Monday, 11 November 2019

A bit on assessment...

Last week, I was working in a couple of classrooms with some crazy science lessons... who says children shouldn't eat sugar!?! As I chatted with the teacher after the lesson, we talked about expectations of student work.

Although there's not a lot out there in terms of supporting teachers to assess from an official point of view -after all, the curriculum has basically one set of objectives for four years (Levels 1 and 2, Levels 3 and 4), there are places you can go for support. I've shared before about the NMSSA resource that seem popular -you can find it on the TKI science capabilities page. There are a few commercial products out there too. At one stage, I was using the Real Science resources as one of those has some good examples that teachers could use (as well as experiments). And of course, I have my capabilities indicators that I share with schools that I work with. Lately, I've been working on some ideas for leveling the indicators based on the capabilities which the Coherent Pathways also have. Their PDF is an interesting read, although I do struggle with how we would put this into the curriculum alongside Key Competencies, Values, ELAs, etc! I like them but...!

If I was putting on my stern voice, I would point out that every essential learning area needs to have some form of assessment or evaluation. If we're teaching so that students can learn, how do we know they have? Our education system has some great resources regarding literacy and mathematics support. We have the progressions as well as reading and writing assessment tools. Teachers are very aware of where children are at, what they are capable of doing, as well as where to next. What if we thought about some of our topic areas in the same way? I don't think I would ever go as far as the depth of maths, reading and writing, but should we have some assessment system in place?

If we don't assess in science, why are we teaching it? I know we could say that the children enjoy it, but is that enough? They also enjoy lunchtime and playing outside (well some of them!)! If I'm doing an experiment with the students, why? Is it just an activity trap -children are doing activities but there's no real learning sought? If we're looking at shadows with the five year olds, why? What do we want them to learn or understand? What do they know already and what do I want to develop further? And if I'm only going to explore shadows for a couple of days, will they have learnt anything?

As I'm writing this, I'm feeling this is all a bit loud-sounding and perhaps judgemental. It's not meant to be, more, wanting to encourage teachers to start to think a little deeper about science. Yeah, we could continue to have fun experiments, or grab a House of Science kit, but are we certain that these sessions are valuable? Have students developed further their understanding of the Nature of Science or the science capabilities? Have they a greater understanding of a context strand?

As the end of the year draws near, and report writing is upon us, I sometimes wonder how science progress is shared with parents. Is it part of the 'topic' paragraph or does it have its own place? Are comments based on knowledge: Paul knows the names of the planets or is it based on the capabilities or nature of science: Paul asks questions that he can investigate. He is learning to plan an experiment and carry it out carefully, sharing the results with others? It's an interesting point to muse, and I am aware how busy teachers are already -but surely there are clever ways of working on this! For example, yesterday I was doing some Digital Technology scratch coding with a class of year 5 and 6 students. They wrote up a three levelled rubric with me and then wrote their names where they thought they might be. And on top of that, had a lovely discussion about which level 'making a game' should be -lovely jubbly! At the end of the lesson, they all shared what they had done in the lesson and what they learnt -without needing to write it was fun!

As always, I'm interested in your ideas too! By the way, I have written on this topic before in the blog -if you'd like to read a bit more, have a look or ask me!
Keep sciencing, 
Paul

2 comments:

  1. For report writing I will put Science progression in the general comments as there is no singular place for it and our report srurcture requires a lot of writing on the three R's. I personally will comment on the skills of Science for my students e.g. XXXX can draw up a scientifc diagram and comment on their overall attitude toward science.

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    1. That's a good start Tim. I've been wrestling over whether we have a focus on science skills more than the science thinking but then I'm not sure how you could report on a child's curiosity or 'thinking like a scientist'... I guess you'd see it in the way the write a description or gather data from an investigation.

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