Last year I gave a pretest to my classes, consisting mostly of vocabulary. I’ve decided to change the assessment and focus more on determining how students think. Rather than trying to reinvent the wheel, I’m looking for existing tests or test items I could use or adapt.
—Melissa, Wilmington, Delaware
I’ve been involved in several math-science partnership projects, and here are a few published resources the faculty used to determine what students understand and what misconceptions they may bring to class:

• MOSART stands for Misconceptions–Oriented Standards–Based Assessment Resources for Teachers. The project is sponsored by a National Science Foundation grant to the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. (Note: Check out the other resources on their site for professional development and content background.) The assessments are different from many multiple choice tests in that the questions are not designed to test students’ recall of facts and vocabulary. The questions are based on the National Science Education Standards (NSES) standards and allow students to think their way through the items.

The four assessments at the high school level address concepts in chemistry, physics, Earth science, and astronomy. (Currently, there are no biology tests for high school.) At the middle and elementary levels, the topics include physical science, life science, earth science, and astronomy/space science.

But you can’t just download the MOSART tests. Users must register (free) and complete a brief orientation. It’s online and it took me about an hour (mostly because I wanted to see all of the video segments!). This tutorial is one of the best things about this project. It guides you through a discussion of what misconceptions are, how these tests let you probe your students thinking, how/when to use the assessments (e.g., at the beginning of a course, or as a pre/post test), what you can learn from looking at the distractors students selected, and how to interpret the results. This orientation could be a good use of professional development time.

After the tutorial, you then have access to all of the tests, which are emailed to you in PDF format, along with guidelines for interpreting the results. The downloads include two versions of the test (with the same questions but in a different order) and a key that goes far beyond a traditional answer key to help you to analyze the results in terms of student (mis)understandings.

• The Science Assessment tool is published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Middle/high school level topics address concepts in life science, physical science, earth science, and the nature of science. For each topic, there are several key ideas and sub-ideas (some schools may refer to these as big ideas and essential concepts) you can match to your science curriculum. Each sub-idea has a collection of multiple-choice items to add to your test bank, and there’s a section for each item with an analysis of how students in the pilot group answered it. You must register (free) to use the site, and you can save the items you select and print them as PDF or HTML files (or copy and paste into a word processor, clicker program, or test generator).

• PALS (Performance Assessment Links in Science) has dozens of performance assessment tasks, organized by standard (NSES), grade level, and topic. Each assessment includes a detailed description, a student handout with places to record data and observations, a scoring rubric, and the results of any formal validation. There are examples of actual student work at each of the rubric levels. This could definitely be a supplement to traditional paper-and-pencil tests.

I’d also recommend the Uncovering Student Ideas in Science  series of books from NSTA. These formative assessment probes can help you uncover student preconceptions and can be used as a pre-assessment or warm-up for a unit.
 
 
 
 
 

Kindergarten teacher Lorna Cordero shared her four-year-old’s excitement about hearing an animal calling outside their home in the evening. She was pretty sure the sound came from a toad or a frog but didn’t know which species. Opening their iPad and opening the window of their home, the mother and son searched for “Virginia frog and toad calls” and investigated the calls of local ones on the Virginia Herpetological Society website (to hear the calls, click on the small icon of a speaker). They found a matching call. “I was pretty sure it was a frog because the call went like this, b-r-r-r-r-r-r-t, not long like b-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r. That would probably be an American Toad.” They played the recorded call at the window, and then heard the call from the yard. Getting a flashlight and his father, the son went outside to continue the investigation. “We first thought it was a toad, but after listening to the call several times we found it was a Cope’s gray tree frog, a Virginia native. When my son and husband went looking that they took the iPad and played the sound but didn’t see anything. The next day as I was watering my plants I heard the frog in my backyard. We found it between the siding and the white gutter of our house. We think that after listening to the call from the iPad it came to check if there was really another frog.”
Cordero shares her interest in the natural world with her students in her dual language classroom at Bailey’s Elementary School for the Arts and Sciences. They raise beetles from (mealworm) larvae and count the population as the larvae go through the life stage changes, record their weather observations and compare their seasonal records, and discuss the shapes of plant leaves before weeding around the pea plants in their garden.
 

