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Welcome!

In the chat, please write:

Your name
What you teach/your role
Where you teach/where you work
Your “Snoopy feeling”

Presented by the California County Superintendents Educational Services Association/County Offices of Education, California Association of Science Educators, K-12 Alliance @WestEd, California Science Project, and the California Department of Education

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Making Science Assessment Meaningful

in TK-2

Presented by the California County Superintendents Educational Services Association/County Offices of Education, California Association of Science Educators, K-12 Alliance @WestEd, California Science Project, and the California Department of Education

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CA NGSS PL #2 Outcomes

Build awareness of equitable NGSS assessment systems

Describe the elements of equitable NGSS assessments
Learn about a tool to screen assessments for equity and utility
Understand the CA assessment system continuum
Develop NGSS assessment literacy

Assessment Practices that Expand Meaningful Opportunities to Learn Science

CA NGSS Collaborative • Professional Learning #2 • Coherent Science Assessment Systems

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Participant Professional Learning Flow

Equitable Assessment Systems

Part 1

Equitable Assessment Systems

Part 2

Assessment Practices

Evaluation Tools and Resources

Assessing in Multiple Dimensions

Introduction

Assessment Practices that Expand Meaningful Opportunities to Learn Science

CA NGSS Collaborative • Professional Learning #2 • Coherent Science Assessment Systems

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Community Agreements

Keep students at the center of the work.
Be present, be curious, and be open to possibilities.
Balance advocacy of own ideas & inquiry of others.
Create a safe environment for individuals to productively struggle with ideas and tools.

Are any other agreements needed?

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Assessment Practices that Expand Meaningful Opportunities to Learn Science

CA NGSS Collaborative • Professional Learning #2 • Coherent Science Assessment Systems

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Writers’ Credit

Karen Cerwin, K-12 Alliance, WestEd
Jenny Chien, Vista Unified School District
Sara Dozier, California State University, Long Beach
Brian Foley, California State University, Northridge
Lesley Gates, Fresno County Office of Education
Jill Grace, K-12 Alliance, WestEd
Ryan Kurada, Sonoma County Office of Education
Myra Pasquier, Montebello Unified School District
Zoë Randall, San Diego Unified School District
Maria Simani, California Science Project
Ryan Soto, Sweetwater Union High School District
Jill Wertheim, SCALE Science, WestEd

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Assessment Practices that Expand Meaningful Opportunities to Learn Science

CA NGSS Collaborative • Professional Learning #2 • Coherent Science Assessment Systems

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Introduction

Prior session:

Exploring the kinds of assessment used in your context

This session:

Focusing on assessment that �informs teaching and learning
Short cycle and �medium cycle

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(Herman, 2013)

Assessment Practices that Expand Meaningful Opportunities to Learn Science

CA NGSS Collaborative • Professional Learning #2 • Coherent Science Assessment Systems

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Introduction

Prior session:

Exploring the kinds of assessment used in your context

This session:

Focusing on assessment that �informs teaching and learning
Short cycle and �medium cycle

8

(Herman, 2013)

Assessment Practices that Expand Meaningful Opportunities to Learn Science

CA NGSS Collaborative • Professional Learning #2 • Coherent Science Assessment Systems

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Session Goals

How can assessment practices expand meaningful opportunities to learn science?

Build a shared understanding of features of equitable NGSS assessment
Analyze students’ ideas using an asset-based lens
Identify ways assessments and assessment practices can support equitable teaching and learning
Experience equitable formative assessment by engaging in an assessment cycle.

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Assessment Practices that Expand Meaningful Opportunities to Learn Science

CA NGSS Collaborative • Professional Learning #2 • Coherent Science Assessment Systems

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Session Agenda

Part 1: Intro

Part 2: Assessment Practices

Part 3: Expanding Equitable Access through Assessment

Break 30 minutes

Part 4: Experience the Assessment Cycle

Part 5: Features of Equitable NGSS Assessment

Exit Ticket

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Assessment Practices that Expand Meaningful Opportunities to Learn Science

CA NGSS Collaborative • Professional Learning #2 • Coherent Science Assessment Systems

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We will hold an asset-orientation toward students & teachers

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Waterfall Chat

What three words come to mind about the assets that students and teachers bring to their sensemaking?

Be kind to yourself �as you work toward change

Assessment Practices that Expand Meaningful Opportunities to Learn Science

CA NGSS Collaborative • Professional Learning #2 • Coherent Science Assessment Systems

Facilitator Note: We are entering this session with a view toward teachers and students that is asset-oriented - where we know that teachers and students are doing impactful work and growing. We know you and your students are doing important and meaningful work and so we come to this session and our work together from a place of generosity. What we care about is learning, and that is how we want to focus our work together today. This is why we take an asset-based lens toward both students AND teachers. It can be easy to default back towards a deficit view, as much in our system reinforces that, so be aware that we will remind you of our asset-based lens often as we proceed together, and when that happens we invite you to check your thinking and re-ground yourself in an asset-based lens.

Click to animate, “What three words come to mind about the assets that students and teachers bring to their sensemaking?”

Click to animate, “Be kind to yourself as you work toward change, and encourage participants to be gentle with themselves as we focus on asset framing.

Inform participants that to frame this session, we are focusing on equitable assessment practices. We recognize that historically, assessments have often been used to punish students or teachers, assuming that teaching isn’t up to par and that students don’t know what they should. Rather, we take an asset-based lens toward both students AND teachers.

Ask participants to add to the chat the answer to the prompt, but NOT hit enter/return until being given the signal:

Think about an asset-orientation to students and teachers. What 3 words come to mind about the assets that students and teachers bring to their sensemaking in science?

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Assessment Challenges

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Assessment Practices that Expand Meaningful Opportunities to Learn Science

CA NGSS Collaborative • Professional Learning #2 • Coherent Science Assessment Systems

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Assessment challenges in your classroom

Introduce yourselves and then,

Consider any challenges you experience with assessment in your classroom and what kinds of problems arise when you are assessing students?

Add your ideas to frame 1 of the Jamboard

Select a spokesperson

T1

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12 minutes ⏲

Assessment Practices that Expand Meaningful Opportunities to Learn Science

CA NGSS Collaborative • Professional Learning #2 • Coherent Science Assessment Systems

Facilitator Advanced Prep: Make a copy of the main jamboard for this breakout and link in the yellow highlighted area below and name, T1 - Assessment Practice Jamboard and save to your session resources folder. [insert copied T1 link for session here]

Tech:

Set up breakouts: random groups of 3, 12 minutes

Post in chat (when facilitator directs):

Introduce yourselves and then discuss the following in your breakouts: Consider any challenges you experience with assessment in your classroom and what kinds of problems arise when you are assessing students? Add your ideas to Frame 1 of the Jamboard and select a spokesperson who can speak for the group when we return to the main room.

Broadcast 2 minutes remaining

T1 - Assessment Practice Jamboard link: [insert copied T1 link for session here]

Ask participants to consider challenges they encounter in their classrooms (or with teachers they support) by considering any challenges they experience with assessment and, in particular, what kinds of problems arise when assessing students. Ask participants to contribute their ideas to page 1 of the assessment practice jamboard.

