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Book Chapter
On the Role and Impact of Formative Assessment on Science Inquiry Teaching and Learning
In this chapter, the authors begin by describing what they mean by formative assessment and outline the potential and challenges of trying to implement and study this promising technique for scientific inquiry teaching. Next they describe their study...
Book Chapter
Using Formative Assessment And Feedback To Improve Science Teacher Practice
The authors in this chapter advocate use of the Reformed Teacher Observation Protocol (RTOP). This tool was originally developed for research on secondary physics teacher’s classroom practices, by science teachers for self-evaluation of their own a...
Book Chapter
Using Data To Move Schools From Resignation To Results: The Power Of Collaborative Inquiry
In this chapter, the author studies the impact of school communities’ analysis of multiple sources of student assessment data on their instructional decisions and organizational responses. The author poses simple questions that school groups can us...
Book Chapter
From Practice to Research and Back: Perspectives and Tools in Assessing for Learning
In this chapter, the authors draw on research and teacher practice to share the story of their own professional inquiry that led them to an exciting marginal space between the worlds of classroom teachers and education researchers. This chapter is in...
Book Chapter
Documenting Early Science Learning
Young children are fascinated by the natural world. They think about how things work, what is alive, and why some things change their shape and form. Science explorations such as planting, animal studies, and cooking are a natural part of early child...
Book Chapter
Using Science Notebooks as an Informal Assessment Tool
Science notebooks have been promoted as a means to enhance students’ scientific and literacy skills and as formative assessment tools for teachers. The author hopes this chapter will help you find ways to make science notebooks more effective tools...
Book Chapter
In this chapter, the authors discuss an instructional framework for scientific explanations, provide a set of rubrics to assess student work, illustrate types of feedback to give students, and describe how to develop assessment tasks to assess studen...
Book Chapter
Assessment Of Laboratory Investigations
The assessment of a laboratory investigation has two distinct components. The first is an evaluation of the quality of the laboratory investigation itself: Does it meet the criteria for a desired laboratory experience? The second is an evaluation of ...
Book Chapter
Assessing Science Knowledge: Seeing More Through the Formative Assessment Lens
In this chapter, the authors focus on classroom assessment practice, with emphasis placed on embedded diagnostic assessment. Embedded assessment activities require teachers and students to rethink their responsibilities in the classroom learning comm...
Book Chapter
Exploring the Role of Technology-Based Simulations in Science Assessment: The Calipers Project
In this chapter, the authors describe a project funded by the National Science Foundation, “Calipers: Using Stimulation to Assess Complex Science Learning.” This project is a two-year demonstration project that aims to use technology-supported �...
Book Chapter
This book, and particularly the stories which lie within, provide an opportunity for students to take ownership of their learning and learn science in a way that will give them a more positive attitude about science. In addition, it will serve to hel...
Book Chapter
The mystery here has a lot to do with the life cycle of the insect in the cereal and what the various stages were that Emma found in the box. However, it is important that children get to know more about the most populous animals on our planet. It is...
Book Chapter
Water makes up a very high percentage of all living things. This story is aimed at providing children with the opportunity to measure the surprising amount of water found in fruit. It also provides an opportunity for the teacher to emphasize the impo...
Book Chapter
Children as well as adults are usually intrigued by the ideas of bargains. More seeds for less money is often enough to convince them to buy a larger, cheaper package. In this case, the children are savvy enough to question the value of either packag...
Book Chapter
This story is aimed at promoting not only inquiry into the germination of tree seeds but seeing trees as typical flowering plants, also known as angiosperms. There is also ample opportunity to take an excursion into fruits and seeds and the germinati...
Book Chapter
For this story, the main purpose is to explore the relationship between temperature and pressure of gases but it may spill over into the concepts of floating and density in older children. It also asks questions about gas being a form of matter that ...
Book Chapter
Rolling objects are always fascinating for children. This story gives children an opportunity to find patterns in the process of rolling objects down ramps. Shades of Galileo! Since he was one of the first to actually do investigations by what “nat...
Book Chapter
The main purpose of studying the pendulum in this story is to provide a vehicle for finding and sorting out variables and designing a study for discovering the variable that controls the period (the time for a back and forth swing) of the pendulum. T...
Book Chapter
The Neighborhood Telephone System
This story uses the “tin can” telephone (TCT) as a focus for inquiry into the transmission of sound waves along a medium and also provides an opportunity for kids to try their hand at improving a simple device so that it works better. Students wi...
