Pre-assessment for differentiation

Pre-assessment is very important since it will help us to differentiate instruction and meet all students’ needs. In high school is a very useful tool since the Science concepts are getting harder to understand and keep them in your mind. A quick review of concepts that should be at least heard on previous years will help teachers to know the class level and for students to know what the lesson will be about.

Pre- assessment should be handled carefully. High schoolers tend to take very seriously test and quizzes, so you have to be sure that they know that this won’t be taken into consideration for grading the unit, it will be just one tool to monitor progress.

For this unit, I create a quiz on kahoot!. This is a very useful tool that I can see it used by many teachers in the school I am currently working. I will give some pieces of papers to students and they will write down the answers. There are others apps that can collect the answers by internet, but in that cases students can have access to internet and look for the information, so the data collected by this assessment will be worthless.

The link to my pre-assessment for that lesson is:    https://play.kahoot.it/#/k/a8949be3-580d-4478-b090-c78e04dfb0ef

This unit will have an assessment for almost each of the objectives. In all the lessons the formative assessment will be class work observation and group activities for each lesson. Summative assessment will be the final project.

Some of the formative assessment are:

• Make a glossary with the main concepts and definitions
• Short answers worksheets
• Group discussion

After analysing the pre-assessment results I will plan some differentiated activities. Let’s take the following results as the ones obtained on the kahoot! quiz:

• 5 students who answer all the questions correctly
• 12 students who have some knowledge about the content but need to develop thinking skills
• 5 students who have limited knowledge about the topic

In the following chart you can see some of the differentiated instructions that will be implemented according to the pre- assessment results. You can access clicking on the following link:

https://www.lucidchart.com/documents/view/48a17b8b-a859-4b82-a7c6-de39de2f7d88

The students who answer all the questions correctly will have more responsibilities in the group work as well as the option to answer the extra question in the final test for the unit. This is a strategy to help students to reach higher marks and do not be so stressed on the test day.

Students who need to develop their thinking skills will be the responsibles of that part on the group project. They do not have to do all the work, just develop it and listen to peers' suggestions. They need to connect all the concepts they know by using these skills.

Finally, the students who are struggling with the concepts asked in the pre-assessment will be monitored closely by the homeroom teacher or the LS teacher in case it is neccessary. For that students will be very helpful the office hours, which are three after school blocks that teachers can solve students' doubts. His main responsibility during group work will be collect data. Doing this part of the project students can interact with group peers and ask questions about their doubts related with their misconceptions or lack of prior knowledge about the homeostasis.

High stakes assessments

There is a huge debate about if high-stakes tests are worthy and reliable for students to check their knowledge.

Each educational expert has his own opinion, but according to the results of studies and pools carried by different organizations and in different places it seems that there is not consensus about this issue.

Different sources I consulted agreed on one point: more research is needed to come up with a realistic conclusion about the effectiveness of high-stakes test.

Many people in the US agreed that standard test are a good tool to measure students' progress, but teachers should also have this type of evaluation to check their teaching performance.

One of the main concerns are the amount of testing and the effects that tests have on students' learning. Generally the idea of having a single test to evaluate students' knowledge is not well accepted since this measure can not let us know the reality of the learning process of each student. 

Stress and anxiety are the main factor that can interfere in the results of the test, do not let us know the real learning achievement that each student has.

A study from Education week affirms that there is a positive relationship between high stake test and a higher achievement. This study shows that implement an standard based program has been associated with a knowledge increment, especially in the math area. To obtain reliable results, the person responsible of the test has to take in consideration the impact of the test in all social groups and the accommodations that some students may required (LS and ESL).

Teaching to a test

Is teaching to a test a good method to increase students' learning? Some experts state that teaching to a test, always you teach according to a good curriculum can be very positive to students. On the other hand, if the curriculum is not well organized and it just cover the aspect that can appear on the test, it will be a waste of time since students will just memorize the content for the test.

As an assistant I observed how the majority of teachers do not have several test, but they measure students' progress by some questions or projects before the final test for the unit. It is a practice that can let them know which students' performance are and act according to the results. The lessons are planned according to the standards, but each teacher can add some aspects if they think that could be interesting for the students. 

In conclusion, we can say that the teaching strategy (teach for the test or not) will be positive or negative depending on many factors being the most important the curriculum that the teacher follows (if it is a complete and well develop and organized one or not).

References

High-stakes testing and effects on instruction: Research review (nd). Retrieved November 15,2015 from http://www.centerforpubliceducation.org/Main-Menu/Instruction/High-stakes-testing-and-effects-on-instruction-At-a-glance/High-stakes-testing-and-effects-on-instruction-Research-review.html

Appropiate used of High-Stakes testing in our Nation's schools. (nd). Retrieved November 15,2015 from http://www.apa.org/pubs/info/brochures/testing.aspx

National centre for education statistics (nd). Retrieved November 15,2015 from https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=1

Formative assessments

The objective is: Express and analyze information using research poster related with homeostasis

A formative assessment to evaluate if students are understanding this part of the unit can be:

• After explaining the parts and the distribution of a Science poster, I will ask students to make a draft indicating the names of the parts that should be covered in a good poster.This draft doesn’t need to have information related with the content, it just to make sure the students know the structure; title, author, abstract, method and procedures, result, conclusion and resources consulted. The design of that information depends on the author, but it has to be coherent and well organized.

•  Students will seat in groups of three and I will give each group a poster related with homeostasis. They will have to evaluate it; they have to analyze structure and content. After 30-40 minutes, they will have to make a brief resume about which parts of the poster they like the most and which ones the least. I will ask them a question related with the content of the poster to check if they can analyze the information and get the main idea.