Facilitator Note: While participants are in breakouts and working, monitor the jamboard and add some of the following if they do not emerge:

Students write IDK/nothing
Many of my students are unengaged in science
I don’t have assessments to use/no time to make new assessments
I don’t have time to assess my students.
My assessments don’t tell me much about student ideas
I have to give the same tests as the rest of my team/department
Other teachers in my department are resisting changing to NGSS assessment/we don’t get support with this change
Grading is boring [good point, grade less & assess more]
Grading is time consuming
I don’t have time to assess my students.
Students don’t read/use my feedback

As folks are contributing to the jamboard, cluster problems of practice and identify major themes that you will debrief with participants on the next slide.

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Assessment challenges �in your classroom

Discuss:

What challenges and problems did you surface?
What are some common themes you see in the problems of practice?
What ideas do you have for how formative assessment can be used to address these problems?

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Assessment Practices that Expand Meaningful Opportunities to Learn Science

CA NGSS Collaborative • Professional Learning #2 • Coherent Science Assessment Systems

Facilitator note: when participants move too deeply in a deficit frame, follow up by asking how formative assessment could actually be used to address the problem/challenge. The group will engage with these ideas more deeply later so move through their sharing quickly. When discussing this slide, you do not need to resolve their challenges with assessment. We will return to them at the end of the session. Keep your debrief short, ~5 minutes.

When participants return to the main room, share screen to display the jamboard for participants and highlight the problems of practice you clustered to support discussion. Invite the group spokespersons to share challenges and problems that were discussed, and ask participants to reflect on common themes they notice, and ideas they have for ways in which formative assessment can address these problems.

Explain that we are going to explore how we are going to use assessments from something that’s driving these problems to a solution by using more equitable assessment practices.

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Assessment and grading

Earlier you discussed the differences between grading and assessment.

Grading is an important part of your job
Grades have consequences for students
Grading is important

And…

Using assessment to efficiently drive pedagogical practice requires a different approach than grading does
These pedagogical practices are the focus of this session
Assessment and grading are not the same thing

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Assessment Practices that Expand Meaningful Opportunities to Learn Science

CA NGSS Collaborative • Professional Learning #2 • Coherent Science Assessment Systems

Facilitator note: this slide is meant to be briefly introduced to acknowledge that grading is important, but to point out that grading and assessment are not the same thing. Be ready to redirect the group if it elicits discussion that takes more than a minute - inform participants that we will revisit problems of practice later in the session. If time permits, you could give space to see if it’s a practice in K-2 to assign grades vs. give effort grade for science.

Remind participants that in an earlier session they considered what was different between grading and assessment. Acknowledge that grading is a part of our work and we acknowledge the importance. Point out that when an assessment is graded, it takes a special kind of attention to the assessment in order to be fair, requires a lot of work in the design, administration, calibration in scoring, etc. We are instead taking a pedagogical approach.

In this session we are focusing on ways we can use assessments to drive instruction. There are practices we can take advantage of that enable us to respond to students’ strengths and needs while not burdening teachers with an overwhelming amount of work.

So much of our session isn’t just the assessment task, question or prompt, but what do you do with that information, and that’s part of assessment too.

In K-2, assessment looks different. We look at what is the child doing? How are they interacting in science activities? How are they showing their learning?

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Expanding Equitable Access

Through Assessment

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Assessment Practices that Expand Meaningful Opportunities to Learn Science

CA NGSS Collaborative • Professional Learning #2 • Coherent Science Assessment Systems

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“In fact, the capacity of young children—from all backgrounds and socioeconomic levels—to reason in sophisticated ways is much greater than has long been assumed” (pg. 24)

NRC, 2012. �A Framework for K-12 Science Education

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Assessment Practices that Expand Meaningful Opportunities to Learn Science

CA NGSS Collaborative • Professional Learning #2 • Coherent Science Assessment Systems

Facilitator note:

The NGSS is grounded in a body of research showing, “In fact, the capacity of young children—from all backgrounds and socioeconomic levels—to reason in sophisticated ways is much greater than has long been assumed”, a quote from A Framework for K-12 Science Education (the theoretical framework for the NGSS).

When we thought about expanding meaningful opportunities to learn science, we were reminded that this is part of a decades-long educational reform. However, this is not your parent’s educational reform.

Historically, all reforms in science education have had goals to expand access to science. Most notably, post-Sputnik reforms (spurred by the congressional National Defense Education Act, passed in 1958. According to a 2007 New York Times article celebrating the 50th anniversary of Sputnik noted, “provided, among other things, college scholarships and other help for aspiring scientists, engineers and mathematicians”) did much to innovate how students learned science in school so that more students would take advanced classes and increase the pool of scientists and engineers. But post-Sputnik reforms targeted only some kids (best and the brightest) and energy and funding waned over the decades.

In contrast, today’s Framework-based/NGSS reforms (based on a large body of research that emerged since the release of How People Learn and Taking Science to School) targets all students. Note that in contrast to past educational reforms, today’s reform is an evidence-based claim that all kids, starting in the earliest grades, are capable of high quality rigorous science learning.

For more information on the impact of Sputnik on education reforms and a haunting call for new reforms (ultimately foreshadowing the arrival of Framework-based/NGSS reforms), see R1- When Science Suddenly Mattered, in Space and in Class - The New York Times

Note that in contrast to past educational reforms, today’s reform is an evidence-based claim that all kids, starting in the earliest grades, are capable of high quality rigorous science learning.

All young learners are capable and deserving of science learning.

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Formative Assessment Cycle

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Set goals for learning

Respond to

analysis

Analyze & interpret �student strengths �and areas for growth

Elicit evidence of student understanding

FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT CYCLE

Assessment Practices that Expand Meaningful Opportunities to Learn Science

CA NGSS Collaborative • Professional Learning #2 • Coherent Science Assessment Systems

Facilitator note:

Address that in the NSTA Elementary Science Position Statement that quality science for young children should “…provide authentic formative and summative assessments to guide and assist development of conceptual understanding. Include regular opportunities to develop, use, and reflect upon authentic formative and summative assessment to uncover student thinking, detect possible misconceptions, and modify learning experiences accordingly, both individually and within a professional learning community.”

Research in early childhood education has identified that assessment should be authentic and observational (vs. paper task).

R4 - NSTA Elementary School Science Position Statement.pdf

https://www.nsta.org/nstas-official-positions/elementary-school-science

Inform participants that we are grounding every stage of our work in the formative assessment cycle in expanding meaningful opportunities for students to learn science. One way that assessment can support this kind of instruction is when teachers are responsive to students' ideas - and that's where this formative assessment cycle comes in.

Often, our ideas about assessment begin and end at the task itself. In this session, we will take a more expansive view of assessment as a process, not just a test. So we will discuss how to engage in equitable formative assessment for each stage of the assessment cycle.

The formative assessment cycle can be thought of as four phases that follow each other, though in practice, you may move back and forth between stages. However, it is important to note that each of the stages is essential and plays a key role in effective assessment practice.

Research in early childhood education identified that assessment should be authentic and observational (vs. paper task).

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How can we use the formative assessment cycle to expand meaningful opportunities to learn �in science?

