Use of New Pedagogical Knowledge in Designing Assessment
I have demonstrated the application of improved knowledge of educational theory in the design of assessments used in my own classroom.


What this first piece of evidence is...
    My first piece of Baseline evidence is taken from the unit plan in my Baseline Portfolio.  It was a unit on Forces and Motion, and each of the assessments were formative assessements that were given at the end of each lesson as homework.  These assessments were adopted from the textbook by Discovery Works, the program my district was using at the time.   When I created those worksheets, I believed these assessments for the unit were the best I could create, but now I know that that is far from true.  I compare this set of assessments to my current creations:  assessments that I took from my pedagogy capstone (see highlighted portions).  

Why I chose this and how this demonstrated the application of improved knowledge of educational theory in the design of assessements...
    I chose the snapshots of the unit plan from my Baseline Portfolio because the quality of them shows my lack of experience in designing assessments at the time.  I had no idea that assessments should be varied and created with a backwards design (Wiggins & McTighe 2005).  By the time of my pedagogy capstone, I understood what it meant to create "fair and varied" assessments that are either formative or summative.  The post evidence of parts of my Stage 2 of the pedagogy capstone demonstrates a clear focus on the current best practices of designing assessments while they are varied and have real-world applications (Dahlgren & Oberg 2001) unlike the assessments in my baseline evidence.  In the past, I thought of assessments as tests or simple proofs that my students understood what I taught them, and using comprehension questions from a provided textbook is sufficient assessment.  Now I know that evidence of learning can be displayed in different forms and realistic situations can be proposed to create meaning for students.
    The assessments that I included in my pedagogy capstone are performance based, realistic, and applicable to real-world situations while the assessments I used in my baseline unit plan were strictly based on written responses.  It is important that students are able to apply what they learn in class to real-world situations like the performance assessments allow them to do .  The homework worksheets in my Baseline unit plan did not allow students to think beyond what was taught in class.  Instead, it limited students' thinking to the isolated activities done in class.  Although written responses can be great measurements of learning, when I used them as the only measurement in the baseline unit plan, it does not allow students to think more deeply into the content.   In addition, by baseline assessments can be measured very subjectively when they do not have a complementing scoring rubric with the worksheets.  The subjectivity can create unfairness when the worksheets are assessed.  On the other hand, I designed rubrics to match my expectations of student performance in the post evidence so that students are assessed fairly.
    Because the new unit was designed this past summer, I have not implemented the unit yet.  I do, however, plan to use the unit along with the assessments this coming spring when I teach ecosystems.  When it is time to assess students on what they learned, their use of process skills and new knowledge (NSTA 2001) will provide me with a fair assessment of their understanding of ecosystems.


Baseline evidence taken from the assessment sections of the unit plan of my Baseline Portfolio:





  

Post evidence taken from Stage 2 of my pedagogy capstone:

Summative Assessment
A Formative Assessment








        

                        

What this second piece of evidence is...
    This is a comparison of the assessment sections of an original Ecosystems lesson plan (see highlighted portions) and a revised lesson plan (see highlighted portions) that I created as part of a course requirement in the leadership class.  It is a fifth grade lesson plan on environmental science:  ecosystems.  The original plan lacks completion, a rubric for objective measurement and scoring of student work, and the application of current pedagogical ideas is absent.   In the revised lesson plan, however, I apply my newly acquired pedagogical ideas of backwards design and the use of realistic performance assessments.   The summative assessment above was implemented this marking period, Spring of 2010, when a unit on ecosystems was taught.  After working through the unit, my students understood that the decomposers in nature help to create a "circle of life" where once living things are converted to energy sources for other living things.  They used their knowledge of decomposition and composting to create a proposal where they convince gardeners to make their own rich soil for their gardens and non-gardeners that it is easy for them to become gardeners.  Many students chose to present their proposal/commercial in a PowerPoint slide show while some created a trifold, but all were able to explain the role of decomposers and the effect of living things on other living things. 

Why I chose this and how this demonstrated the application of improved knowledge of educational theory in the design of assessements...
    The revised lesson plan incorporates varied and accurate assessments, as I have learned to use.  The assessment piece in the revised plan is a true and accurate assessment whereas the original lesson plan lacked clear assessment.  With current knowledge of how students learn science best by doing science,  I am more able to create better assessments in order to collect accurate data of student learning.  In the revised lesson plan, the assessments are varied and numerous, and the rubrics to assess student work keep students accountable for their learning and provides clear expectations of their skills. 
    In this second piece of evidence, I also created an objective, traditional assessment as a pre and post assessment, but in it, I incorporate students' thinking as I ask for their opinion in the first 3 questions (see page 7).  I have learned that student understanding is not only based on the facts they remember or the problems they can solve; if students are about to express a definite opinion towards science content, that is also a valid assessment of their understanding.  With an identical pre and post assessment, I am able collect comparative data to see the growth of each student.  In the past, I did not see pre assessment as valuable, but I understand now that the comparative data holds me accountable to current best practices of science instruction.
   


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