Handouts are available below

Big Idea

What’s the best pro-d you had in 2022? Today, I want to share the best pro-d I’ve had this year regarding assessment – specifically, standards based assessment. And, this was all done without hiring an expert or speaker or quietly sitting through another workshop. However, you will need the company of a few colleagues. Long story short, the best pro-d regarding assessment I had this year had my colleagues and I discussing case studies, marking assignments and tests together, and sharing and discussing our resources.

3 Activities to do for Pro-D on Assessment

Number 1:  Discuss case studies. Here’s one we discussed on our last pro-d day:

“James is in your class and he’s missed a lot of classes this term. As a result, James has numerous missing assignments and tests this term. Furthermore, many of his absences are unexcused. If James shows up at the end of the term and demonstrates his learning on the alternate, “make-up” assignments created by you, would you assess James as “Proficient” or “Extending” this term for his curricular standards? Why?”

The case study above is based on something we’ve all probably experienced as science teachers – a student coming in at the end of term, scrambling to get marks in, and that’s what’s so great about case studies because they’re authentic and we’ve all had our own ways of dealing with those same issues which makes for great discussion and learning. I’ve come up with some more science focused ones in our handouts below.

Number 2:  Mark something together. For example, with my department, I gave colleagues a copy of a student’s final exam – the written portion – and asked colleagues to mark each response using a 4 point proficiency scale from emerging, developing, proficient, and extending. Turns out, we didn’t all agree that number 6 was a proficient response or number 2 was a developing one. However, we were within one level of each other, which good enough because the point of this exercise is to show whether or not we are similar in what we’re looking for in a response. If I say a response is an extending response while another colleague says it’s a proficient one, then that’s all good – we’re close enough. However, if I say a response is an extending response while another colleague says it’s a developing one, then that’s something we should discuss and hash out.

Number 3:  Share and discuss sample work. During our last meeting during our pro-d day, I asked department members to bring two different tests or assignments that were used to assess two different science standards. One colleague brought a test and talked about how the extended response questions were used to assess application, while another colleague shared a project that was also used to assess application. And, I shared a project as well and how it assessed application too. What’s interesting is how we assess application through such different contexts and real examples. What does extending or proficient look like on an extended response question or in my project or my colleague’s project? That’s something that could definitely push my practice forward.

Thanks for reading, and we’ll talk science again soon.

Resources

Handout(s): Standards Based Assessment Case Studies in Science Ed.

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