“Although it sometimes occurs, teachers should never be handed standards, including the NGSS, and then be expected to translate them into classroom practice on their own. Teachers are certainly capable of doing so, but the time and effort required of such a task is beyond the scope of the normal teaching assignment and the time and resources allocated for the job. This guide will help the entire science education team in a district or state understand the extent of the tasks…that need to be accomplished.”

Hear! Hear! I applauded as I read Harold Pratt’s words in The NSTA Reader’s Guide to The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). The Reader’s Guide contains a series of suggested recommendations for action, starting with a plan to intensely study the NGSS, including becoming familiar with the architecture of the document and thinking about the development of instructional strategies and the corresponding materials as a way of gaining a deeper and more ‘operational’ understanding of the standards and how they should be used.

A Game Plan for NGSS

The chapters in the Reader’s Guide provide details on this checklist of activities:

• Determine your state or district’s plan for adoption and implementation decisions and timeline
• Form a team or study group
• Collect resources from NSTA and other sources
• Follow a plan to study the NGSS
• Create a plan for putting the NGSS into practice
• Use the NGSS in limited trial situations

As you work your way through the activities outlined in the Reader’s Guide, keep in mind that there are other NSTA resources available, or soon will be, to support you and your team. NSTA has been helping teachers prepare for the NGSS since 2011, so visit NSTA’s NGSS Resources for a robust collection of print, online, and in-person resources.

As a SciLinks webwatcher, I spend time every week looking for and reviewing websites on a variety of science topics. I recently came across several biology videos on the Education Portal website. The site promotes itself as a way to earn college credits online, but I was more intrigued by its other purpose: “take free courses.”
The science offerings include AP exam prep/reviews, several courses in biology and mathematics, and courses in chemistry, earth science, and environmental science. The introduction to the courses includes the big ideas, a list of objectives, and a mini-biography of the instructors, who are scientists and educators. Each course is organized into chapters with a set of narrated videos (the ones I looked at were less than 10 minutes in length) that include a full transcript of the narration and a brief multiple-choice quiz with feedback. For some of the courses, there are chapter exams and a final. The videos are not talking heads; they feature animations, diagrams, and vocabulary.
The individual videos could be used in the classroom or viewed at home. No special software or plugins are required and there are no ads. I looked at several videos on an iPad, and they seemed to work well on that platform, too.
I could see interested students taking advantage of these courses as a supplement for topics that are not often part of the curriculum (e.g., microbiology, anatomy and physiology), for independent study, to review basic concepts, or to get a jump start on a course offered at school.
Teachers might be interested in the course resources to supplement their instruction or the traditional textbooks, as a way to offer additional or alternative units of instruction, to review content topics themselves, or as part of a flipped classroom.
 
Photo:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/breatheindigital/4527144772/sizes/l/in/photostream/

Are you looking for a way to encourage students to pursue topics of interest? To go beyond the information in a textbook? To take advantage of online resources and the electronic devices that are becoming more common in classrooms? To give students and parents an opportunity to investigate and collaborate together?
I’m reading about and exploring Smithsonian Quests, a recently announced project that provides a series of online activities designed around interdisciplinary themes. As students progress through the activities (the “quests”), they earn “badges.” The work they submit for a quest is reviewed by an expert who also provides feedback.
The project taps into the resources of the Smithsonian, including artifacts, recordings, and photographs. The quests are all online, so students can participate anytime, anywhere. Teachers must register first in order to set up classes. (Registration and the site are free).
The badges include oral historian, historical biographer, cool curator, cultural storyteller, astrophotographer, portrait reader, community historian, symbols spotter, correspondent, dirt detective, arts advocate, enviro-scientist, culture keeper, eco-journalist, time traveler, H2O hero, conservation campaigner, invasions investigator, and tree hugger.  Quests (activities) include things like listening to audio, taking pictures, recording, etc. Most then require students to upload their writing, photographs, or other documents. There is a place for students to write and edit before submitting their work, so no special software or apps are necessary.
This appears to be a safe environment for online collaboration and investigation. This could be a culminating project for a unit or semester or a way to tap into student interests with a real-life audience. BTW–Teachers can also earn badges as evidence of participation in Smithsonian online conferences, online professional development sessions, and the completion of class projects.