Designing Assessments to Understand Students Thinking

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Designing Assessments to Understand Students
Thinking
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Purposes for Classroom Assessment

• Understanding your students
• Helping your students to assess and improve their
  own understanding
• Grading

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Criteria for good assessments

• Connection to goals The questions address
  important objectives you have for student
  learning
• Interesting wrong answers Even incorrect answers
  reveal students' thinking
• Insight into students sense-making The
  students answers help you understand how they
  make sense of the world, not just where their
  knowledge of science is weak.
• Starting a dialogue with students The questions
  help you to start discussions with students where
  they can compare their ideas with scientific
  ideas.

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Types of questions that produce interesting wrong
answers
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Backwards reasoning

• If --- is the answer, then what was the question?
• What question were scientists trying to answer
• when they discovered photosynthesis? (e.g., why
  do plants need light?)
• when they discovered atomic theory (e.g., why do
  elements always combine in certain proportions?)

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Familiar situations

• Getting students theories about familiar
  examples.
• What are the forces on a coin flipped into the
  air?
• Are your eyes the same color as your mothers?
  How do you think that happened?
• Whats inside the bubbles of boiling water?

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Connecting different representations

• Seeing what happens when students represent the
  same example in different ways.
• Draw a picture of what is happening to the atoms
  of NaCl as solid salt dissolves in water.
• Show how the light rays travel that enable a
  person to see a tree as she looks out the window.

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Short answer explanation

• Ask students to make a choice or draw arrows,
  then explain their reasoning.
• Does food normally move up or down a plants
  stem? Explain your reasoning.
• Will the ashes left after magnesium burns weigh
  more or less than the original metal? Explain
  your reasoning.

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Use misconceptions research

• Ask questions that will reveal common
  misconceptions.
• What question would reveal a belief that liquids
  disappear when they evaporate?
• What questions would reveal a belief that plants
  get their food from the soil?
• What question would reveal a belief that the
  phases of the moon are caused by the earths
  shadow?

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Copy questions from someone else

• Try questions with your students that have worked
  for other people.
• Other interns
• Research reports
• Ideas in resource files
• Ideas brought to class by instructors

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Comparing examples or concepts

• Ask students to compare and contrast different
  real world examples or familiar terms
• heat vs. temperature
• force vs. momentum
• Current vs.voltage
• Green plants vs. fungi
• Volcanoes vs. other mountains

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Critique of suggested responses

• Ask students whether they agree or disagree with
  responses that reveal misconceptions, and why.
• My friend says that sunlight is food for plants.
  Do you agree? Why or why not?
• My friend says that when water evaporates, the
  water vapor weighs just as much as the liquid
  water. Do you agree? Why or why not?