Week 10: Authentic Assessment

Context: 

In my upcoming unit, my students will be spending 12 days of open investigation that will eventually showcase science and experimental design in action.  The unit ends with a large science fair that allows students to present their investigations and results to other students, teachers, school leaders, and families. Student displays feature visuals, interactive components, hands-on models, and trifold or posters that contain explanations of student work. On these tri-folds or posters, students will articulate why their project is an important contribution to the scientific community and share data and conclusions from their experiment. Students will start off by developing interesting and testable questions with the assistance of their teacher. The questions they create will be centered around their curiosity about the world around them and the need to solve a problem within their community. Once the students have refined their questions to test, they are then able to design and execute their own experiments. In the end, students will construct explanations of their testable question and will be supported by evidence gathered by others or through their own investigation. 

 

Specific Learning Objectives: 

Through this Unit, until the final project, students will be working on the following skills. Each skill is aligned with aSTA Next Generation Science Standard, Science and Engineering Practice. For example, one standard being met is "Ask questions that require sufficient and appropriate empirical evidence to answer". 

Formulating testable questions 
Conducting background research 
Formulating hypothesis and identifying variables.
Designing experiments and creating their own procedure.
Testing their hypothesis by completing the experiment.
Analyzing their results (through data tables and graphs) and drawing conclusions about their results 
Communicating their results through the science fair presentations

 

• In your Reading Journal, explain why you think that this assessment is authentic

Authentic Assessments are realistic assessments that ask students to demonstrate the application of a subject, rather than just content knowledge. This assessment is authentic because it simulates the context in which scientific research is conducted from the origin of an idea to the communication of the results. In this assessment, I am able to assess a student's or group's ability to use their skills and knowledge acquired this year to complete the complex task of open inquiry. Open inquiry provides no supports from the teacher and role would be to ask as a guide and an observer of their growth and struggles in this unit. I can then provide feedback on hard skills like content knowledge and the process of experimentation as well as on soft skills like organization, presentation skills, and working in a group.