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Assessment Practices that Expand Meaningful Opportunities to Learn Science

CA NGSS Collaborative • Professional Learning #2 • Coherent Science Assessment Systems

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How can assessment support equitable science learning?

In your breakout room, discuss the following questions and add to frame 2 of the Jamboard.

What does instruction look like when it supports equitable science learning?

(See Bang, et al. 2017. Toward More Equitable Learning in Science, pg 34)

How can formative assessment be used to support equitable instruction?

T1

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10 minutes ⏲

Assessment Practices that Expand Meaningful Opportunities to Learn Science

CA NGSS Collaborative • Professional Learning #2 • Coherent Science Assessment Systems

Facilitator note: Facilitate share out while displaying the Jamboard.

Facilitator Note - Sample Responses:

Allows for multiple entry points for assessment
Incorporates various assessment modalities
Honors cultural and linguistic strengths and backgrounds of students
Explicit language scaffolds are addressed
Assessments are relevant and meaningful to students
Assessments are phenomenon or problem-based

Tech:

Set up breakouts: same groups of 3, 10 minutes

Post in chat (when facilitator directs):

Discuss the following in your breakouts:

How can assessment support equitable science learning?

Discuss the prompts and record your thinking on frame 2 of your jamboard

T1 - Assessment Practice Jamboard link: [insert copied T1 link for session here]

Bang, et al., 2017 article: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NVOqesOifad2kPVOZhrYOvBjR-ShitsV/view?usp=sharing

Inform participants on the jamboard that they will see three ways we can support equitable science learning at the top of the frame. These are, drawn from page 34 of the chapter Toward More Equitable Learning in Science by Bang and others that you read before the session. In breakouts you will use these ideas to discuss with your group what instruction looks like that meets these features. Then consider what assessment needs to look like that would support the instruction that you described.

To do this, we will be sending you back into breakouts and ask you to consider: How can assessment support equitable science learning?

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Experience the �Assessment Cycle

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Assessment Practices that Expand Meaningful Opportunities to Learn Science

CA NGSS Collaborative • Professional Learning #2 • Coherent Science Assessment Systems

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Equity at Every Stage: Set Goals

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Set goals for learning

Respond by

providing feedback and modifying instruction

Analyze & interpret �student strengths �and areas for growth

Elicit evidence of student understanding

FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT CYCLE

Assessment Practices that Expand Meaningful Opportunities to Learn Science

CA NGSS Collaborative • Professional Learning #2 • Coherent Science Assessment Systems

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Exploring an Assessment Task

Begin with a close reading of the dimensions to be assessed
This will ground our discussion of the assessment and student work

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Assessment Practices that Expand Meaningful Opportunities to Learn Science

CA NGSS Collaborative • Professional Learning #2 • Coherent Science Assessment Systems

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Explore a Performance Expectation

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Performance Expectation Unpacking Table
PE: 1-PS4-3. Plan and conduct investigations to determine the effect of placing objects made with different materials in the path of a beam of light. [Clarification Statement: Examples of materials could include those that are transparent (such as clear plastic), translucent (such as wax paper), opaque (such as cardboard), and reflective (such as a mirror).] [Assessment Boundary: Assessment does not include the speed of light.]
Science & Engineering Practice (SEP)	Disciplinary Core Idea (DCI)	Crosscutting Concept (CCC)
Planning and Carrying Out Investigations Planning and carrying out investigations to answer questions or test solutions to problems in K–2 builds on prior experiences and progresses to simple investigations, based on fair tests, which provide data to support explanations or design solutions. Plan and conduct investigations collaboratively to produce evidence to answer a question.	PS4.B: Electromagnetic Radiation Some materials allow light to pass through them, others allow only some light through and others block all the light and create a dark shadow on any surface beyond them, where the light cannot reach. Mirrors can be used to redirect a light beam. (Boundary: The idea that light travels from place to place is developed through experiences with light sources, mirrors, and shadows, but no attempt is made to discuss the speed of light.)	Cause and Effect Simple tests can be designed to gather evidence to support or refute student ideas about causes.

Assessment Practices that Expand Meaningful Opportunities to Learn Science

CA NGSS Collaborative • Professional Learning #2 • Coherent Science Assessment Systems

Facilitator Note: we encourage you to avoid acronyms if possible (or at least when it’s been a while since you’ve used it). We encourage you to preface acronym use with the full phrase. For Example, “A Performance Expectation, or, PE….”

Inform participants that a Performance Expectation, or “PE”, is a succinct description of the goals for each dimension, but there are many components (broken into grade-specific elements, the bullet points) to learning how to use each dimension that are embedded in these descriptions and are not explicitly described.

To assess students in ways that will help guide teaching and learning, we need to break these descriptions down into their components so we can not just assess the competency described in the PE, but evaluate students’ progress with these components to support them toward this competency.

Ask participants to first, take a minute to read the full text of the three dimensions, including the clarification statement. We will use all of this information to guide our exploration of a student assessment vignette.

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Explore a Performance Expectation

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Performance Expectation Unpacking Table
PE: 1-PS4-3. Plan and conduct investigations to determine the effect of placing objects made with different materials in the path of a beam of light. [Clarification Statement: Examples of materials could include those that are transparent (such as clear plastic), translucent (such as wax paper), opaque (such as cardboard), and reflective (such as a mirror).] [Assessment Boundary: Assessment does not include the speed of light.]
Science & Engineering Practice (SEP)	Disciplinary Core Idea (DCI)	Crosscutting Concept (CCC)
Planning and Carrying Out Investigations Planning and carrying out investigations to answer questions or test solutions to problems in K–2 builds on prior experiences and progresses to simple investigations, based on fair tests, which provide data to support explanations or design solutions. Plan and conduct investigations collaboratively to produce evidence to answer a question.	PS4.B: Electromagnetic Radiation Some materials allow light to pass through them, others allow only some light through and others block all the light and create a dark shadow on any surface beyond them, where the light cannot reach. Mirrors can be used to redirect a light beam. (Boundary: The idea that light travels from place to place is developed through experiences with light sources, mirrors, and shadows, but no attempt is made to discuss the speed of light.)	Cause and Effect Simple tests can be designed to gather evidence to support or refute student ideas about causes.

Assessment Practices that Expand Meaningful Opportunities to Learn Science

CA NGSS Collaborative • Professional Learning #2 • Coherent Science Assessment Systems

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15 minutes ⏲

Explore a Performance Expectation

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Performance Expectation Unpacking Table
PE: 1-PS4-3. Plan and conduct investigations to determine the effect of placing objects made with different materials in the path of a beam of light. [Clarification Statement: Examples of materials could include those that are transparent (such as clear plastic), translucent (such as wax paper), opaque (such as cardboard), and reflective (such as a mirror).] [Assessment Boundary: Assessment does not include the speed of light.]
Science & Engineering Practice (SEP)	Disciplinary Core Idea (DCI)	Crosscutting Concept (CCC)
Planning and Carrying Out Investigations Planning and carrying out investigations to answer questions or test solutions to problems in K–2 builds on prior experiences and progresses to simple investigations, based on fair tests, which provide data to support explanations or design solutions. Plan and conduct investigations collaboratively to produce evidence to answer a question.	PS4.B: Electromagnetic Radiation Some materials allow light to pass through them, others allow only some light through and others block all the light and create a dark shadow on any surface beyond them, where the light cannot reach. Mirrors can be used to redirect a light beam. (Boundary: The idea that light travels from place to place is developed through experiences with light sources, mirrors, and shadows, but no attempt is made to discuss the speed of light.)	Cause and Effect Simple tests can be designed to gather evidence to support or refute student ideas about causes.
Brainstorm: What are the main goals for these practices?	Brainstorm: What are the main ideas for the DCIs?	Brainstorm: What are the components of the CCCs?

