Assessment
We believe that assessment should be used throughout the teaching process informally and formally to get a generalized picture of where students are at in their learning. Assessment can be an extremely helpful tool for the teacher to understand what information students are taking in and what parts of the lesson students are struggling on. While formal assessment at the end of the unit is crucial for the teacher to see what the students have learned overall, we firmly believe that informal assessment is so much more important. Rather than waiting till the end to see what students learned, we believe that teachers should constantly be looking at students' work, asking questions, and overall, trying to assess students throughout the unit. This gives teachers the overall picture of students learning and helps teachers to adjust accordingly.
Our lesson plans use various forms of assessments such as informally looking at their picture cards, posters, and models. We will see if they can put the formation of a hurricane in order, if they're posters are accurately presenting information and if their models correctly depict information learned in class. This unit is a hands-on unit and we believe it is more appropriate to assess them on critical thinking more than memorizing facts. We would also assess them on their discussions instead of focusing merely on their written work. At the end of the unit, they will be assessed by creating an evacuation plan based on a fictional hurricane. They will use the information they have learned throughout the unit to predict the movement of the hurricane and create this plan, which requires higher level of thinking. We have included a wide variety of informal assessment and a final formal assessment at the end. The informal assessment of picture cards, and posters are much better to see exactly what the students are learning/have learned. The assessment at the end puts everything we have taught in the unit together, as one large assignment. We also took the approach of using non-traditional assessment because science is a much more interactive subject and the assessments should model this as well.
Our lesson plans use various forms of assessments such as informally looking at their picture cards, posters, and models. We will see if they can put the formation of a hurricane in order, if they're posters are accurately presenting information and if their models correctly depict information learned in class. This unit is a hands-on unit and we believe it is more appropriate to assess them on critical thinking more than memorizing facts. We would also assess them on their discussions instead of focusing merely on their written work. At the end of the unit, they will be assessed by creating an evacuation plan based on a fictional hurricane. They will use the information they have learned throughout the unit to predict the movement of the hurricane and create this plan, which requires higher level of thinking. We have included a wide variety of informal assessment and a final formal assessment at the end. The informal assessment of picture cards, and posters are much better to see exactly what the students are learning/have learned. The assessment at the end puts everything we have taught in the unit together, as one large assignment. We also took the approach of using non-traditional assessment because science is a much more interactive subject and the assessments should model this as well.