Creative Assessments in Science Education

Assessment: 

Is referred to as the wide variety of methods or tools that educators use to evaluate, measure, and document the academic readiness, learning progress, skill acquisition, or educational needs of students. Every student can preform better when they have an assessment that suits them the best.

An article from the “The Science Teacher” Journal states, “Thus, it is almost self-evident that the portfolio of approaches to assessment within the faculty is extremely diverse, from quantitative to highly descriptive, from esoteric to professionally relevant and constrained.”

Forms of Assessment

Test:

Are unfortunately the main form of assessment that are present in high schools today. Test are defined as a procedure intended to establish the quality, performance, or reliability of something, especially before it is taken into widespread use. Using test as a form of assessment can be ineffective because of how students handle the pressures of test in the classroom.

Better forms of assessment for different types of learners: 

Mobile:

This Mobile will allow students to represent certain topics in the science classroom in a very creative way. It is a great way for students to show how well they understand topics without taking a test.

Brochure:

This brochure allows for simple explanations along with creative design to explain certain topics.  This type of assessment has the best of both worlds for creative learners and also learners who work best with words and explanations.

Poster:

The poster form of assessment will allow for students to take control and design something that explains certain topics while still playing to each students individual strength.

Experiments:

Creating an ecosystem board game assessment:

Students will be encouraged to follow the rubric below to create a board game that will highlight a different ecosystem or ecosystems. This will allow students to explain how much they know about a specific ecosystem without having to take a test.

Rubric for board game assessment:

Accommodations in Assessment:

You will need to make certain accommodations in assessment according to the types of students in your classroom. Once you learn that all students are different and need different accommodations your assessment will be more accurate.

ELL students:

  • Clear easy to read font
  • Plenty of visuals throughout the assessment
  • Rubrics that are easy to understand.
  • Clearly state objective both on paper and orally
  • Offer help when students look confused

Visually impaired students:

  • Large font for both the assessment and rubric
  • Clearly state the objective orally
  • Provide audio of the rules and goal students can go back and listen to

https://twitter.com/MissChasteen/status/1112744689491460098

3 Comments

  1. Bailey,

    Great post! I love the multiple ideas that you presented for this blog post! You were very visual in all the examples you gave! I like the idea of a brochure in theory, but the actual application seems tricky. What would you do for something like photosynthesis or ecology? Are those applicable to a brochure?

    Michael

  2. Bailey,

    I liked how you drew me in on tests just to bash them, made me laugh! I really liked all your examples you came up with for alternative, more creative assessments. In your opinion, which is the best out the ones you chose? Also can experiments be the assessments, I feel like there’s always been a follow up like a report to the experiments to assess me but I very much would like your take on that! Great blog!

    -Wyatt

    • Wyatt, my favorite form of assessment that is mentioned in my blog is actually the brochure! I love how creative students can be with the brochure and complete it in any way that they would like! I also think that experiments could be used as an assessment to really get a feel of how familiar students are with certain reactions and things like that. Safety lessons will prepare students to complete experiments safely as well! Thanks for all of the feedback.

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