Book Chapter
Heat and cold are often difficult concepts for children to understand. First, our everyday sloppy language gives them a predisposition to such common misconceptions as cold being a substance that moves from place to place. Our colloquial language oft...
Book Chapter
Using the Book and the Stories
It is often difficult for overburdened teachers to develop lessons or activities that are compatible with the everyday life experiences of their students. A major premise of this book is that if students can see the real-life implications of science ...
Book Chapter
The Link Between Science, Inquiry, and Language Literacy
There is currently a strong effort to combine science and literacy, because a growing body of research stresses the importance of language in learning science. Discussion, argumentation, discourse of all kinds, group consensus, and social interaction...
Book Chapter
The apparent daily motion of the Moon and other celestial objects through the sky is a major science concept. This story is designed to call attention to the changes in position and shape of the Moon over time. Its purpose is to motivate students to ...
Book Chapter
The main purpose of the “Cheeks” story is to get the children to learn something about the behavior of shadows cast by objects in sunlight. Although the story takes liberties with the “thoughts and projections” of Cheeks, one can take it as m...
Book Chapter
This story is designed to spur an inquiry activity about the process of weathering and soil formation. Evidence lies all around us if we look closely enough and ask the right questions. Eddie is helping us by asking some of these questions and the au...
Book Chapter
The theme of the story can be summed up in one word: microclimates. Have you noticed that there are variations among the temperatures broadcasted on your radio or TV and your own thermometer? Have you noticed that there are differences in temperature...
Book Chapter
The incident described in this story actually happened to the author during a camping trip in Everglades National Park years ago. The humidity was fierce but the air cooled down and overnight he awoke to a wet face and wet pillow. This story is desig...
Book Chapter
Just what kinds of characteristics do living things receive from their parents and what kinds of traits do they not? What makes the offspring of any animal or plant have the basic characteristics of the parents? There happen to be a great number of h...
Book Chapter
Evolution and the Functions of Color
The purpose of the first activity is to stimulate students’ interest in the coloration of animals. While students may already be aware that the white coat of the polar bear provides some measure of concealment in the snowy surroundings of the Arcti...
Book Chapter
This activity introduces students to an animal that is to be the subject of much experimentation by them. Because most fish have a relatively simple form and exhibit a wide variety of colors and patterns, they prove to be an excellent animal for expe...
Book Chapter
In their study of animal coloration, the students will be “hiding” animals from themselves. If the students cannot easily spot a fish, they may assume that the fish will be overlooked by another fish or by a preying bird or mammal. If a moth esca...
Book Chapter
This chapter introduces an especially important subject in the concealment of animals—countershading. One observes many animals with colors that match the general color of their usual backgrounds. Many leaf-eating insects appear green, for example,...
Book Chapter
Concealment of Give-Away Parts
The outline of an animal is not the only feature that might give it away. Often some part of it, perhaps its eyes or its legs or its tail, might also be a clue. In this activity, these parts are called giveaway parts. The function of the first activi...
Book Chapter
A previous activity suggested the importance of behavior to an animal with coincident coloration. If the stripe-legged frog fails to fold its legs, the disruptive markings on them lose much of their effectiveness. If, when at rest, a moth with coinci...
Book Chapter
In this activity, students will be asked to review their experiments from the previous chapters. Throughout this book, the students have studied animal coloration through the use of models, rather than by investigating living animals. This activity g...
Book Chapter
The apparent daily motion of the Moon and other celestial objects through the sky is a major science concept. This story is designed to call attention to the changes in position and shape of the Moon over time. Its purpose is to motivate students to ...
Book Chapter
The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about the properties of atoms. The probe is designed to determine whether students can distinguish between the microscopic properties of an atom and the macroscopic properties of a s...
Journal Article
Idea Bank: Warming to Global Warming—Sunspots and Sea-Surface Temperature
In the problem-based laboratory activity described here, students evaluate the causality of changes on the solar surface in regard to climate change and warming in Earth’s environment. They use graphing calculators and real-time data from the inter...
Journal Article
Editor’s Note: Windows Into Understanding
In this month’s column, the editor reflects on how teacher programs in the early 1980s gave little attention to assessment. The assumption was that end-of-chapter tests in textbooks and standardized state tests provided a good idea of student under...
Journal Article
The Early Years: First Explorations in Flower Anatomy
Help children explore the idea that there are many different flower shapes, all with the function of forming seeds, by allowing children to dissect flowers after drawing them, using their fingers or plastic picnic knives. As children take apart the f...