Assessment for Next Generation Science Standards:

Highlights from the Report

Nancy Butler SongerProfessor of Science Education and Learning

TechnologiesThe University of Michigan

Poll: If you do not gather NGSS-like information for formative purposes often, why not?

(select all that apply)

A. No time to gather information, let alone apply it

B. I do not have any good examples of NGSS-like assessment tasks

C. I have some good NGSS-like tasks, but they are too complicated to analyze and use

D. I do not know if I have some good NGSS-like tasks or not

E. None of the above

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Committee MembersJames W. Pellegrino, University of

Illinois at Chicago (co-chair) Mark R. Wilson, University of

California, Berkeley (co-chair)Peter McLaren, Rhode Island

Department of Elementary and Secondary Education

Knut Neumann, Leibniz Institute for Science and Mathematics Education

Kathleen Scalise, University of OregonRichard Lehrer, Peabody College of

Vanderbilt UniversityWilliam Penuel, University of

Colorado at BoulderBrian Reiser, Northwestern University

Nancy Butler Songer, University of Michigan

Richard M. Amasino, University of Wisconsin, Madison (life sciences)

Helen R. Quinn, Stanford University (physics)

Roberta Tanner, Loveland High School, CO (engineering)

Edward Haertel, Stanford UniversityJoan Herman, CRESST, UCLAScott F. Marion, National Center for

the Improvement of Education Assessment

Jerome M. Shaw, University of California, Santa Cruz

Catherine J. Welch, University of Iowa

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Topics Addressed in the Report• Challenges of assessing 3-dimensional

learning

• Principles for assessment task development

• Classroom assessment examples

• Issues and options for monitoring purposes

• Creating coherent assessment systems

• Implementation issues

• Summary of main messages6

Some Main Messages

1. New types of assessment are needed, well designed to address NGSS learning goals

2. State monitoring assessments must move beyond traditional forms; they will NOT suffice.

3. NGSS assessment should start with the needs of classroom teaching and learning

4. States must create coherent systems of assessment to support both classroom learning and policy/monitoring functions.

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Some Main Messages (cont.)

5. Implementation should be gradual, systematic, and carefully prioritized and must attend to equity

6. Professional development and adequate support for teachers will be critical.

7. Research is needed

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Assessment Grounded in NGSS Expectations

• Tasks should ask students to apply practices in the context of disciplinary core ideas and crosscutting concepts

• Need well-designed, multi-component tasks that use a variety of response formats:

– Selected-response questions

– short and extended constructed response questions

– performance tasks

– classroom discourse

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Not an Assessment: Systems of Assessment• No single, on-demand assessment is sufficient

• To support NGSS learning, states need 3 part systems:

Assessment to support classroom teaching and learning

Assessment for monitoring student learning

Indicators of opportunity-to-learn (OTL)

• Monitoring (large-scale) assessments will need both

– on-demand component

– classroom embedded component

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Classroom Assessment is Priority:Challenges of NGSS Assessment in the Classroom

and Tips to Address Them• Instruction that is aligned with the Framework and NGSS will

naturally provide many opportunities for teachers to observe and record evidence of students’ learning.

• Student activities that reflect such learning include the practices of:– developing and refining models; – generating, discussing, and analyzing data; – engaging in both spoken and written explanations and

argumentation.

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Characteristics of Classroom-Based NGSS-Aligned Tasks

• Often include multiple tasks in a set that reflect the connected use of different scientific practices in the context of disciplinary ideas and crosscutting concepts;

• Address the progressive nature of learning by providing information about where students fall on a continuum between beginning and ending points in a given unit or grade; and

• Include an interpretive system for evaluating a range of student products that are specific enough to be useful for helping teachers understand the range of student responses and provide tools for helping teachers decide on next steps in instruction.

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NGSS Assessment Challenges and Tips to Address Them

• Challenge: Each performance expectation incorporates all three dimensions, and the NGSS emphasize the importance of the presentation as blended science knowledge (performance expectations).

• Challenge: It will not be feasible to assess all of the performance expectations for a given grade level during a single assessment occasion.

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NGSS Assessment Challenges and Tips to Address Them

• Challenge: Each performance expectation incorporates all three dimensions, and the NGSS emphasize the importance of the presentation as blended science knowledge (performance expectations).

• Challenge: It will not be feasible to assess all of the performance expectations for a given grade level during a single assessment occasion.

• Tip #1: Provide students with multiple—and varied—assessment opportunities to demonstrate their competence on the performance expectations for a given grade level

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Tip #2: Use a set or cluster of interrelated questions to generate lots of evidence of NGSS-like knowledge

Specific questions may focus on individual practices, core ideas, or crosscutting concepts, but together the parts need to support inferences about students’ three-dimensional science learning as described in a given performance expectation

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Two Examples of NGSS Classroom Assessment Task Clusters

1. Biodiversity and Three Practices: Fifth grade

2. Climate Change and Two Practices: High school

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Fifth Grade Task Cluster:Biodiversity in the Schoolyard Zone

• Set of three tasks that ask 5th grade students to determine which zone of their schoolyard contains the greatest biodiversity

• Tasks require students to demonstrate knowledge of: – Disciplinary Core Idea -- biodiversity – Crosscutting Concept -- patterns – Practices – planning and carrying out investigations, analyzing

and interpreting data, and constructing explanations.