T2a-d

Assessment Practices that Expand Meaningful Opportunities to Learn Science

CA NGSS Collaborative • Professional Learning #2 • Coherent Science Assessment Systems

Facilitator Note: During the breakouts, watch the T2a-d (Workspace for Grades K-2) and circulate the breakouts to provide additional support. Direct participants to page 1 of the H2a-d (Workspace for Grades K-2). If needed, to help guide discussion, the unpacking dimensions come from the CA NGSS Appendix 1: https://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/sc/cf/documents/scifwappendix1.pdf

Introduce the Workspace document showing that page 1 matches the image on the slide and that subsequent pages of the document will be used later in the session.

Circulate the breakout rooms as participants work to check in and provide support.

Facilitate share out highlighting breakout discussions. Consider sharing an idea you heard in a breakout when you visited to get the conversation started.

Tech:

Set up breakouts: same random groups of 3 as before, 15 minutes

Broadcast time warnings at 10 minutes, 5 minutes, and 2 minutes

Post in chat (when facilitator directs):

Link to T2a-d (Workspace for Grades K-2):

[insert copied link to T2a-d here]

Inform participants that we will now move into breakouts to work on unpacking dimensions in more detail. Inform participants that it’s ok to start with one they are interested in, and to get as far as they can. Inform participants that we will do a lot of analyses like this in breakouts during this session and it’s likely that they won’t have time to completely finish any one of the analyses, but they should have time to get enough of a sense of the process that you can reflect on implications for expanding equitable access to science learning.

Prior to sending participants to breakouts: Invite participants that when they have just a couple of minutes left, it’s ok to pause their work and take a moment to review the other group’s work. Have a spokesperson for your team prepared to share some of the learning your group did about the dimension that wasn’t explicit in the PE.

Unpack the dimensions in more detail, starting with one your team is interested in and then move on to the others.
When you have a minute or two left in the breakouts, we encourage you to review the work of other groups.
Be ready to share some of your learning about the Performance Expectation (PE) that wasn’t explicit in the PE (please choose a spokesperson)

Select a spokesperson who will report on behalf of your breakout when we return to the whole group. Consider having a person in your breakout share screen to help conversation and unpacking of the Performance Expectation.

Circulate breakouts to check in on team progress.

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Instructional Sequence

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Lesson 1 Plan and conduct an investigation to provide evidence that light is required in order to see an object.

Lesson 2 Design a solution to determine the effect of the ability of different materials to block light in a room.

Lesson 3 Make observations to develop a testable solution to increase the amount of light a plant located in a dark spot may receive.

Lesson 4 Plan and conduct an investigation to explain the effects of different objects on light and how different objects change what we see.

Students are focusing on various bullets from the PE in different combinations over the course of the unit

T2a-d

Assessment Practices that Expand Meaningful Opportunities to Learn Science

CA NGSS Collaborative • Professional Learning #2 • Coherent Science Assessment Systems

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Rich Opportunity for Assessment

During the Lesson

The learning sequence provides rich opportunities for formative assessment.

We will look for evidence from the explore/explain and extend portions of Lesson 4 to see how a teacher can monitor student understanding and guide next steps for instruction.

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Lesson 4 Plan and conduct an investigation to explain the effects of different objects on light and how different objects change what we see.

T2a-d

Assessment Practices that Expand Meaningful Opportunities to Learn Science

CA NGSS Collaborative • Professional Learning #2 • Coherent Science Assessment Systems

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Equity at Every Stage: Set Goals

Now, think for a moment about the bullets that you unpacked from the PE in the context of students.

In your notebook or on a sheet of paper, answer these questions:

How do these bullets relate to students’ life experiences?
What assets might your students bring to these bullets?

Optional: add your comment to the chat and �waterfall when I say go!

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Assessment Practices that Expand Meaningful Opportunities to Learn Science

CA NGSS Collaborative • Professional Learning #2 • Coherent Science Assessment Systems

Facilitator note: The bullets we are referring to were the ones recorded in the last row of T2a-d page 1 (Explore a Performance Expectation)

Point out that an important part of equitable assessment is checking in with ourselves about our students. Ask participants to take a moment to do a personal reflection about their own students (or the students of teachers they work with) and how they might recognize the learning (and, specifically, the bullets identified in our unpacking exercise) as relating to their student’s life experiences. Consider also, what assets do students bring when engaging at this level. Even if our topic of focus (in this case, Physical Science) isn’t your content area, what would resonate for your students? What assets might they bring to understanding these ideas and practices?

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Equitable Formative Assessment

Setting goals for learning with an equity stance:

Include all 3 dimensions of the NGSS
Ensure access to grade-level appropriate dimensions for all students, particularly those marginalized in science
Student agency and growth is prioritized over meeting external standards

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Adapted from Penuel & Watkins, 2019, pp. 204-205

Assessment Practices that Expand Meaningful Opportunities to Learn Science

CA NGSS Collaborative • Professional Learning #2 • Coherent Science Assessment Systems

Facilitator note:

Note that the standards are the product of a lot of really thoughtful folks who had the luxury of spending years thinking about what matters and is important for learners to engage with as they learn science. They really considered what matters in science and how should kids get to practice science and make connections across disciplines. So the standards are incredibly useful and powerful supports for teaching. Teaching science is a complex task, and the NGSS reflect that complexity. The NGSS are one of the very few tools we have that has a research-based vision about what matters in science and an action plan for how to support science learning.

Further, the three dimensions should be grade-level appropriate as the guidance for what is appropriate for the grade-level is based on extensive research (for when and how we can move students thinking based on what is developmentally appropriate for them) and supports moving students to higher order thinking. This is one way to help ensure that instruction and assessment are aiming at higher order thinking for all students, not just the most “advanced” students.

Our job as teachers is to think about our students and how we can use the standards to help direct our students’ growth. We start with the standards because they are helpful in unpacking what we really want students to demonstrate.

Access to science in the elementary grades is an equity issue. All students need and deserve to engage in science learning, not just when the CAST starts in 5th grade.

Inform participants that It’s important to make connections to students and their assets as part of identifying goals for assessments. There are some additional aspects of setting goals that contribute to equitable formative assessment.

In order to move towards setting goals with an equity stance, we need to ensure that all three dimensions of the NGSS are assessed, not just the core science ideas. This is an important consideration for equity because many students who are considered “underperforming” receive instruction focused only on the core ideas, neglecting the other 2 NGSS dimensions. Thus students who seemingly need the most support are given the fewest opportunities to learn in meaningful ways.

Further, the three dimensions should be grade-level appropriate.

Finally, equitable assessment practices focus on student agency and their own growth.

