“I don’t have many grades for this quarter, so I better give a few quizzes soon.” “I don’t have time for assessments – just let me teach.” I’m sure we’ve heard comments such as these (or thought them ourselves) in the faculty room. Both of these comments show a possible disconnect between assessment and student learning. The era of NCLB has us focused on summative assessments – those state level or end-of-year tests that can help us to make decisions about our courses and curriculum (assuming we look at the results!). But the articles in this issue, address formative assessments – the ongoing, classroom level assessments that are critical to knowing what students are learning during the instructional process so that we can move on (if they have learned a topic) or refocus the lesson to correct any misconceptions or fill in any gaps. Quizzes, lab reports, checklists, homework, quick writes, clicker systems, or “thumbs-up” can all be forms of formative assessment, assuming we provide feedback to the students. Providing timely and specific feedback to the students from these assessments has been identified in the research (see Marzano’s work What Works in Schools) as an effective way of enhancing student achievement. I’ve seen morphs of the word, such as informative or transformative that describe the effects that using these assessments can have on learning and instruction.
This issue of Science and Children relates to the January issue of Science Scope, which also considered the topic of assessments. There are lots of resources on assessment (use assessment as a keyword in SciLinks, – many of the sites address the issue of content area reading, too) and NSTA has some great books on formative assessments in science, including Science Formative Assessment: 75 Practical Strategies for Linking Assessment, Instruction, and Learning and Uncovering Student Ideas in Science: 25 Formative Assessment Probes. These are both excellent!
The authors of Assessing Children’s Career Aspirations invite you and your students to participate in a research project. While this type of assessment does not provide feedback on what students are learning from your lessons, it does provide insights into how your students perceive themselves and their futures. The study consists of an interview protocol and a sheet to tally your class summary. Even if you don’t submit the summary, it would be interesting to use the data to address some questions: Is there a difference between girls and boys in their aspirations? Are their differences between students of various socio-economic levels? Do student have realistic perceptions of various careers? Is there a difference in how students at different grade levels respond? (You’d need to have several teacher participate, and working on this project would be a neat introduction to action research as professional development.) If your school does a “Career Day,” the adults could use the protocol as a starting point for their discussions, too. The due date for the survey results is October 2008, so you could do this in September with your new class as a little individual time with each student! For more information on careers, you can also go to SciLinks and enter Careers as a key word. The sites here include descriptions of specific careers and examples of scientists at work.
The Elementary Students’ Science Beliefs Test is not exactly a test, but rather a tool for learning what your students know, think they know, or don’t know about 24 ideas in science. The authors describe a project in which they used the online version with students in grades 3, 4, and 5, including a summary of the results. (I wonder what scores adults would have!) They did describe some issues, including the reading level of the instrument. I took at look at it, and it would also require some computer savvy on the part of the students, especially the part where they type in an explanation of their responses. I could see a teacher using a “clicker” system to gather student responses while reading the questions and perhaps getting some oral feedback on the explanations. According to the website, the instrument is for students under 18, so it might be interesting to try with older students, too. Perhaps as a pre and post for an intermediate or middle school?
This is such an important topic, that I’ll consider more at another time!