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Collect data on the number of animals (abundance) and the number of different species (richness) in schoolyard zones. The students are broken into three teams, and each team is assigned a zone in the schoolyard. The students are instructed to go outside and spend 40 minutes observing and recording all of the animals and signs of animals seen in their assigned zone. The students record their information, which is uploaded to a spreadsheet containing all the students’ combined data. Purpose: Teachers can look at the data provided by individual groups or from the whole class to gauge how well students can perform the scientific practices of planning and carrying out investigations, and collecting and recording data.

Example: Task 1

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Task 1: Collect data on biodiversity of schoolyard

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Example (cont.): Task 2

Create bar graphs that illustrate patterns in data on abundance and richness from each of the schoolyard zones. Students are instructed to make two bar charts – one illustrating the abundance of species in the three zones, and another illustrating the richness of species in the zones – and to label the charts’ axes.

Purpose: This task allows the teacher to gauge students’ ability to construct and interpret graphs from data -- an important element of the scientific practice “analyzing and interpreting data.”

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Task 2: Create graphs of schoolyard biodiversity data

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Example (cont.): Task 3Construct an explanation to support your answer to the question, “Which zone of the schoolyard has the greatest biodiversity?” Previously, students learned that an area is considered biodiverse if it has both a high animal abundance and high species richness. In the instruction for this task, each student is prompted to make a claim, give his or her reasoning, and identify two pieces of evidence that support the claim.Purpose: This task allows the teacher to see how well students understand the core idea of biodiversity and whether they can recognize data that reflects its hallmarks (high animal abundance and high species richness). It also reveals how well they can carry out the scientific practice of constructing explanations. This task could also be used as part of a “summative” end-of-unit assessment.

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Task 3: Use their data as evidence for explanations of which schoolyard area has the greatest biodiversity

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Tip #3 To generate useful information on NGSS blended knowledge, NGSS assessments might focus on a smaller set

of most important, gatekeeper concepts.

Tip #4 Formative tasks can provide support in the form of DCI, practice or blended knowledge scaffolds. Classroom

summative tasks often have scaffolds removed.

scaffold

scaffold

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Poll: How Similar Are These Tasks to Activities In Your Classroom? (select all that apply)

A. Very similar. My kids do these kinds of activities on a regular basis

B. We do these kinds of activities regularly, but not for formative assessment purposes

C. Not that similar because these take too much time/do not follow my curriculum plan

D. Not that similar but I can see the possibility to shifting to more tasks like this

E. Not that similar and I do not see us moving in this direction

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Second Set: Two high school tasks to address one HS performance expectation

HS-ESS3-5: Analyze geoscience data and the results from global climate models to make an evidence-based forecast of the current rate of global or regional climate change and associated future impacts to Earth’s systems

Tasks require students to demonstrate knowledge of: Disciplinary Core Idea -- climate change (changes to global and regional climate)Crosscutting Concept -- patternsPractices – analyzing and interpreting data, constructing explanations.

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Task 1 Activity asks students to analyze estimated temperature data from ice cores at Vostok Station, Antarctica

Task 1: Extend graph line to make an evidence-based forecast of average annual temperature from 150 yrs. ago to present

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Task 1 Activity asks students to analyze estimated temperature data from ice cores at Vostok Station, Antarctica

Task 1: Extend graph line to make an evidence-based forecast of average annual temperature from 150 yrs. ago to present

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Task 2 Activity asks students to analyze recent, measured air temperatures at Vostok Station (red data), then construct an

explanation to address a question about natural cycles

Task 2: Construct an explanation to address the question: Do natural climate cycles (such as Milankovitch Cycles) explain

increases in global temperature in the last 150 years?

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Tip #5: Ideally, all tasks can be coded for evidence of DCIs, practices and blended knowledge

4 Possible Points : (1) Claim, (1) Reasoning (2) Evidence•Correct Responses•Claim: Yes, climate change will affect where the red squirrel can live in the future.•Reasoning and Evidence Full credit for three of four:•R: Species have a preferred temperature range and a change in temperature in a region will affect the distribution of a species.•E: The map shows that the present and future distributions do not overlap, thus climate change will affect the red squirrel.•E: With increased carbon dioxide emissions in the future, the temperature will increase and this will affect the red squirrel can live in the future.•E: The future distribution has moved up north.

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Checklist of Recommendations for NGSS Assessment

1. Do your classroom assessments have multiple and varied opportunities to demonstrate NGSS-like blended knowledge?

2. Do your classroom assessments have multiple component tasks (sets of interrelated questions) for a given NGSS performance expectation?

3. Do your classroom assessments focus on or highlight a smaller set of most important gatekeeper concepts?

4. Have you thought about or tried scaffolds or hints in assessment tasks to help scaffold students’ ability to generate valuable information about NGSS blended knowledge?

5. Are you careful to score/provide feedback on DCIs, practices and blended knowledge products?

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For Further Information

For pre-publication version of NRC Assessment for Next Generation Science

Standards, see:http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=18409

Nancy Songer songer@umich.edu