I know, I know. The last word a teacher or student wants to hear at the end of the year is test, but that's what most of us are doing - finishing guided reading and end of the year math assessments, grading finals, compiling writing portfolios, and giving report card grades. Let's be honest, when you hear the word assessment, you probably think test. Students learn in different ways and so we teach to different learning styles and call it differentiated instruction. But have you thought about differentiating your assessments? In my first couple of years for teaching, I always used summative and formative assessments in my classroom, but I wasn't as creative as I am now. Problem based learning and project based learning have become very popular as they are easy ways of holding your students accountable for showing what they learned without having to take a quiz or test.They can just be plain fun too! Try involving students in creating a rubric at Rubistar.
Two of my favorite ways of assessing students are to have them create a foldable (upcoming blog) or a scrapbook page of what they learned. Once pages are put together, they have a memory book of the school year! I had students bring in pictures from home that had a similar theme (nature, holiday, etc.). If they forgot, I had them use PhotoBooth to take a couple of pictures. I used our school's die cuts to make it decorative. Go to freescrapbookfonts and Lettering Delights to check out their current freebies, which are perfect for scrapbooking (and blogging / worksheet creation) if you have a printer or can take screenshots. If you don't have any die cuts or a color printer, you can have the students draw with colored pencils or markers. I avoid crayons because the wax and pictures don't get along very well! Students can cut out letters, words, and phrases from newspapers or magazines too. We created borders and picture backgrounds by cutting construction paper with decorative edge scissors.
Check out these pictures to see what my students created when I was an artist for a day at our arts festival. (I was one of the "artistic teachers" mentioned in the newspaper article.)
This year in science lab, kindergartners learned about gases, wind, and air. They performed many experiments to measure how far objects would move when blown, investigated evidence that gases existed, and created a kit and a parachute (Science Museum of Minnesota). Parachutes were created using tissues, tape, string, and a paperclip. The parachutes were dropped from the same altitude (height) and students recorded how long they took to hit the ground for each of 10 trials using the online stopwatch. Then they graphed their data using Create a Graph.
I used tissues because dish towels were too heavy and I wanted the students to be able to decorate their parachute. On second thought, I would use a paper towel or decorative napkins instead. You could also tie the strings to Army men or Lego people instead of paper clips.
Second and fifth graders studied tornadoes and hurricanes. Students used a hurricane maker, NOAA's National Hurricane Center website, a weather balloon simulator to learn about air pressure and temperature in each layer of the atmosphere, a tornado simulator, and a Teaching Tornado to experiment with factors that contribute to formation and strength of each natural disaster. If you don't have the budget for one, tornado tubes or a Pet Tornado work just as well, but as with every model you use, be sure to explain how the model is like and not like the real thing. My students have become so used to those questions that they automatically analyze the models for accuracy. In this case, the Teaching Tornado is much smaller, has slower wind speed than a real tornado, does not move over a wide and unpredictable path, is manmade instead of natural, and moves from the bottom to the top because our fan creates a vacuum instead of a downdraft.
I used a Windows to the Universe Activity. Second graders created a bar graph and hurricane calendar. Fifth graders graphed data about the number of overall and stronger hurricanes within a given period, students had to conclude whether or not global warming was contributing to an increase in natural disasters. They learned a new word they now love to use, "inconclusive." We also watched a video about how meteorologists use science, math, and technology predict hurricanes and tornadoes.
My students were so excited when I told them they were going to become engineers and that they were about to build something. The problem they had to address was that many people in Tornado Alley were concerned that their roofs were not going to be able to withstand tornado force winds. They were to use the engineering design process to build a model of a roof using popsicle sticks, index cards, and tape. They would then calculate the cost. The winner of the challenge would be the team that built a sturdy "roof" that stayed on for 15 seconds or more.
A couple of days ago, we had a tornado warning from the National Weather Service Prediction Center at NOAA (U.S. National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration). One of my students stopped me on Friday to say, "Miss Battista, did you know that we had a tornado warning last night? I predicted that it probably wasn't going to happen here because in science lab we learned that New Jersey is near the Appalachian Mountains, and tornadoes usually can't gain enough wind speed to get to at least 74 miles per hour like in Tornado Alley." I love it when the lightbulb goes off!
