In last week’s post, I gave ways to help students learn within a Comprehension Model science classroom. This week, I will give tips for how to assess students’ knowledge of science without penalizing them for a lack of reading comprehension.
In a few weeks, I will post about alternative assessments in a science class. This week, I am providing tips for teachers who are more comfortable with the standard test model. Test taking is an important skill for students to learn, but a science test should measure science knowledge, not test-taking ability. Here are a few small changes you can make to your tests to let students’ knowledge shine through.
Tip #1: Highlight Key Words
In True/False and multiple choice questions, draw attention to the word that is most important in the sentence. This will help students comprehend the question being asked and give them their best chance to show their knowledge of the answer. A benefit of highlighting one word in a True/False question is that you can have students change the word in a False statement to make it true, further proving that the student knew the right answer instead of making a lucky guess.
Here’s an example of a True/False question:
Cheetahs are classified as herbivores because they only eat meat.
True or False: the word should be ________
Tip #2: Break Paragraphs into Meaningful Phrases
In second grade, my students learn about the steps of the engineering design process. The original test included a long paragraph at the end in which the students had to underline and identify each step of the design process. Many of my students are only reading books with a few sentences on a page, so it was not appropriate to ask them to read a long paragraph and pull out sentences as examples. Instead, this year I changed the test to have five sentences next to blanks to put the number of the step of the design process it represented. This way, the students could evaluate one sentence at a time and show their knowledge of the steps. It also prevented students from just writing the steps in order, since they would have known a paragraph would have the steps in chronological order.
The old test question:
Find an example of each step of the design process in this story:
It was rainy season in Thailand and the Grade 2 class needed to cross the flooded playground without getting wet. How could Grade 2 get across the playground safe and dry? First, they got out their science notebooks and drew a bridge made of cardboard boxes. Next, the students placed all the boxes from one end of the playground to the other to make the bridge. The students sent their teacher out to try the bridge, but the cardboard was too wet and she slipped and got all wet. The students collected the boxes and went back to their notebooks to draw a new solution. This time, they drew bricks and drew rubber mats on top of the bricks. This time their teacher went out to try the bridge. She got to the other side safe and dry! Then all of Grade 2 went across. They went back to their notebooks to write down what happened and when they got home they told their parents all about the bridge design project.
The new test question:
Write the numbers 1-5 next to each sentence to put the steps of the design process in the right order.
__ The class made a bridge out of cardboard. When they tested it, the cardboard did not work.
__ The class asked, “How can we cross the wet playground without getting our shoes wet?”
__ The class decided to make a bridge. They planned what they would use to build it.
__ The class improved their bridge by building it out of bricks and rubber mats. It worked!
__ The class thought of making shoe covers, soaking up the water with a towel, or building a bridge.
Which question would you rather answer?
Tip #3: Let students use their own words
In any multiple choice, true/false, or even fill-in-the-blank test, there is a possibility that some students guessed their way to success. While those questions can be necessary, and students need practice in learning to answer them, the only way you can know what students know is if you let them tell it. On that same engineering design test mentioned above, the last question on the test was for the students to write steps for a new problem. I used sentence stems to get my students started and to give them a better chance of success.
Example question:
My teacher’s plant keeps falling over. How can I help her using the design process?
First, I would ____________. My question would be _______________.
Next, I would __________. Some ways to solve the problem are _________.
Then, I would ____________. My plan would be to _______________.
After that, I would ___________. I would also test my solution.
If my first design does not work, I will _______________.
Tip #4: Keep Background Knowledge in Mind
This tip is especially pertinent for Emerging Bilinguals, but it can also apply broadly to other students. On the engineering design test I’ve been using for the last few examples, I made sure my students had the background knowledge they needed to come up with a solution. I knew my open-ended question would be about keeping something from falling over, so I spent a few days in class talking about how to keep pencils from rolling off desks and how to keep water bottles from falling over. This way, I knew every student had experience with thinking about working against gravity. If I had used the wet playground as my open-ended question, some of my students might not have had enough experience with avoiding wetness to be able to come up with an answer. That would not show that they don’t know the steps of the design process or how to use them; it would just show that they did not have experience with that exact situation. This can also happen with vocabulary words. My students don’t understand the concept of “chores,” so that would not be a good context for a test question. Cultural norms can also be a barrier. My students don’t know the length of a school bus or a football field, and they don’t use pennies or dimes. The best science test questions deal with topics that have been discussed in class or topics that you know every student has experienced. Use this as a chance to personalize the test for your class! You can also build a bit of the context into the question, like I did in the example below.
Example question:
Mr. Swimmy (a neighboring teacher’s goldfish) likes to eat worms and bugs. Mr. Swimmy is a:
A. Herbivore
B. Carnivore
C. Omnivore
I hope these tips help you write great tests (and save you from the despair of wondering why all your students did so poorly on the science test).
Next week, I’ll introduce the Concept Model as an alternative model to the Comprehension Model of teaching science. Stay tuned!
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