Sample Assessment Items

This is not meant to be printed off and given as a test…this document is to give you ideas of how this standard might be assessed. Please use these as an example when you are developing your own formative assessments. Remember formative assessment is to be given throughout the teaching of a standard to help you guide your instruction based on students needs. A good formative assessment should have a mix of multiple choice as well as open ended.

SS5H2 The student will analyze the effects of Reconstruction on American life.

a. Describe the purpose of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments.

b. Explain the work of the Freedmen’s Bureau.

c. Explain how slavery was replaced by sharecropping and how African-Americans were prevented from exercising their newly won rights; include a discussion of Jim Crow laws and customs.

Multiple Choice:

The process of rebuilding and transforming the South after the Civil War was called ______.

a.  Reconstruction

b.  Segregation

c.  Sharecropping

d.  Slavery

Answer: a

Whish of these ended slavery in the United States?

a.  Thirteenth Amendment

b.  Fourteenth Amendment

c.  Fifteenth Amendment

d.  Emancipation Proclamation

Answer: a

Which of these made African Americans citizens?

a.  Thirteenth Amendment

b.  Fourteenth Amendment

c.  Fifteenth Amendment

d.  Poll Taxes

Answer: b

Use this list to answer the question below:

·Provided sources of food
·Helped former slaves find education
·Provided emergency medical care for former slaves

The list above describes the functions of which group?

A the Sharecroppers

B the Freedmen’s Bureau

C the Jim Crow Group

D the Confederate States

Answer: B

Which of these did the Freedman’s Bureau provide to former slaves?

a.  education

b.  horses

c.  jewelry

d.  land

Answer: a

Ronnie was an African American male living in Alabama in 1865. He had no money, no land, and no formal education. Which of these would Ronnie MOST LIKELY have depended on?

a.  the Confederacy

b.  the Freedman’s Bureau

c.  the Atlanta Campaign

d.  the Compromise of 1877

Answer: b

Which of these was the FIRST federal relief agency in U.S. history?

a.  welfare

b.  the New Deal

c.  Social Security

d.  the Freedman’s Bureau

Answer: d

Poll taxes and literacy tests were used to deny African Americans the rights guaranteed them by the ______.

a.  Thirteenth Amendment

b.  Fourteenth Amendment

c.  Fifteenth Amendment

d.  Emancipation Proclamation

Answer: c

Use the image below to answer the question.

Which of these BEST completes the web?

a.  Black Codes

b.  Reconstruction

c.  Jim Crow Laws

d.  Freedman’s Bureau

Answer: c

After the Civil War, many areas established Jim Crow laws. What does the term Jim Crow refer to?

a.  the man who led Americans to free slaves

b.  the laws that freed African Americans from slavery

c.  the laws that kept African Americans from having full rights

d.  the man who fought against giving African Americans full rights

Answer: b

Open ended:

What was the Freedman’s Bureau? What was it created to do?

Why did newly freedmen decide to sharecrop?

What were some of the methods used by white Southerners to keep free African Americans from exercising their rights after the Civil War?