Building Blocks of Life: Formative Assessment Design 3.0

This post presents the final version of my formative assessment design. While reading this post, you will find changes to my previous design made in green. The assessment design incorporates different ideas from topics discussed in the assessment theory and from my assessment design checklist. This will help me assess student work, provide effective feedback, incorporate technology, and allow students to show their knowledge gain. This post will also shed light on how my formative assessment fits into the broader instructional plan.

Name of assessment: Building Blocks of Life

Objectives: The standard from the NGSS that I will be focusing on is MS-LS1-2. From Molecules to Organisms: Structures and Processes.

Develop and use a model to describe the function of a cell as a whole and ways the parts of cells contribute to the function.

Students will be able to:

• describe the relationship between structure and function.

• describe the structures of the organelles of an animal cell and its specialized functions.

• develop a model that represents the cellular processes of an animal cell.

Purpose: The purpose of this formative assessment is to assess student understanding and adjust teacher instruction to address misconceptions and close student learning gaps. In order to achieve these points, this assessment is not a final product, but rather an integral part of a student's learning process. Even though science involves many phenomena and interactions that are visible around us, there are many abstract and unfamiliar concepts that must be taught. Students will be asked to apply the relationship between structure and function. I would like this assessment to be part of the content instruction which will allow students to build on their scientific knowledge about animal cells while making connections to real-world applications. That being said, this assessment will increase students' scientific literacy and develop their 21st-century skills needed to become successful citizens of tomorrow. In order to build this understanding, students must be able to test, compare, and organize their ideas. As this assessment is designed to be part of the learning process, students will learn new concepts that they can add or edit to their ideas as they progress through the lesson. This would mimic the design process, which includes defining the goal, exploring ideas, creating models, testing, and incorporating feedback. In the end, students will have opportunities to reflect on their work and show levels of increased learning.

Assessment Description & Task: This formative assessment design asks students to create a city with various organizations/jobs that will be fully functional and stable. Students will also design buildings or areas within their cities that match the function of that entity. For example, cities contain fire stations to put out fires. Firefighters usually use a pole installed within the station premises to allow firefighters to respond to emergencies faster. The end goal is that students make connections between their design of their city and the structure of each organelle in an animal cell. In turn, I believe that this assessment for learning will assess students not only on their ability to recall scientific knowledge, but also develop their cognitive skills.

The assessment task for the Building Blocks of Life is divided into three parts to help guide student learning. Students will be provided with feedback after parts 1 and 2. Then, they will submit a final reflection that will provide me with an overall idea of where students are at with regards to mastering the lesson objectives.

1. The first part of the task asks students to brainstorm by writing their initial ideas prior to any content instruction. This will allow students to track how their ideas have developed and evaluate what they have learned. After content instruction, they will build on their plan which will require them to dive deeper into the reasoning behind their ideas and the concepts they covered.

2. Once they receive feedback on their plan, students will modify and build on their ideas to create a 'blueprint' of their city. Their blueprint must contain the list of least 5 organizations and the reasoning behind why they are essential to the city. For evidence of understanding, the organizations must be matched with an organelle......

3. Once they receive feedback on their blueprint, students will self-assess their blueprints and write a final reflection to show what they learned.

Technology Incorporated: Since this assessment is on-going throughout the lesson, I would like students to receive effective feedback as they progress through the lesson. In order to do so effectively, their initial plans will be done on Google Docs. This will allow me to share helpful resources and immediate feedback. Students will then be able to choose whether they would like to continue to work on Google Docs or create their blueprint through other technology. In order to align this assessment with principles of UDL, students will also be able to choose whether they prefer to submit their blueprint as a sketch, text, video, or any form they are more comfortable with. They are required to upload their work to the below Padlet so that they can also take a look at their classmates' blueprints.

Formative Assessment Handout:

Pre-Assessment: With the goals clearly defined, instruction will complement and prepare students for success in the assessment. Prior to instruction students will be asked to brainstorm organizations and/or jobs they believe are important for their city to be comfortable for its residents. Their ideas will be recorded on their Google Docs and shared with me.

Students will then learn about the structure and function of the different organelles using multimedia resources to explore the different structures that are not visible to the naked eye. These resources include readily available videos and simulations such as this one found on YouTube and BrainPOP respectively. From the resources and instruction, students should build an understanding that the animal cell is a system composed of multiple parts. These parts each have a specific structure to perform a specific task that contributes to the internal stability of the cell. Since, this the animal cell is not something students can see every day, their project that will help them relate these scientific concepts to things they are more familiar with. During this learning process, students will be asked to check if there are any connections with their initial city designs and the components of an animal cell.

Post-Assessment: I would like to not only provide students with feedback on their performance but also on the processes underlying the task. I would hope that they reflect on their work after receiving feedback. Feedback would be based on the following:

1. Have they justified the reason(s) for the jobs/organizations that they decided to include in their city?

2. Have they related it and backed it up with functions of organelles with an animal cell?

3. Are there valid examples of why the structure and function are closely related?

As mentioned above, students will receive feedback after they submit their plans and blueprints. In order to provide students with effective feedback, it should be aimed at the task and is useful to improve strategy processing or to enhance self-regulation (Hattie & Timperley, 2007). The following are examples of possible feedback that is directly related to the task but also will allow students to think deeper about the processes underlying the task:

• You have included streets for public transportation, but how will the people respond to trash on the streets? What will happen when it continues to pile up?

• That's great that you chose to include a government in your city and that relates very well with the nucleus of an animal cell? How do the two structures compare?

Student reflections should include the reasoning behind why a particular job is important for the stability and function of their city with references to how an animal cell functions. For instance, the government can enforce the law and provide and the adequate living place for the people of the city. They should then relate this to the nucleus of the cell, such as how it regulates all cell processes and is crucial for the stability of the environment in the cell. A government contains the laws and the nucleus contains the DNA, which is powerful information on how to run the city/animal cell. After they submit their reflections, student work will provide teachers the data they need to adjust or address any learning gaps. Teachers will also receive valuable feedback on the effectiveness of instructional strategies used in the classroom. If there is a common trend of misunderstanding, a video can be used to emphasize on each organelle. The video can be used to highlight student ideas from different cities to re-explain parts of the animal cell.

References

Hattie, J., & Timperley, H. (2007). The power of feedback. Review of Educational Research, 77(1), 81–112.