Agenda
• Final Assignment reminder
• Assessment
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–
–
–
Forms
Designing
Rubrics
Analysis
• Safety in the classroom
• Beginning to pull things
together
Final Assignment
Reminder
school
• Due Dec 6th by 5:00pm
• For your final assignment you need to reflect
on your science teaching in a way that
reveals your growth as a science teacher
this semester and that shows others what
you care about.
Head on over to the wiki: Assignments.
What do you stand for?
• Part of what I want you to do in your final assignment
is to be able to say what you stand for as a science
teacher.
• Individually or with a partner, draw a picture or figure
that captures your ideal vision of science teaching.
• Then, come up with a list of 4 (or so) ideas that you
stand for, and that help to explain your picture. You
should think about the assignment, and try to think
about: Students, Planning and Teaching. Your
statements should be clear, concise, reflect what we
have discussed and also your own ideals.
• Turn these in as they will help me to plan for next
week!
Returning to
assessment
• Three kinds of
assessments
– Diagnostic/pre-assessment
– Formative
– Summative
• Generate a list of 3 ways
that each kind of
assessment helps you as
a teacher,
What to think about when creating an
assessment
1. What do you want to find out?
– Be very clear on your objectives
• Do my students know the stages of a butterfly’s life cycle?
– Be clear on the specifics of what you want them to know
• Should I be asking them to describe each stage or only provide an
overview?
2. How does your assessment align with lesson
goals?
– Is my lesson about engaging, exploring, explaining or
applying?
• Should I be asking if my students know the stages of a life cycle or if
they can come up with examples of insects or animals that have similar
life cycle patterns?
• Should I be asking students to use key terms or should I be asking for
explanations of ideas?
3. When planning, tweaking or selecting an assessment
task, start with an assessment objective that explains
what your students will be able to DO after your lesson.
(use Blooms Taxonomy verbs)
Assessment Objective Example:
The students will be able to
identify and describe the
parts of a mealworm.
Create your own Assessment
(Choose a format that can be displayed for peer review)
Work together in groups. Select a GLCE appropriate for
your placement:
•
An assessment objective
a statement that explains what your students will be able to
DO after your lesson. (Use one of the verbs from Bloom’s
Taxonomy)
• An assessment task
Should reveal strengths and weaknesses in students’
mastery of the overall learning goal.
• A list of expected features
Should include the critical points the students should
include in their response to demonstrate meeting the GLCE.
Assessment Gallery Walk
As you review your classmates’ work,
consider the following questions:
• Is the assessment objective related to the GLCE/
learning goal?
• Is the assessment objective focused on conceptual
understanding rather than information recall?
• Will the assessment task reveal strengths and weaknesses in
students’ mastery of the learning goal? (features of student
responses)
• Is the assessment task age appropriate?
Write comments directly on assessment task!
Designing Rubrics for
Assessment Tasks
• Guiding questions
– What do I want my students to know and
be able to do?
– What does this look like?
• Alignment with
– Task/assignment
– Learning goals
– Expectations
• Analytic or Holistic
Designing a Rubric
• Step 1: Develop a list of qualities that the learner
should demonstrate proficiency in by completing an
assessment task
– no limit to the number of criteria that can be included in a
rubric
– Criteria should connect to: learning goals and students’
developmental levels
• Step 2: Refine your list so that it is fair, accurate and
reasonable
– Are you asking for too much or too little?
– Are the criteria aligned well with your goals and what you have
taught?
– Do the criteria really capture what you want to measure?
Designing a Rubric
• Step 3: Expand on the
dimensions of quality and
proficiency
– What is high quality versus low
quality?
– A good way to get started is to
think about the attributes of a
truly superb performance
• Step 4: The final step
toward filling in the grid of
the rubric is to benchmark
the remaining levels of
mastery or gradations of
quality.
Holistic: Examples from PALS
Analytic: Example from BSCS
• Ecosystems model project: Students are to model
their ecosystem. The model should include
appropriate living and non-living organisms present.
The paper should include an appropriate description
of their ecosystem including the climate, what living
and non-living organisms are present, how the living
organisms meet their needs for survival, and example
of a food chain or web that exists in this environment,
what types of changes could take place, what those
changes could do to the populations within that
ecosystem, and what microbes might be present that
may drastically effect the ecosystem.
Return to the assessment you
designed earlier (gallery walk)
• Design a rubric
– Holistic OR Analytic
• Justify why you selected holistic or
analytic
• Produce a “sample” piece of student
work that reflects high achievement and
low achievement
Making sense of student work
from your lesson!
Assessment Analysis and
Reflection Task
Such a task gives you experience with assessment &
provides us with an assessment of your growth as a
teacher! I have been asked to collect your work so that we
can examine it and also compare it across all sections of
401.
What you need:
• Your “big lesson plan”
• Samples of student work
• A partner – you can choose to look at
your own or a classmate’s student work.
If you do not have samples of your own
students’ work, partner with someone
who does.
Part I. Steps for Analyzing Students’ Post-Assessment
Responses
• Read through all students’ responses to get an idea of the range
of student ideas.
• Construct a rubric for analyzing your assessment task. The
rubric should reflect your expected task response features as
well as the range of student responses.
