EDC G 679 - Strategies to Improve Instruction and Assessment in Middle Grades Science Course III

3 Credit(s)

Description:
This course will provide a structure to analyze and understand data on students learning. The course has two foci: 1. Assessment Template. Participating teachers will collaboratively create and pilot a template for student assessments. Course participants will create a template for assessments that is: a. Designed to measure clearly defined knowledge and skills b. Based on a clear understanding of cognitive development c. Expressed in criteria that define a competent performance d. Rigorously field tested to ensure that the items or tasks are understandable and are measuring the intended concepts and abilities. e. Well-linked to standards When these principles are followed, studies have found that assessments can be made comparable and valid across time, tasks, and raters 2. Teacher Research. In teacher research, the teacher chooses the question (the research question), plans how to gather useful information (data collection), reflects on what was learned by students (data analysis), and determines how content or instruction can be modified to better serve student needs (conclusions or outcomes). Teacher research is simply good teaching that is planned and written down in a formal way. This is not a statistics class, but we will provide participants with an understanding of methods to organize classroom assessment, observation, and MCAS data for more than assigning grades. Through this course, participants will recognize and effectively implement assessments consistent with DESE’s Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy of Cognitive Skill Descriptions for Science and Technology/Engineering 1. Remembering 2. Understanding 3. Applying 4. Analyzing 5. Creating

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