each suggested topic for religious literacy, assigns that topic to an age group (with grid squares colored light orange), and begins to offer some suggestions for assessing children’s knowledge of each topic. As always, your comments are welcome.

Within a week, I hope to have another list for your comments. Another of our big four educational goals for UU kids involves teaching basic religious skills that are appropriate for UU kids to learn (e.g., mediation, public speaking skills, etc.), and this list would cover some of the basic religious skills we’re thinking are central to our tradition.

12 thoughts on “Religious literacy: Assessment grid

  1. Tom

    In my experience the Bible stories work well with younger children. There is a reason they have survived thousands of years.

    On the other hand, I have little sympathy for the Sophia Fahs project of reducing complex intellectual traditions to simple folk tales. I particularly dislike the effort to make Confucianism into magical birth stories. That is simply not what Confucianism has ever meant to anyone who took it seriously. If kids are too young to read, say, The Great Learning, then they are too young to engage meaningfully with Chinese philosophy. That’s OK.

    The same problem arises with UU history. The story of Theodore Parker and the turtle is completely generic. It has nothing to do with why UU adults are interested in Parker.

    So my criteria for good stories for elementary students are these:

    1) The stories have human characters with real names.
    2) The stories have been meaningful to people for centuries
    3) The stories have conflict and events. Something happens.

    Most UUs would agree with these criteria, but it is surprising how hard UUs find it to implement them. They tend to come up with stuff like “How Sam the monkey learned tolerance” or “Maria Mitchell was a Unitarian who got tenure!”

    Finally, let me observe that young children can deal with much more stressful material than adult UUs. They don’t have the same aversion to God-talk. They are much better at dealing with conflict. They are a joy to be with.

  2. Jean

    I’m impressed by the organization, and I think a grid like this is super — good for many learning styles. I’m probably missing something, but what’s the assessment? I mean, what tools are you using to *assess* the learning?

    Yes, this is written by an academic, who fusses with a myriad of assessment tools all year long. Everything from “minute papers” to “exit interviews” and all the stuff in between, both non-graded and graded. What tools do you use?

  3. Victor

    Good job! See you decided to include Eastern Orthodox. Makes sense.

    Was just wondering why you decided to put all of Western Religion History in Grade 7/8? My inclination would be to split it between 7/8 and H.S., perhaps emphasizing the American movements (the Foursquare church, etc.) in H.S.

    A bulletin board of Cain and Abel!? I’d love to see it.

  4. Kathy Parmentier

    The grid/assessment list seems to have left out the earth-centered religions. It is a strong thread in our denomination and congregation, and is one of the sources. Earth-centered religious focus draws from many traditions, as I understand it, including pagan, Native American, and others. As always, the choices have to be carefully made. I’ve seen some pretty awful material on Native American religions that reduced them all to one, and made a quick Sunday game of choosing a spirit animal. Young children understand the changing of the seasons. Older children can be involved meaningfully in such things as the connections made between the seasons, directions, elements and so on. I’m sure that there is more, which could bring in care for the earth. For older children, distinctions between specific religions would be good, so that Wiccan, Lacota, southwest Navajo or Zuni traditions are not merged into one single tradition.

  5. Dan

    Tom @ 1 — Mostly, I agree with you. But I think you underestimate Sophia Fahs. Several of the curriculums she wrote or edited were notable for relying on the most recent Biblical scholarship, e.g., Jesus the Carpenter’s Son, Moses, The Drama of Ancient Israel. You could critique The Old Story of Salvation for simplifying the Bible, but that’s exactly the point she’s making with the book — that our culture has simplified the Bible in exactly this way, and that we should address that simplification head on. So your ciritque of Fahs applies mostly to her From Long Ago and Many Lands, although in spite of that it remains perhaps the best UU-produced collections of religious stories (which is no compliment to the other UU-produced collections out there).

    Jean @ 2 — Legitimate assessment genres include things like public performance of competence, reflection journals, etc. See also Multiple intelligences in the classroom, p. 83, by Thomas Armstrong, Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (available on Google Books), for more ideas on how assessment can work in the kind of setting like a Sunday school.

    Victor @ 3 — I kept stuff out of the high school age range only because the current UU culture doesn’t have much in the way of formal learning for that age group.

    Kathy @ 5 — Yes, it does leave out earth-centered traditions, except for looking at indigenous religions in a congregation’s local area (at the bottom of the grid). I think the kind of thing you’re talking about fits better into another one of our big goals, which is religious skills and practice.

  6. Jeremiah

    Dan @6: You are absolutely right about lack of formal curriculum for HS youth. We have to make it up as we go along. But that age group asks so many profound and nuanced questions that I have to think we are doing them a disservice. What’s your take on this?

    My concern is that what we are really saying is that once you are
    between the ages of 15 and 28, we really don’t want you. Come back when you have little kids. It’s definitely one of a number of white elephants in the RE closet.

  7. Dan

    Jeremiah @ 7 — You ask my take on this. Basically, I think too many UU congregations put all their eggs in the youth group basket — if you’re a youth aged 14-18, you’re expected to either participate in the youth group, or not come to church. There are other alternatives. One UU church used to offer both a youth group and a teen RE class and a youth choir — their average weekly attendance for high school aged youth was over 50 for a church with 250 members.

  8. Ms. M

    putting my own cranky pants on today – as much as I like (and agree with) your vision Dan, I can say that two of the last three (no make that 3 of 4) congregations I knew most intimately did not see religious literacy at all on their list of priorities – and one group explicitly stated that any form of “raising uu’s” was absolutely not an objective (let alone priority!). Though others still seem to have some success with high attendance (and “competency”) expectations of OWL and COA, I’ve most recently seen average attendance rates of <50%* – seeming to further indicate that priorities for any “learning” programs is limited at best.

    *even with attendance covenants/parent-family orientation etc etc..

    grumble

  9. Jeremiah

    Dan@8 – Wow. That’s brilliant. As our HS Youth Group meets in two days, you’ve given me something to mull over. Thank you.

  10. Joe

    Hi Dan,
    I like the assessment grid you have started to fill out.

    One tool that you might find helpful for filling out the empty cells is a list of Knowledge Expression Activity Types created by Judi Harris and Mark Hofer from the College of William and Mary. These activities, and the products of these activities, can tell us a lot about what children have learned from their religious education experiences.

    Here is an excerpt of Harris and Hofer’s work about Knowledge Expression in social studies (which could include religious education): http://merit2008.pbworks.com/Activity_Types

    For a good paper on this topic, go to: http://activitytypes.wmwikis.net/file/view/HarrisHoferActivityTypes-TPACKDev.pdf

    Harris, J. & Hofer, M. (2009). Instructional Planning Activity Types as Vehicles for Curriculum-Based TPACK Development. Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (Eds.). Research highlights in technology and teacher education 2009

    For more ideas about Knowledge Expression activities in SocialStudies
    http://activitytypes.wmwikis.net/file/view/SocialStudiesLearningATs-Feb09.pdf

    – Joe

  11. Volly

    Daniel Quinn’s Ishmael offers a fascinating perspective on themes from Genesis, especially the Cain and Abel story. Our congregation has devoted numerous discussion-group sessions to the book and I’m sure your teens would get a lot from it.

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