danielles_journal3_2009

Danielle Sutton 2/12/09

The assessment for this journal entry was fill-in-the-blank.

__General Outline of Assessment__: For this assessment, students had to identify four key parts of a plant for a science quiz. They each had to complete a worksheet and were graded from 0-4. __ Assessment Structure: __ To get a “4” on this assessment, two parts had to be completed. The top half of the worksheet had a sketch of a plant with four lines pointing to four different parts and areas of a plant. The students had to fill in the four lines with the appropriate label from a word bank. The bottom half of the worksheet had four definitions of different parts of a plant. The students had to answer these definitions by filling in the blank by using the same word bank from the top half of the sheet. The worksheets were completed with a science lab partner. __ Assessment Results: __ I was sorting the students’ papers when I came across these worksheets. I asked teacher what they were for; obviously understanding they had to test the students’ knowledge on plants. She said that she gave them after learning about plants, specifically after a few class discussions and a project with planting their own seeds and taking care of the plants that later grew from them in the classroom. This worksheet was given soon after the class discussions and after they had planted their seeds. While giving back the worksheets, most students received a 4, and no student got any lower than a 3. __ Reflection of the Assessment: __ One aspect of this assignment that I thought was positive was that the students were allowed to complete this worksheet with a science lab partner. I think that a lot of times assignments like this particular worksheet is completed silently and without assistance. It is interesting that the students were able to work with another classmate, especially their lab partner, because they would be able to discuss the answers to the questions. I think that without working with another student, there really would be no verbalization about why a particular answer made sense; it would just be completed wordlessly. I think this quiz is generally not the best way to assess a students understanding of plant parts. Having a word bank and definitions give students a chance to guess the correct answer and also become confused and mark the wrong answer. There is too much chance involved with this type of assessment, meaning the chance that you may assume a student truly understands the material when guess was involved, or a student was anxious about getting a quiz and as a result became confused when they typically show a strong understanding of the material. That is why I feel having this quiz completed in pairs really enhances the strength of this assessment, simply because articulating an idea at the very least will get the students to think more about the correct answer. << Back to EDC 452 home page << Section 2 <<Danielle's Journals