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Book Chapter
The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about sexual reproduction. The probe is designed to reveal whether students recognize that multicellular organisms develop from a fertilized egg. ...
Book Chapter
The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about life cycles. The probe is designed to see if students recognize that the pupal stage of a life cycle is a living organism. ...
Book Chapter
The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about structures they encounter when they learn about heredity. The probe is designed to reveal students’ ideas about the “parts and wholes” relationship between DNA, genes, an...
Book Chapter
The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit ideas about genetic traits. The probe is designed to see if students recognize that some traits, such as eye color, are complex and cannot be predicted solely by the result of one gene. ...
Book Chapter
The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about the cellular makeup of the human body. The probe is designed to see if students recognize that the body is an organized collection of cells and not a structure or “outline...
Book Chapter
The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about a scientific word they frequently encounter in middle and high school science, chlorophyll. The probe is designed to reveal whether students know that chlorophyll is more th...
Book Chapter
Book Chapter
Research-Based Techniques Incorporated Within Mastery Learning
This chapter begins with a brief explanation of cognition and how we learn. This explanation will serve as the foundation for understanding why the various aspects of mastery learning have the impact that they do. ...
Book Chapter
Practical Implications of Mastery Learning
The research supports the belief that mastery learning results in improved student learning and motivation. But how do you actually do it? What are the implications of revamping a course to make it a mastery learning course? How do you handle the det...
Book Chapter
How Mastery Learning Might Look
In this chapter, the author describes what their mastery learning classroom looks like and presents several variations that could be used to make mastery learning fit specific circumstances or people....
Book Chapter
It’s very daunting to consider completely changing the way your classroom is run. The author went back and forth many times in the month before school started before making the switch to mastery learning. The author knew my students would benefit, ...
Book Chapter
The key to mastery learning is that students are required to show mastery of a concept before they are allowed to move on to the next concept. The teacher determines at what level the mastery must be accomplished—for example, 100%, 80%, or 70%. Stu...
Book Chapter
How Do We Know What the Climate Was Like in the Past?
In this Data Puzzle, students interpret a multiparameter graph of pollen data from a sediment core collected in the northeastern United States to assess changes that occurred in the tree community over a period of about 7,000 years. By comparing the ...
Book Chapter
How Do We Decide ''Weather'' Or Not To Proceed With a Trip?
In this Data Puzzle, students will observe how temperature, dew point, pressure, and wind direction change over time, and they will interpret this suite of related changes as due to the passage of a cold front. They will recognize relationships among...
Book Chapter
What Does an Earthquake Feel Like?
In this Data Puzzle, students examine real newspaper accounts of the August 10, 1884, earthquake in the northeastern United States and gain firsthand experience applying the Modified Mercalli Intensity Scale to the event. Students gain insight into ...