• Score student responses and based on the results, categorize
all students by high, medium and low proficiency. Students who
do not respond to a task are to be placed in a non-response
category.
• Choose one to two students from each group (high, medium
and low category) for further analysis.
STOP: Discuss
• What surprised you about the range of
student ideas? Did more or less
students “get it” than you anticipated?
• How did your rubric help you figure out
who “got it”? After scoring student work,
how might you revise your rubric to
make it more effective in getting you the
information you need?
• Part II. Examining and Reporting on Patterns in Your
Analysis
• Analysis of students’ learning: Examine the understandings of
the students in the high, medium and low categories.
• Please address the following questions (see handout), focusing
on evidence based on the 6 selected students’ work:
– How did students’ different proficiency levels understand different aspects of
the learning goal(s) as reflected in the task response features?
– Were certain features more problematic than others? If appropriate, please
comment on other evidence you might have about your students' learning.
– Where did the students end up in their understanding of the goal(s)? What
ideas were generally understood? What naïve ideas remain? Your
response should explore students’ strengths and weaknesses, their
responses to the particular assessment features (which aspects did they
seem to master and which ones did they struggle with?) to help you identify
specific ways in which your lesson was successful in supporting students’
mastery of your learning goals.
– Discuss the next steps you would take as a teacher based on the evidence
you gathered and analyzed regarding student learning.
STOP: Discuss
• What were some of the things you did well as a
teacher during this lesson?
• To what extent did you see students’ growth with
respect to the science content based on evidence
from your science talk which provided insight on
students’ prior knowledge (for example, anticipated
misconceptions, challenges, etc.)?
• If you were to teach this same lesson again, what
changes would you make? Why?
• What have you learned from this experience that will
influence your teaching of other science lessons in
the future?
Safety in Elementary
School Science
Legal Aspects of Safety
In the event of negligence in the classroom, the following parties are
potentially liable:
• the state
• the school district
• the school board
• the school administration
• the teacher
3 basic duties
• Duties of instruction
• Duty of supervision
• Duty of maintenance
Legal Issues, con’t
Duty of Instruction
• developmentally appropriate
• Addresses and identifies any forseeable dangers
• Explains procedures
Duty of Supervision
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•
•
•
•
Do not tolerate misbehavior
Failure to act is grounds for liability
Greater the risk, the greater the supervision
Younger students require more supervision
Never leave students unattended
Duty of Maintenance
•
•
•
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Never use defective equipment
File written reports for hazardous equipment
Establish procedures for checking classroom safety
Follow all school safety guidelines
Legal Issues, con’t
• Keep your lesson plans- Your lesson plans are a
legal document. Use the plans to record each
specific safety lesson you teach to each class. Add
any and all documentation-injuries, safety quizzes,
and contact with parents.
• The legal litmus test if an issue or injury goes to court
is: Would another reasonable and competent
professional teacher have done the same thing in the
same situation?
• A good definition of reasonable is: If you can
reasonably foresee the consequences of what you’re
about to do, or are not about to do, you will be held
responsible. (Flinn website)
Responsibilities for Teachers!
Teachers need to:
• maintain a safe science program
• exercise good judgment in planning and conducting safe science
investigations
• provide instruction in safe science procedures
• provide supervision for all science activities
How do I make my classroom safe?
• Make safety an integral part of
everyday science.
• Review possible hazards and safety
concerns before each activity.
• Practice the investigation before
presenting it to the class.
• Keep students on task and allow ample
time for cleanup and waste disposal.
• Do not allow drinking or eating in
science class.
• Encourage students to wash their hands
after each science task.
• Teach students how to conduct
investigations safely.
• Make sure safety equipment is
functioning and readily available.
How do I make my classroom safe?
• Model obeying safety rules in science.
• Supervise students to ensure that they obey
safety rules.
• Document safety instruction.
• Verify that there are no electrical hazards.
• Substitute plastic for glass when possible.
• Monitor glassware to make sure it is in useable
condition.
• Address all student allergies/special needs in
classroom set up and instruction.
• Teach students to safely handle and use
equipment.
• Be sure there is adequate space for students to
work.
• Know what to do if there is an accident
Safety Tools for classroom
teachers….
• Safety Contracts
• Goggles (cleaning materials: rubbing alcohol
or wipes)
• Heat sources (electric tea kettles, hot plate,
hot water from cafeteria) keep heat sources
away from students
• Lockable cabinet for chemicals, keep science
room locked
Safety Tools for teachers (con’t)
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Fire extinguisher
Wool fire blanket
Sand
Non-glass containers
Safety posters
Water Source
First Aid kit
Information sheet posted near phone
Request for Correction of Safety Concerns
form
Safety tools for students…
• Extra t-shirts or lab coats (for messy
investigations)
• Scissors (instead of blades)
• Clean-up materials (paper towels, bleach
solution)
• Use rubber gloves vs. latex (latex allergies)
• Take students on a classroom safety tour
(point our water source, fire extinguisher,
goggles and phone)
Thinking more about safety
Group 1: Safety Contract
Group 2: Safety Poster
Group 3: Teacher & Student
responsibilities: Animals & Plants in the
Classroom
Group 4: Design a Classroom Safety
Hunt
Group 5: Teacher & Student
responsibilities: Lab materials
Group 6: Safety Lesson Plan