It may seem contradictory to say that we should focus on the NGSS and prioritize student growth over standards. Standards are often framed as the only “goal” of our instruction. But the perspective we are taking here is that student growth is the goal for instruction.

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Equity at Every Stage: Elicit

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Set goals for learning

Respond by

providing feedback and modifying instruction

Analyze & interpret �student strengths �and areas for growth

Elicit evidence of student understanding

FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT CYCLE

Assessment Practices that Expand Meaningful Opportunities to Learn Science

CA NGSS Collaborative • Professional Learning #2 • Coherent Science Assessment Systems

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Task features

that promote equity

also elicit better evidence

of whether students can

make sense of the world

using the three dimensions.

Achieve, 2018 Task Annotation Project in Science

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Assessment Practices that Expand Meaningful Opportunities to Learn Science

CA NGSS Collaborative • Professional Learning #2 • Coherent Science Assessment Systems

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Observation-Based Assessment

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H1a-j

Assessment Practices that Expand Meaningful Opportunities to Learn Science

CA NGSS Collaborative • Professional Learning #2 • Coherent Science Assessment Systems

Facilitator Note: The second box on the right slide is animated.

Facilitator Advanced Prep: Post in the chat the link to H1a-j (Lesson 4 of Teacher Guide).

Facilitator note: after 5 minutes move to the next slide to give participants instructions for the breakout rooms. Keep this short! It’s very easy for participants to be highly engaged in this portion of the session. We encourage you to acknowledge that and inform participants that we are just doing a quick review to start and will keep moving on so we can do other analysis work in the session.

Tech

Post in chat:

-H1a-j (Lesson 4 of Teacher Guide): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1h6JJx9J9Yvr-Xk27RID39UVOgwnNQFUoJqghN2VkhlA/edit?usp=sharing to view the lesson plan.

Directions: Skim the teacher guide and focus in on the 3D learning goals and assessment opportunity flags

We are showcasing an observation-based assessment - this is a type of formative assessment where teachers observe students as they are engaged in a task, with particular learning goals in mind, to determine where students are in their understanding of those learning goals to inform next steps. To get a sense of what the assessment is like, we are giving you an opportunity to review the teacher-facing materials, a 5E lesson plan, that give guidance for this. Invite participants to take 5 minutes to review the lesson plan. With such limited time, we encourage you to focus on three-dimensional learning goals and the black assessment opportunity flags (click to animate example) and, if time, peruse the surrounding context.

-Feel free to turn off cameras and mic and take 5 minutes on your own to review the lesson plan

- Look for the three-dimensional learning goals (you will see them below each gray box identifying the components of the 5E lesson)

- Focus in the black assessment opportunity flags, which give additional assessment guidance and, if time, peruse the surrounding context

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Debrief task

When reviewing the lesson plan, which of the bullets in each dimension did you see evidence from?

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20 minutes ⏲

Performance Expectation Unpacking Table
PE: 1-PS4-3. Plan and conduct investigations to determine the effect of placing objects made with different materials in the path of a beam of light. [Clarification Statement: Examples of materials could include those that are transparent (such as clear plastic), translucent (such as wax paper), opaque (such as cardboard), and reflective (such as a mirror).] [Assessment Boundary: Assessment does not include the speed of light.]
Science & Engineering Practice (SEP)	Disciplinary Core Idea (DCI)	Crosscutting Concept (CCC)
Planning and Carrying Out Investigations Planning and carrying out investigations to answer questions or test solutions to problems in K–2 builds on prior experiences and progresses to simple investigations, based on fair tests, which provide data to support explanations or design solutions. Plan and conduct investigations collaboratively to produce evidence to answer a question.	PS4.B: Electromagnetic Radiation Some materials allow light to pass through them, others allow only some light through and others block all the light and create a dark shadow on any surface beyond them, where the light cannot reach. Mirrors can be used to redirect a light beam. (Boundary: The idea that light travels from place to place is developed through experiences with light sources, mirrors, and shadows, but no attempt is made to discuss the speed of light.)	Cause and Effect Simple tests can be designed to gather evidence to support or refute student ideas about causes.
Brainstorm: What are the main goals for these practices?	Brainstorm: What are the main ideas for the DCIs?	Brainstorm: What are the components of the CCCs?

T2a-d

Assessment Practices that Expand Meaningful Opportunities to Learn Science

CA NGSS Collaborative • Professional Learning #2 • Coherent Science Assessment Systems

Facilitator note: Circulate the breakout rooms as participants work to check in and provide support.

Facilitate share out highlighting breakout discussions. Consider sharing an idea you heard in a breakout when you visited to get the conversation started.

Facilitator Note - Expected Responses:

The focus of the PE is to plan and conduct an investigation which is an SEP
DCI - Determine the effect of placing objects in the path of light
CCC - The focus in on cause and effect

Tech:

Set up breakouts: same random groups of 3 as before, 20 minutes

Post in chat (when facilitator directs):

Link to T2a-d (Workspace for Grades K-2): [insert copied link to T2a-d here]

-

After participants have been working for 5 minutes, broadcast a message:

Gentle reminder to wrap up your work on the student task and start analyzing the task itself.

Broadcast time reminders when 10, 5, and 2 minutes remain.

Post in chat (when facilitator directs):

HHa-j (Lesson 4 of Teacher Guide): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1h6JJx9J9Yvr-Xk27RID39UVOgwnNQFUoJqghN2VkhlA/edit?usp=sharing

Directions:

-Examine the Performance Expectation again to decide which dimensions were addressed in the lesson plan

-Highlight the bulleted items on the unpacked PE shown in T2a-d (Participant Workspace for grades K-2) that were addressed

-As you discuss with your group, be specific in describing which part of the lesson plan addressed each dimension. Record your group’s additional thinking on page 1 of your Workspace document

-Be ready to discuss your thinking when we return to whole group

Inform the participants that they are going to move into breakout rooms. They can choose to keep working through the task if they want more time, but they should not take more than 5 more minutes. Note to participants that in 5 minutes there will be a message reminding everyone to move to the next step, which is to look again at the Performance Expectation (PE) shown on page 1 of their workspace that will be shared in the chat. They will use their unpacked PE to decide which dimensions were addressed in the lesson plan.

Ask participants to highlight each bulleted item on PE that describes the dimensions they think were addressed in the lesson plan. Stress to participants the importance of being really specific in identifying which aspects of each dimension were being assessed.

Directions:

-Examine the Performance Expectation again to decide which dimensions were addressed in the lesson plan

-Highlight the bulleted items on the unpacked PE shown in T2a-d (Participant Workspace for grades K-2) that were addressed

-As you discuss with your group, be specific in describing which part of the lesson plan addressed each dimension. Record your group’s additional thinking on page 1 of your Workspace document

-Be ready to discuss your thinking when we return to whole group

Circulate the breakout rooms as participants work to check in and provide support

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Eliciting Evidence of Student Understanding: Shifts in assessment tasks for NGSS

As we look at how to elicit, choose one shift and keep it in mind as we go through the next activity.

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Intro H3

Assessment Practices that Expand Meaningful Opportunities to Learn Science

CA NGSS Collaborative • Professional Learning #2 • Coherent Science Assessment Systems

Facilitator Note: Slide says to “choose one shift and keep it in mind as we go through the next activity” — be sure to do this and have participants write their shift down — the 1D/3D session is coming back to this graphic and providing time to discuss the flagged assessments in the lesson through the lens of the shift they choose in this session.

