Formative Assessments

As part of my field placement at Lincoln Middle School, I implemented formative assessments to help direct the lessons and make them more student centered. Each formative assessment focused on a different part of the lesson. 

One of the formative assessments I implemented was a worksheet asking students to label 'parts' and 'not parts' of a topic, then explain why. An example of this formative assessment is the following: 

I then analyzed this assessment using the see, think, wonder template. 

After analyzing this formative assessment, I saw that the student used a lot of drawings to model his thinking, and that he was able to identify differences between somatic and gametic cells. He also identified that mitosis is asexual reproduction, but did not realize it could go into both categories. This showed me that the student held several misconceptions about the topic, but I did not perceive these to be disruptive to his learning. For instance, he listed 'neurons; as one of the things that asexually reproduce but these are not typically reproducing cells. The formative assessment made me wonder if the student could recognize mitosis and meiosis outside of the human body, since he seems to only think of the processes as they relate to human reproduction.

Overall, this formative assessment taught me which misconceptions most students hold, and showed me what I should be addressing in the following lessons. For example, based on this FA, I would implement a lesson about mitosis in plant cells to ensure the students understand the processes are not limited to the human body.  

Another formative assessment I implemented involved the students completing an online activity about genetics, then sharing why they thought they did the activity and what they learned from it. An example is the following:  

Overall, I feel that for most students (especially those who did the activity and put some effort into it) the activity seemed to work nicely. The responses generally showed a process of self reflection that involved a better understanding of the transcription and translation processes, especially as they related to RNA. I noticed that most students were not able to make the full relationship between DNA to RNA to protein, but were able to explore at least a part of this relationship by exploring how at least two of the three related to one another. I also noticed that the students avoided discussing thiamine (if they even discussed base pairing at all), indicating that perhaps they did not understand the relationship between A U and T bases. I can use this information to create further scaffolding in a genetics lesson that specifically and explicitly introduced the central dogma. This activity was a great start to the introduction of this concept, and once the students are told about it explicitly, they might be able to think back to this activity. I would also implement activities that involve transcribing DNA into RNA then RNA to proteins, which will both help solidify the idea of the central dogma and help understand the connection between thiamine and the other base pairs. 

Finally, I implemented a formative assessment called 'I used to think and now I know". An example is the following: 

When looking at this student’s formative assessment, I am able to recognize that the first part may have been influenced by prior experiences outside of the classroom. Perhaps she comes from a religious family, and has experience relating prayer to pregnancy, or perhaps this conception arose elsewhere. However, it is reassuring to see that this preconception was partially altered by what she learned in the classroom. Even if she still believes pregnancy requires prayer, she at least knows of the science behind it and will have the opportunity to decide for herself which of these beliefs she would rather side with more. 

The second bullet point was particularly interesting to me because we had spent a lot of time in this class comparing the different advantages of sexual and asexual reproduction. She explains she used to think asexual reproduction was better because ‘finding a mate is too much work’, and the fact that she lists this in what she used to think reinforces that she now understands there are alternate advantages to sexual reproduction. Additionally, the student commented that sexual reproduction may be better because she does not want to look like everyone else, which implies to me that she understands the connection between sexual reproduction and genetic diversity, a huge factor that we have been trying to emphasize for the past couple of weeks through both our gummy worm lab on crossing over and our M&M lab on population survival. 

After implementing this assessment, I learned about which lessons I implemented were effective or not. I had addressed multiple misconceptions as a class, and I was hoping to see which ones were the most effective based on the student responses.