Angie's Assessment Update

Progress is slow, but I am reconsidering what the assessment should look like after my first run.

I created a study guide for the first unit based on the notes and lessons we had. Then I created the test from the study guide. The test had to be shorter than the study guide, but I felt it was good for the students to review all the important terms, concepts and applications even if they would not be tested on them because they form the background students would need for future lessons.

The test, like the study guide, had two parts. Part A was vocabulary and concept check, with some very basic application (i.e. do you know how to create and label a box-and-whisker plot given a data set). Part B was a mini-lab in which students would work with a lab partner to expose potatoes to three different environments, with one control, and explain the movement of molecules based on their observations and measurements. Both parts would be given over two days. So this is where I started.

On day one, I looked over the tests the students had completed and I knew we couldn't complete Part B. The vocabulary section was the worst. I thought students would ace this part since it was basic recall of vocabulary and concepts and also since we'd spent weeks defining, labeling, and identifying the vocabulary in various contexts, including the infamous Egg-speriment (which I am also reconsidering now after 4 years at it). Instead of giving the second part of the test the following day, we talked instead about what students did (or didn't do) to prepare for the test, whether and how the study guide was helpful, and lessons we can learn for future assessments. By the way, I did have three students get better than 100% on this first part of the test, but that is clearly not enough to make up for the utter failure of most of the class. The students admitted that they only relied on our class review to prepare for the test; many had incomplete study guides and most did not bother reviewing.

At this point, I know that the primary problem was not the assessment itself since I have given a form of this test in previous years without a dismal passing rate. What I did learn for next time is that students strongly felt that a review game would have been helpful. In the past, while I have found review games to be fun, I have not seen that it results in significant gains. In as much as they play a role in assessments, I would like to steer away from them and use review stations instead, which I feel are more focused and the distraction of earning points for one's team isn't there.

Moving forward, I would like to try creating tiered assessments. I meet regularly with a small Critical Friends Group of middle school math and science teachers and one of the things we discussed this weekend is using tiered assessments to determine how well students are meeting objectives. I think I already do this in some fashion, but the idea of explicitly designing a test with clearly labeled levels of questioning isn't something I've done and would be an excellent use of Bloom's taxonomy. I think this change will be better than the mammoth 2-day assessment I had in mind because it can incorporate application of concepts as a basic objective that all students have to meet. I have a couple of ideas on the actual design of the assessment so that it is a simple one-day assessment. Labs will still have to be separate assessments; there's no way to get around this. They become fewer and fewer as we move into more activity-based (rather than lab-based) lessons, so this will be something that applies only to the first unit.