Tech:

Post in chat (when facilitator directs):

Achieve Task Annotation Project in Science: Equity in Three-Dimensional Science Assessments: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1u9KvutczSW3wFRW2vKUSuWo3XS8wPylO/view

In the introduction session, you considered these shifts in assessment task design that are required to support equitable NGSS instruction.

In equitable assessments, students are able to share their cultural and linguistic background.

Equitable assessments provide choice, use multiple modalities, provide sentence frames, and encourage verbal responses.

Allow for students with disabilities to use other ways if they can not communicate verbally to allow them to fully participate.

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Lesson Plan Reflection

Answer one of the questions below.

In what ways do the embedded observational assessments in the lesson plan encourage students to:

Examine relevant and engaging phenomena and problems?
Share their ideas, cultural and linguistic backgrounds, and experiences as they relate to the task?
Choose how to engage and what ideas to bring to the table?
Make sense of something that matters to them?

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Assessment Practices that Expand Meaningful Opportunities to Learn Science

CA NGSS Collaborative • Professional Learning #2 • Coherent Science Assessment Systems

Facilitator note: sharing in the chat is optional - this reflection may be personal. But others enjoy sharing their thinking on this prompt and would like to see how others react to their ideas. Encourage participants to interact with this reflection in whatever way is comfortable for them.

Ask participants to reflect on the embedded observational assessments in the lesson plan they examined from the perspective of these criteria for assessments that support equitable NGSS instruction.

Invite participants to choose one of the bullets points and consider how the assessment[s] they reviewed aligns with the equity principles identified on the slide:

Examine relevant and engaging phenomena and problems?
Share their ideas, cultural and linguistic backgrounds, and experiences as they relate to the task?
Choose how to engage and what ideas to bring to the table?
Make sense of something that matters to them?

Encourage participants to take a moment to do a personal reflection in their notebook (about 90 seconds).

After participants have time for individual reflection, invite anyone who wants to share something from their reflection to record it in the chat.

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Equity at Every Stage: Analyze & Interpret

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Set goals for learning

Respond by

providing feedback and modifying instruction

Analyze & interpret �student strengths �and areas for growth

Elicit evidence of student understanding

FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT CYCLE

Assessment Practices that Expand Meaningful Opportunities to Learn Science

CA NGSS Collaborative • Professional Learning #2 • Coherent Science Assessment Systems

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What a student knows and what one observes a student doing are not the same thing.

NRC, 2001.

Knowing What Students Know, pg 42

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Assessment Practices that Expand Meaningful Opportunities to Learn Science

CA NGSS Collaborative • Professional Learning #2 • Coherent Science Assessment Systems

Facilitator note:

Student responses MAY accurately show what a student knows and can do, but it is important to recognize that each individual response is affected by the prompt or question, the social environment where the idea is elicited, and how a student is feeling at that moment. So, we need to consider the possibility that when looking at one task, particularly depending on the quality of the task, the students’ responses may not capture the full extent of their understanding.

Acknowledge that it is easy to forget that what a student writes down or says is not necessarily how they understand an idea. Rather it’s just one piece of evidence that we can use to infer what they know. So, as teachers, we take multiple pieces of evidence about students' ideas and try to build a model of their understanding.

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Analyzing & Interpreting for Equity

Move beyond “got it” & “didn’t get it”
Look for evidence of:

What students do know and can do
Students’ cultural funds of knowledge and practices
Students’ identity and language resources

Value and respect student knowledge claims as valid and useful interpretations of their world
Identify areas for growth for all students

Adapted from Penuel & Watkins, 2019, 204-205.

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Assessment Practices that Expand Meaningful Opportunities to Learn Science

CA NGSS Collaborative • Professional Learning #2 • Coherent Science Assessment Systems

Facilitator note:

Sometimes, we can look for understanding by checking for vocabulary words or “Academic language” that we hope to see. However, this often proves misleading and underestimates the abilities and understanding of speakers of non-dominant dialects of English and multilingual learners.

A more equitable approach is to interpret the meaning of their words and focus on understanding the student’s thinking that is reflected in the writing or speaking.

With this in mind, it’s important to acknowledge that our model of what students understand is not complete and therefore, it’s critical to ask how can we analyze student work with an equity stance? What happens if we focus on what they DO know and then, where are there places for growth?

So often, when looking at student work or assessment tasks, we focus our attention singularly on what students DON’T know and CAN’T do. These are important pieces of information that we can use in our teaching, but they are not the ONLY useful pieces of information. Using assessment to focus on what students CAN do enables us to keep our equity framing stance mentioned earlier.

Assessment can give us precious information about how students are thinking that we then can build on. What words do they use? What experiences are they connecting to the task?

We should of course acknowledge errors or misunderstandings. The important shift is that we first focus on what they are bringing to the science we are learning. When we do this, we can then think about how to use that information to help build new and deeper understandings on top of what they already have.

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A Snapshot of

Observational Assessment

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H2a-c

Assessment Practices that Expand Meaningful Opportunities to Learn Science

CA NGSS Collaborative • Professional Learning #2 • Coherent Science Assessment Systems

Zoom note: You may need to stop screen share and select “optimize for video clip” and re-screen share (be sure to disable this after the video as sometimes open alerts and windows will appear as dark boxes to participants when this is enabled). (Direct link to video if needed: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1P9-QRmaynAuQ18y7Z02A8-f4tK9YE6Yg/view?usp=share_link)

Tech

Post in chat when when facilitator directs:

H2a-c (Classroom Transcript): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EED2aECVygB5ANDhhNkJpWPFJqK_Yq-S4Cbp1XmrJbU/edit?usp=sharing

Feel free to make your own copy of the transcript and annotate

Tell participants that they are now going to view an example of observational assessment in action. Set the context of the vignette by telling them that what they will be viewing is not the whole lesson; rather it provides a glimpse midway through the Explore/Explain segment of the lesson plan through the very beginning of the Elaborate.

We also have a transcript of the teacher and student’s comments as an additional resource to review. This is set to view-only, feel free to make a copy and save to your drive if you want to annotate the transcript.

Watch the Lesson 4 Vignette video and watch for how teachers can document and capture student thinking and understanding about light, focusing on the PE we unpacked.

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Norms for discussing student work

Presume positive intentions and expertise on the part of the teacher
Assume the ideas students have shared make sense to them and are useful ideas
Focus on how the students’ responses are giving us evidence about the goal and objectives of the task

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Adapted from Classroom Discussions: Seeing Math Discourse in action, Grades K-6. A Multimedia Professional Learning Resource and the Next Generation Science Exemplar Program.

Assessment Practices that Expand Meaningful Opportunities to Learn Science

CA NGSS Collaborative • Professional Learning #2 • Coherent Science Assessment Systems

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Identifying What Students Do Know�and the Resources They Bring

Student Science Notebook Responses

During the Extend portion of the lesson, students documented their ongoing experiences in a science notebook. Let’s take a look at three sample student responses.

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Assessment Practices that Expand Meaningful Opportunities to Learn Science

CA NGSS Collaborative • Professional Learning #2 • Coherent Science Assessment Systems

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What do students show us about �their ideas and resources?

