Formative assessments allow a teacher to benchmark progress, evaluate the pace of instruction, and determine the need for intervention support. Through formative assessments, students receive timely feedback regarding their accomplishments and needs.
Diagnostic information gained from multiple forms of assessment enables teachers to adjust their day-to-day and week-to-week practices to foster greater student achievement. The many types of assessment include paper-and-pencil testing, performance testing, interviews, and portfolios, as well as less formal inventories such as regular observation of student responses to instruction. In helping students achieve standards, assessments should also use a variety of question formats: multiple-choice, short-answer, and open-ended. Performance-based assessments should also be developed that allow students to demonstrate what they have learned in the context of solving a problem or applying a concept. This kind of assessment requires students to refine a problem, devise a strategy to solve it, apply relevant knowledge, conduct sustained work, and deal with both complex concepts and discrete facts.
GUIDING PRINCIPLE IX
An effective program in science and technology/engineering gives students opportunities to collaborate in scientific and technological endeavors and communicate their ideas.
Scientists and engineers work as members of their professional communities. Ideas are tested, modified, extended, and reevaluated by those professional communities over time. Thus, the ability to convey their ideas to others is essential for these advances to occur.
In order to learn how to effectively communicate scientific and technological ideas, students require practice in making written and oral presentations, fielding questions, responding to critiques, and developing replies. Students need opportunities to talk about their work in focused discussions with peers and with those who have more experience and expertise. This communication can occur informally, in the context of an ongoing student collaboration or on-line consultation with a scientist or engineer, or more formally, when a student presents findings from an individual or group investigation.
GUIDING PRINCIPLE X
A coherent science and technology/engineering program requires
district-wide planning and on-going support for implementation.
District-Wide Planning
An effective curriculum that addresses the learning standards of this Framework must be planned as a PreK–12 cohesive unit. Teachers in different classrooms and at different levels should agree about what is to be taught in given grades. For example, middle school teachers should be able to expect that students coming from different elementary schools within a district share a common set of experiences and understandings in science and technology/engineering, and that the students they send on to high school will be well-prepared for what comes next. In order for this expectation to be met, middle school teachers need to plan curricula in common with their elementary and high school colleagues, and with district staff.
To facilitate planning, the district coordinator should be involved in articulating, coordinating, and implementing a district-wide (PreK–12) science and technology/engineering curriculum.