3/6/2013
Assessment and Instruction:
The best forms of assessment are given when students don't know they are being assessed, they just share what they know.
Science Notebooks:
- good assessment tool in science,
- structured responses, Journaling techniques
- give students the opportunity to draw in them,
- What should students write about? : What do I know? What happened? What did I find out? What do I think about this experiment or investigation? If I could do it again, what would I do differently?
- Teacher should assess student science notebooks by looking for evidence of conceptual understanding and look at the way they used the information.
Science Blogs:
- Student created
- Use of pictures and other visuals
- Teachers can encourage students to explore and comment on other students' blogs
- Encourages engagement because students are creating something and sharing ideas that can be seen and read by others.
Science Portfolios:
- purposefully created cover-sheets
- shows student-progress
- reflect on choices they made
Concept Maps:
- Can be student or teacher created
- great way to organize the information in a visual way in order to improve student understanding of the science concepts
PowerPoints:
- created by students
- in order to make them more engaging: have students share and contribute examples to the subject matter they are discussing.
- Accountability piece should be added when teacher create PowerPoints for students. Require that students add notes to the powerpoint slides. (Tip: don't provide ALL the information)
Performance Assessment:
- Assessment is just a part of the process shouldn't always be formal assessment.
- Make sure you, as the teacher, give feedback and reflect on what the students learned and what they had trouble with.
- Build students' self-efficacy around assessments and subject material.
Experiment of the Day!!!
Materials: Alka-Seltzer, water and a film canister.
What will happen when Alka-Seltzer is mixed with water and air when combined in a tightly sealed film canister?
We used a FGOLFeR (fore-golfer) Journaling Technique throughout this experiment.
- F: Focus
- G: Guess
- O: Order
- L: Learned
- Fe: Feelings during and after the activity.
- R: Reflection
Final Thoughts: When assessing students it is important to provide a variety of assessments. As I said at the beginning of my post today, the best forms of assessment are the types that students are unaware of. By providing these forms of assessment, the students will be free of "test anxiety" ergo, teachers will be able to see students show case their knowledge and skills in a non-threatening way. I have learned and discussed a few methods of assessment that could be especially useful in science lessons. It is important that teacher provide assessments throughout their lessons. Teachers should alternate between formative, interim, and summative forms of assessments.
Some thoughts on our Science Lesson on Temperature:
I led a first grade science lesson with my partner Desiree today and it was really successful!! We incorporated the iPads that the CSUF education department has available to borrow for school related activities. We were teaching the students about temperature, so we used the weather channel app and gave every student a chance to look up the weather/temperature in a city in the United States (or in America as one student corrected me.. haha). I think we successfully broke down every task for the students so the lesson went very smooth. We gave ever student a letter (a, b, or c) and they were in a group together with one iPad. In order to ensure that everyone had a chance to use the iPad we went in order and everyone who was an "A" looked up the same city at the same time, then they all passed the iPad to the "B" and the "B"s all looked up the same city at the same time. Then they passed the iPad to the "C" person in their group and the "C"s looked up the same city. I think it went really well! Desiree and I were extremely excited by how everything went!! We hit the vocabulary over and over again and kept asking them questions about the names and function of everything throughout the whole lesson to ensure they really grasped the concepts we were presenting. The students did AWESOME!!! It was a great learning experience. We tried to guide them to discovery through questions we posed about what the temperature measurement meant about how they would need to dress if they were outside in that weather. I am always amazed at how insightful the students are even at such a young age. I am amazed at the explanations they come up with when you ask them questions about their thinking process or reasoning. I am always pleasantly surprised.
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