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Please click
on images for a larger view.
Baseline
Evidence:
Summative
assessments (quiz and test) for the
"Gas Laws & Gas Properties" unit used in 2007-2008 school year,
Honors class
MAY 2008
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Click
on image
for full .pdf--relevant parts highlighted
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The baseline evidence
shows an example of the nature and timing of the assessments I had used
in my teaching
before joining the MCE program. I used summative assessments at
the end of a unit or particular lesson to evaluate whether students had
learned the material. I did not use
pre-assessments or conscientiously use formative assessments in my
instruction. Also, oftentimes the majority of my questions gauged
rote or algorithmic understanding, rather than process and concept
understanding. The example shows that the majority (if not all)
of the questions I asked were "WHAT" questions that focused on rote
recall and algorithmic (math problem-solving) ability, rather than
conceptual understanding of how gases interacted.
I am aware that the date for this evidence is after
my
entrance into the program, but that is more indicative of the fact that
old habits and practices change slowly and that there is some lag time
between encountering new pedagogical knowledge and allowing it to
impact my practice. I still have quite a way to go!
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Please click
on images for a larger view.
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Evidence: |
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Evidence
#1:
Examples
of student answers: Pre-assessment
gauging misconceptions about the particulate nature of matter
SEPTEMBER 2008
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Excerpt
from Student 1 (writing in red is mine)
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Excerpt
from Student 3 (writing in red is mine)
- What color are atoms? Do they conduct
electricity?
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Excerpt
from Student 2 (writing in red is mine)
- What happens when you melt a solid?
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Excerpt
from Student 4 (writing in red is mine)
- What happens when you boil a liquid?
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The first piece of
later evidence
shows the student pre-conceptions that I became aware of by
administering a pre-assessment, a practice that grew out of my
understanding of constructivist theory and how preconceptions affect
the way a learner interacts with information. I used this
pre-assessment before my unit on phases of matter and gases. I
had not conscientiously used pre-assessments in my
teaching before, and thus, I had little ability to access the
pre-existing conceptions or novice understanding my students possessed
before doing end-of-unit testing. By this time, it would be too
late to change the way I would teach to specifically address student
deficits in understanding. Instead, I deliberately changed my
instruction to stress correct conceptual understandings that challenge
misconceptions (e.g. saying or reminding students repeatedly
"atoms do NOT have a color--color is a macroscopic property, on a large
scale--you do NOT see color on the atomic scale--atoms are smaller than
a wavelength of visible light!!! even if you see a color on these
animations, that's just to make it look nice!) and more deliberately
include more
animations and visualizations that would debunk other miconceptions.
While I
have not yet integrated pre-assessments
into all of my units, I am working on making them a consistent part of
any lesson I create or modify in the coming year, especially because
they have immense value in directing how I need to teach and what I
need to teach to best increase learning in a particular group of
students.
Furthermore, it is important to note that I asked my students to
EXPLAIN, so that I could better assess the correctness of their
conceptual understanding.
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Evidence
#2:
Formative
assessments (UNGRADED) and
related summative assessment (GRADED)
for 3 related gas pressure demonstrations
APRIL
2009
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Formative
assessment:
Crush the can demo
(click image for larger
view)
Modified version of Predict, Observe, Explain inquiry
method.
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Formative
assessment:
Water "sucked" into flask demo
(click image for larger
view)
Modified version
of Predict, Observe, Explain inquiry
method.
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Summative
assessment:
Balloon "sucked" into flask demo
(click
image for larger view)
Students asked to EXPLAIN
WHY.
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The second piece of
later evidence shows how I integrated the use of formative assessments
in my practice. I had not conscientiously used formative
assessments in my pedagogy before this year. However, after
reading
Roth (2006) in Edu636, I better understood the iterative aspect of
knowledge construction and how the teacher needs to work with what the
learner already knows or the way in which knowledge is being
constructed (rather than assuming that it does not matter). I became
aware of the need to give immediate
feedback to students and to provide a non-threatening manner of
assessing how I needed to teach. The professional
development on demonstrations given by Mark Hayden, Mark Bruder, Jenny
Line, and Mike Dappalone in Edu636 also provided the resources and the
inquiry-structure (of P.O.E.--predict, observe, and explain) that I
modified for my worksheets.
I used
this sequence of assessments (2 formative and 1 summative) in the
middle of my gas unit. In this
evidence, you can see that the first two assessments show students two
different (but related) phenomena that are grounded in an understanding
of gas pressure. By showing two different phenomena and requiring
students to predict, observe, and explain both, students had to elicit
what they already knew and differentiate between what ideas were
consistent and fundamental for understanding both demonstrations
and what was unimportant. Furthermore, by
marked the assignment quickly and then having a class discussion and
reviewing
how these phenomena were occuring, I provided students with helpful,
individualized feedback, and students had ample opportunity to
correct their novice conceptions. After these two formative
assessments, I evaluated whether these concepts were learned in a
summative assessment based on another demonstration that was different,
but related to the first two the students had seen.
Note that I asked students to EXPLAIN rather than just list or give me
answers based on algorithmic ability.
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