Natl. science ed. conference: Saturday
by Timothy Boyle on Mar 20 2010 Posted in Boyle's law
Before I knew I would covering the NSTA conference for the Notebook, I had planned on spending Saturday at the conference as a professional development.
I teach third and fourth grade, which entails using three different FOSS curricula. This afternoon FOSS was running two workshops: assessment and notebooking.
While four and half hours of professional development can be daunting, it was time well spent.
FOSS assessment
I especially enjoyed the assessment workshop. I know that I still have a long way to go in better assessing my students. In the midst of a young career, I have concentrated most of my efforts on the delivery of instruction. Personally, I enjoy the teaching aspect of education more than the evaluation. Divorcing assessment from instruction is not an option however.
The framework for the assessment workshop was the knowledge gleaned from theAsk Project. FOSS has spent years developing a series of embedded and formative assessments in their curricula. The formative assessment takes the shape of a pre- and post-surveys along with I-Check. I-Checks are benchmark assessments with a very precise scoring system.
I particularly like the I-Check scoring because it is designed to inform teachers and students about student understanding as opposed to achievement. FOSS Co-Director Larry Malone posited a transition from the current state of "achievement of arbitrary goals to one of student progress." His rationale for this transition is that it values the efforts of all teachers and students. Instead of NCLB style winners and losers, we could see who is facilitating children's growth the most.
A progress model also takes into account the different levels of prior knowledge students might have. I thought the point that we don't stop educating children when they accrue a certain amount of education was quite poignant. Taking into account that some of students come from disadvantaged backgrounds, but still show