Assessment in Science Intermediate (3-5)

“Assessment and instruction often become indistinguishable because the assessment activities are an immediate and integral component of instruction.”
– Alaska State Frameworks 1996

This section provides information for teachers about using assessments in a standards-based curriculum. For specific information about Alaska’s Assessment programs (Benchmarks, HSGQE, TerraNova, etc.) go to http://www.eed.state.ak.us/tls/assessment/

Standards-based assessment program should provide information about the attainment of critical educational goals to a variety of audiences, students, teachers and parents, but also the school, the district, and the state.
No one indicator or type of assessment tool is adequate to meet all of the potential needs for information or to demonstrate the attainment of the Alaska content standards.
High quality, classroom-based assessments provide useful information that can clarify and guide instructional decisions.
Teachers must use multiple measures and diverse avenues of expression to continuously assess the current knowledge of students.
Teachers need to know exactly when a student becomes confused, and they need to be committed to providing alternative experiences to help the student understand.

Science is more than a body of facts. Science is a structured and directed way of asking questions. The process standards are valued by scientists as much as the facts and theories and need to be assessed in a purposeful way.

Observing, communicating, classifying, inferring, predicting, making models and collecting data are all skills to be mastered by intermediate students at their ability level.
Intermediate students can interpret data, make graphs from their data collected, hypothesizing, controlling variables, defining operationally and investigating.
Specific science standards should be assessed both formally and informally allowing the student to choose work that demonstrates meeting the standard.
The ability to classify by single characteristics progresses to the ability to group by more than one characteristic or to classify by abstract characteristics.
It is reasonable to expect plateaus in which newly acquired process skills become integrated, used and made useful.
One students’ progress should not be compared with the progress of other students but instead a student should be assessed on their own progress towards the standards.

Assessment Ideas:

Students should feel comfortable making and correcting mistakes.
Students think through and explain their solutions instead of seeking or trying to recollect the "right" answer or method.
The teacher establishes the model for classroom discussion, making explicit what counts as a convincing scientific argument.
The teacher lays the groundwork for students to be respectful listeners, valuing and learning from one another's ideas even when they disagree with them.