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Sample Student Response

“I see a triangle on top and lots of triangles! When I looked in the prism one it looked it was a rainbow and I think the rainbow was made from the lights.”

Assessment Practices that Expand Meaningful Opportunities to Learn Science

CA NGSS Collaborative • Professional Learning #2 • Coherent Science Assessment Systems

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What do students show us about �their ideas and resources?

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DCI

Some materials allow light to pass through them

Sample Student Response

“I see a triangle on top and lots of triangles! When I looked in the prism one it looked it was a rainbow and I think the rainbow was made from the lights.”

CCC

Simple tests can be designed to gather evidence to support or refute student ideas about causes

Assessment Practices that Expand Meaningful Opportunities to Learn Science

CA NGSS Collaborative • Professional Learning #2 • Coherent Science Assessment Systems

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What do students show us about �their ideas and resources?

Describe trends in groups of student responses:

What are students’ strengths in terms of the dimensions being assessed?
In what ways do students need additional supports?

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NONE Responses show evidence of neither of the dimensions being assessed	SOME Responses show evidence of 1-2 dimensions being assessed	ALL Responses show evidence of all dimensions being assessed
	“I see a triangle on top and lots of triangles! When I looked in the prism one it looked it was a rainbow and I think the rainbow was made from the lights.”

Assessment Practices that Expand Meaningful Opportunities to Learn Science

CA NGSS Collaborative • Professional Learning #2 • Coherent Science Assessment Systems

Then you will start to look for trends. As an example, we looked at all of the students who showed evidence of both dimensions. We described common strengths for all of those responses and we described one way students who are using both dimensions could progress even further.

Adding to this example, focus on all of the students who showed evidence of both dimensions to consider what you see as their strengths and needs.

Then examine the responses where you highlighted just one dimension: what are their strengths in terms of the dimensions being assessed? In what ways do they need additional support?

Then do the same for students who did not show evidence of any of the dimensions. What ARE they doing? What could be a next step for these students in their progress with the dimensions?

Since you only have a few pieces of student work analyzed you’ll need to describe trends from just a few responses, or even one, but it will give you a sense of what you would do if you had more student responses.

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What do students show us about their ideas and resources?

Follow the instructions and examples in your workspace to do this analysis in breakouts

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T2a-d

15 minutes ⏲

Assessment Practices that Expand Meaningful Opportunities to Learn Science

CA NGSS Collaborative • Professional Learning #2 • Coherent Science Assessment Systems

Facilitator note: monitor participant progress on T2a-d (Workspace for Grades K-2) and circulate through the breakouts to provide additional support.

Participants may struggle with highlighting. They may wonder if they should highlight any word relevant to either dimension. Also consider pointing them back to the PE - encourage them to consider how a response provides insight into how the student is able to use the dimension in question. If they just highlighted the words “natural hazard” in orange, will these words tell the teacher what the student understands about using past hazards to predict future events? Encourage participants to constrain highlighting to phrases that are instructionally useful, even if they show an emerging use of a dimension. But a scientific term on its own, like natural hazard, will not inform instruction.

Participants may also wonder if they should highlight if it’s showing an emerging understanding of the dimension. Remind participants that they are just bringing attention to where EVIDENCE of a dimension exists, not evaluating how the dimension is being used. This activity allows us to recognize the use of dimensions at all levels, since that is what is instructionally useful. We aren’t just looking for right answers, we are looking for how students are working on using each dimension to get guidance for how to support them in their growth.

Tech:

Set up breakouts: same random groups of 3 as before, 15 minutes

Post in chat (when facilitator directs):

Link to T2a-d (Workspace for Grades K-2): [insert copied link to T2a-d here]

Inform participants that all of the instructions for this activity are in the workspace on Pages 3 and 4 of their handout T2a-d (Workspace for Grades K-2 and let them know that you will be circulating through the breakouts for support.

Then, in breakouts, you will try doing this highlighting additional pieces of student work while keeping our norms in mind. Note that we are not highlighting what kids don’t know, but rather, what kids gave us evidence of.

Since we only have a short time to do this activity you’ll only analyze a few pieces of student work and infer what was happening across the class based on these samples.

Directions

Follow the instructions for this on pages 3-4 of T2a-d (Workspace for Grades K-2):
Be ready to discuss your thinking when we return to whole group

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Debrief

What are some trends in what students were doing well and what they needed more support with?

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NONE Responses show evidence of neither of the dimensions being assessed	SOME Responses show evidence of 1-2 dimensions being assessed	ALL Responses show evidence of all dimensions being assessed

Assessment Practices that Expand Meaningful Opportunities to Learn Science

CA NGSS Collaborative • Professional Learning #2 • Coherent Science Assessment Systems

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Reflection

In your notebook or on a piece of paper, write about how it felt to do one of the following in your group:

Move beyond “got it” & “didn’t get it”
Look for evidence of:

What students do know and can do
Students’ cultural funds of knowledge and practices
Students’ identity and language resources
Value and respect student knowledge claims as valid and useful interpretations of their world
Identify areas for growth for all students

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Optional: add your response to the chat and �waterfall when I say go!

Assessment Practices that Expand Meaningful Opportunities to Learn Science

CA NGSS Collaborative • Professional Learning #2 • Coherent Science Assessment Systems

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Equity at Every Stage: Respond

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Set goals for learning

Respond by

providing feedback and modifying instruction

Analyze & interpret �student strengths �and areas for growth

Elicit evidence of student understanding

FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT CYCLE

Assessment Practices that Expand Meaningful Opportunities to Learn Science

CA NGSS Collaborative • Professional Learning #2 • Coherent Science Assessment Systems

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Responding to Students’ Ideas

Responding for equity should position students as co-constructors of shared knowledge and partners in the assessment cycle by providing them:

High-quality feedback that incorporates their strengths and how to build on them
Opportunities for revision that connect their current ideas to expanded understandings

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Assessment Practices that Expand Meaningful Opportunities to Learn Science

CA NGSS Collaborative • Professional Learning #2 • Coherent Science Assessment Systems

Facilitator note:

Unfortunately, research shows that grades are not high-quality feedback. In fact, multiple studies have shown that if you provide students a numerical score, rubric score, or other type of grade alongside written comments, students will not attend to your comments. When you need to provide students with a letter grade, be thoughtful about when to share it with students.

We recommend providing comments without grades, at least initially, and letting the students revise based on our comments. This ensures that the time and effort we spent writing comments is time well spent and that the students will grow based on your comments. You can provide a grade or score on the revised work, if needed.

Share with participants that there are many ways to respond during instruction, including providing teacher or peer feedback, self-reflection, and revision opportunities.

The goal isn’t to catch or punish students for what they don’t know, but rather to use the assessment task as a learning tool by providing feedback that uses students’ responses to help them move from where they are toward the learning goal.

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Student Agency and Growth

Responding for equity includes designing future learning experiences that:

Make students’ learning and intellectual contributions visible to individual students and the class as a whole
Incorporate common strengths that are shared by students
Move students toward shared goals

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Assessment Practices that Expand Meaningful Opportunities to Learn Science

CA NGSS Collaborative • Professional Learning #2 • Coherent Science Assessment Systems

Facilitator notes:

A common practice is to just assign a grade and move on. But if we assess early and assess often, we can help our students grow at every opportunity.

