Assessment Part Deux

I hope you have all had a good week in this unrelenting sun... For me, school visits are about to get underway with two new schools this term in the beautiful Hawkes Bay –I’m very much looking forward to getting back down there and into schools! I’ve had the opportunity this month to support teachers from Saudi Arabia who are spending a year here learning about our education system. It’s been a very interesting week with lots of conversations, as well as trying hard not to use colloquialisms and speaking slower and clear!

I wanted to continue talking about assessment this week. As I was writing up the good ol’ Soda Water and Raisins experiment (I like to update them each year with new ideas and experiences), it reminded me of a conversation I had with teachers back when we were running around the countryside delivering free teacher only days around the science capabilities. It went something like this…

Ancient people's "gathering data" http://rockartblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/halleys-comet-pictured-in-chaco-canyon.html

If I teach a unit on the Solar System and want to assess the students, I might choose a few Learning Intentions: I can name all 8 planets (if you’re a Pluto hater!), I can describe 4 different objects in our Solar System (like comets, asteroids, etc.), and I know what these words mean: orbit, rotation, moon and planet. All of these are things I would like children to understand and some of them (particularly the language) may be helpful in other areas of science eg orbit or rotation.

At the beginning of the unit, I might do a pre-test activity (although maybe not a ‘test’ as such, more just for me to know what to put in to the unit) and at the end of the unit, give them a post-test. And now I know Paul knows all nine planets and can argue that Pluto should be classified as a planet. He can write about meteorites, the Kuiper Belt, comets and asteroids. He can also define all of the vocabulary listed in his own words. He also did some chalk art of the planet Jupiter and wrote a report on the planet. I’ve got some lovely information for his report and parent interviews.

Next term, I’m doing Kitchen Science. So all that lovely assessment is sort of a waste of time! I’m perhaps exaggerating a little but if assessment is all about supporting next moves, then evaluating student knowledge of the solar system is a bit moot. Whether I think Pluto is a planet or not (I feel like I should set up a protest movement!), or knowing that comets are made up of ice, may not be much use in dissolving sugar and baking soda reactions which might be my next LIs.

Galileo's sketches of Saturn -he wasn't aware that these were rings

This time I’m going to think bigger! I want to have a ‘Big Idea’ that isn’t context-based but capabilities-based. For Solar Systems, I might want the children to be thinking about how scientists gather data about space, so my big idea is “We are learning how there are different ways to gather information (or data)”. For the younger children, this might be learning about the space probes (for example, Voyager or the late Mars rover, Opportunity), as well as looking at the pictures they beamed back and contrasting with Earth (and in particular, their local places). With older children, I might add some Digital Technology and talk about binary language, as well as different types of data the probes collected –not just photos. We might analyse this data and compare it to NZ or the Earth. We could talk about why this data was collected and how it has helped us understand the Solar System better. We might also talk about the different opinions scientists have about the data collected –this is quite important as data doesn’t always mean one thing. With older children, I might also do a little history –how did Galileo and Copernicus gather data? What data did they gather and how did they make sense of it? Did everyone agree with them? Finally, I might get children themselves to do some gathering of data! Can they draw the moon each night? Could they also plot its path through the night sky? Could older children find a planet and watch it each night through the term –does it ‘move’? The Greek word for planet ‘asters planetai’ means ‘wandering star’ –why? Could they draw sketches of the moon and compare with one another to critique their observations?

Galileo's observations of Jupiter and the four largest moons

So at the end of the unit, I’ve assessed the children… well hopefully, rather than at the end, I’ve been doing it right through the unit (but that’s another story!) and I’ve found out:

• ·        Paul can list ways scientists gather data –they can measure temperature, sound and take photos
• ·        Paul observes closely, listing different features of the planet Jupiter, including colour and shape
• ·        Paul is beginning to infer, for example he has noticed the rings of Saturn are made up of small rocks and wonders if they are a moon. He has corroborated this with some articles online.
• ·        Paul can gather data ‘like a scientist’ by reading the temperature outside and then compare and generalise, for example, “The temperature is getting colder through the term. I wonder if it’s because it will soon be winter. It’s still much warmer than Mars though.”

With this assessment (or evaluation), I know that I want to continue to work on Paul’s inference skills. Since he’s starting to read more online, I think I’ll start developing some critiquing skills too. As he is starting to gather number data, I might give him more opportunities to do this with our next unit eg measuring capacity and temperature.

So now the next unit has some really good focus points. I’m still going to do Kitchen Science and I have some ideas of what capabilities I need to develop. I’m also going to start looking at Using Evidence which I had a little bit in the last unit (what scientists do with the data) and I want to move further with children gathering data, inferring from this and then building explanations using evidence from their experiments.

As I’ve written this, two things have been bouncing around my head… vocabulary and definitions. Yes, we do want children to get the idea that words are important eg orbit, rotation, moon but the bigger idea is that scientists use specific words when they share ideas. We use the word ‘rotate’ rather than ‘spin’ if we’re talking about day and night. I’m okay if children don’t get all the terminology, but I do want them to understand that language is important in science. If a child still thinks that it’s a meteor that hits the ground rather than a meteorite, that’s okay! They may get further chances to be exposed to this language, build their own interest, or never need the word again!

The second thing bouncing around is definitions. If I’m doing Kitchen Science (and I hope by now you know I’d rather not say it like that but think about the Big Ideas!), how important is it for children to understand dissolving? Yes, it is really important but here’s the thing. Like content knowledge (from the first example), if I’m after a particular answer, I might end up just teaching a pile of words and not the understanding behind them. I’ve been in classes where children can all rabbit the definition of dissolving but when I have challenged them, they’ve got confused. If I’m doing a series of lessons about dissolving, I do want them to get the idea but I’m okay if they don’t. I imagine that the student will come across dissolving a few more times in their lives at school! I might give them some more experiments and have a few more chats with them until they can have that ‘aha’ moment.

Mellan's engravings of the moon. The website talks of these being the finest up until then (1630's) but were an artist's interpretation, not an astronomers... I wonder what that means... http://galileo.rice.edu/sci/observations/moon.html

So assessment is important, particularly for my next science unit. If we continue to assess each science unit independently of the next, how do we know children have improved? If we assess content knowledge, how will this link to the next unit so I know how to support the student with the next steps? But if we plan Big Ideas and developing the capabilities at the top of the unit, we can then have data that will support our students improving in science. If this is interesting to you, I have written some posts on planning –have a look and get back to me if I can help further.

Oh, and one more point... do remember that NZCER has an assessment tool for science: Science Thinking with Evidence. It's a standardised test and good to see where your students are with the capabilities. I also like to use it to show teachers the kinds of questions we need to be asking, as well as different types of activities for the different levels. 

And that’s it for today! Keep sciencing on and, as always, feel free to comment or post. I really valued the emails last time, thanks so much.

Paul