This process doesn’t need to be terribly time consuming. It can be as simple as sharing examples of interesting ideas and strengths you saw in student responses and having students modify their response to incorporate this idea into their own work. This allows the task to become a part of the learning process, where students continue to deepen their understanding even after they complete a task.

How this is done, of course, depends on where in the instructional sequence you are. Earlier in a sequence, small quick assessment cycles can provide just-in-time information that students need for growth. Toward the end of a sequence, more substantial revisions might be more appropriate.

When identifying that responsive move, it is essential to incorporate students’ current strengths and areas for growth by making explicit and visible students’ assets and using them, as well as their needs, to move students forward.

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Responding to Student Ideas

Think back to the task you just analyzed.

What is the next move you would make to truly listen to these students?

Choose one category (none, one, or both dimensions) to focus on
Select one student response

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NONE Responses show evidence of neither of the dimensions being assessed	SOME Responses show evidence of 1-2 dimensions being assessed	ALL Responses show evidence of all dimensions being assessed

Assessment Practices that Expand Meaningful Opportunities to Learn Science

CA NGSS Collaborative • Professional Learning #2 • Coherent Science Assessment Systems

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Formative assessment as part of �equitable instructional practice

Consider how you would respond to that individual student:

What could you do that celebrates a strength?
What would you do next to support this student’s growth?

Think about the whole class:

How could you use the strengths and needs of this individual student to support growth across the whole class

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T1

8 minutes ⏲

Assessment Practices that Expand Meaningful Opportunities to Learn Science

CA NGSS Collaborative • Professional Learning #2 • Coherent Science Assessment Systems

Tech:

Set up breakouts: same random groups of 3 as before, 8 minutes

Post in chat (when facilitator directs):

1. Choose one of the three categories of responses to focus on

2. Pick one student response to use to answer this question

3. Consider how you would respond to that individual student (what could you do that celebrates a strength, what could you do next to support this student’s growth)

4. How could you use the strengths and needs of this individual student to support growth across the whole class?

5. Be ready to discuss your thinking when we return to the whole group.

Inform participants that they will be going into quick breakouts to discuss how they would respond to an individual student and support growth across a whole class.

Using a student response form of the three categories, they will consider how they would respond to that individual student. They will use that response to decide:

-what they could do to celebrate a strength for that student

-what they could do to support that students’ growth

Then based on that student they will think about how they could use these strengths and needs to support growth across the whole class.

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Equity at Every Stage: Set Goals

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Set goals for learning

Respond by

providing feedback and modifying instruction

Analyze & interpret �student strengths �and areas for growth

Elicit evidence of student understanding

FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT CYCLE

Assessment Practices that Expand Meaningful Opportunities to Learn Science

CA NGSS Collaborative • Professional Learning #2 • Coherent Science Assessment Systems

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Review of Equity at Every Stage, Revisit Assessment Challenges, Exit Ticket

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Assessment Practices that Expand Meaningful Opportunities to Learn Science

CA NGSS Collaborative • Professional Learning #2 • Coherent Science Assessment Systems

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Equity at Every Stage

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ELICIT:

Use relevant, authentic, meaningful & empowering tasks and prompts

FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT CYCLE

ANALYZE:�Value and respect students’ ideas when evaluating student responses

RESPOND:

Show students how to build on their strengths and work through challenges

SET GOALS: �Prioritize student agency and growth in all 3 dimensions �over external goals

Assessment Practices that Expand Meaningful Opportunities to Learn Science

CA NGSS Collaborative • Professional Learning #2 • Coherent Science Assessment Systems

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Revisiting Assessment challenges in your classroom

Revisit the challenges with assessing students in your classroom that you shared earlier in this session.

What kinds of problems do you think can be addressed using equity at every stage of the formative assessment cycle? (Jamboard frame 1)

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T1

Assessment Practices that Expand Meaningful Opportunities to Learn Science

CA NGSS Collaborative • Professional Learning #2 • Coherent Science Assessment Systems

Facilitator note: Here are a few examples for common problems to help you engage participants in this discussion:

Provide scaffolding questions that help all students begin a given task, provide an introduction to the task (discussion, video, image) to help the students understand why/how the task is relevant or meaningful to students

Students write IDK/nothing
Many of my students are unengaged in science

We don’t always need to use things formally labeled as assessments to gather evidence of learning: can gather rich evidence from discussions, notebooks, other visible/audible artifacts; Start small and modify assignments and assessments you already have to be more useful. I don’t have assessments to use/no time to make new assessments

I don’t have time to assess my students.
My assessments don’t tell me much about student ideas
I have to give the same tests as the rest of my team/department
Other teachers in my department are resisting changing to NGSS assessment/we don’t get support with this change

Reconsider the balance of time you spend assessing ideas vs. assigning grades and do what helps you and students most

Grading is boring
Grading is time consuming
I don’t have time to assess my students.

Provide feedback that is specific and that students can use immediately to improve that specific assignment, allow revisions

Students don’t read/use my feedback

Tech:

Post in chat (when facilitator directs):

T1 - Assessment Practice Jamboard link: [insert copied T1 link for session here]

Give participants an opportunity to reflect on problems of practice and discuss if/how assessment can be used to address any of them. To facilitate the discussion, share your screen of frame 1 of the T1 - Assessment Practice Jamboard the begin by identifying a problem from the jamboard and asking participants to reflect on our new understanding of assessment and how that can support addressing the challenge.

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Gots and Needs

Directions

Go to frame 4 on the Jamboard and add:

Something you “got” from the session (a new understanding, an “ah-ha”, etc.)
Something you need to help your understanding of assessment

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Assessment Practices that Expand Meaningful Opportunities to Learn Science

CA NGSS Collaborative • Professional Learning #2 • Coherent Science Assessment Systems

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Session References

Achieve (2018). Task Annotation Project in Science (TAPS). Washington, DC: Achieve.

Bang, M., Brown, B., Barton, A. C., Rosebery, A., & Warren, B. (2017). Toward more equitable learning in science: Expanding relationships among students, teachers, and science practices. In C. V. Schwarz, C. Passmore, & B. J. Reiser (Eds.), Helping students make sense of the world using next generation science and engineering practices (pp. 33–58). NSTA Press.

Exploratorium Tinkering Studio. San Francisco, CA. https://www.exploratorium.edu/tinkering

Herman, Joan L., and Margaret Heritage. 2007. Moving from Piecemeal to Effective Formative Assessment Practice: Moving Pictures on the Road to Student Learning. Paper presented at the Council of Chief State School Officers Assessment Conference, Nashville, TN.

National Research Council (NRC) (2012). A Framework for K–12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi. org/10.17226/13165

Penuel, William R., and Douglas A. Watkins. “Assessment to Promote Equity and Epistemic Justice: A Use-Case of a Research-Practice Partnership in Science Education.” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 683, no. 1 (2019): 201–16.

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Assessment Practices that Expand Meaningful Opportunities to Learn Science

CA NGSS Collaborative • Professional Learning #2 • Coherent Science Assessment Systems