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Assessments during Remote Learning
For optimal design of your assessment, we recommend that you consider the following:
Suggested Resources:
Supporting Articles:
How do you assess students while remote teaching? The following two resources from Edutopia provide ideas and framing to help you navigate this.
- Duration:
- For computer interface assessments, the amount of time needed to complete them should be proportional to the amount of time you expect students to work on for an online assignment on any given day during this remote learning period.
- For independent, research or project-based activities, students will need multiple days to complete them. However, consider that students may lose interest in anything that may require more than a week’s worth of instructional time to complete.
- Authentic and creative assignments:
- Provide students opportunities to demonstrate their learning in multiple ways. Assessments could include a combination of multiple-choice questions, open response questions, simulated activities, and/or creating or designing something in response to a problem, etc.
- Synchronous and Asynchronous opportunities:
- Provide students opportunities to complete a portion of their assessment in front of you (virtually of course), where you are present to watch and listen to them as they think through and respond to problems on their own. Encourage students to talk through their problem-solving strategy(ies) to give you an insight into their thinking.
- Provide students opportunities to work independently off-line on some sort of project with which they demonstrate or display their learning. Ideas for creative projects could include students creating their own YouTube video, a video montage, a podcast, a presentation, experiment, a lesson, etc.
- Parental or Adult Involvement:
- Assignments should require very little to no parental oversight or the involvement of another person. For younger students, a parent or adult may be needed to help them set up an apparatus or experiment. But additional support should not be a necessary part of a student’s demonstration/presentation, unless the assignment involves using family members as audiences or participants in the learning where it is recorded and submitted to the teacher.
- You are not reinventing the wheel:
- Capitalize on and utilize the skills and strategies that students are already familiar with using during remote learning to assess them, for example, Acellus, Khan Academy, CK12, Flipgrid, Kahoot, Legends of Learning, etc.
Suggested Resources:
- FOSS (access via Clever)
- I-checks
- FOSS Map
- Pull questions from our Science Interim Assessments on Illuminate, developed in collaboration with BPS teachers.
- If you already own the books (and many of us do!), use Page Keeley formative assessment probes and have students explain their thinking behind their chosen responses. Free chapters with a formative assessment can be found for each book.
- BPS Science Weebly:
- Have students complete a writing assignment in which they engage in Argumentation or develop Explanations using evidence.
- Make use of the great resources in the materials shared with us by presenters:
- Defined Learning (access via Clever)
- JoVE
- Legends of Learning (access via Clever)
- Mystery Science
- Blogger Kasey Bell offers suggestions for 20 Formative Assessment Tools for Your Classroom. You are most likely already familiar with or already using some of her suggestions (including EdPuzzle, NearPod, Quizlet, and Kahoot), many of which are free or offer a free trial period.
- NewsELA has great science articles and an entire section aligned to FOSS units.
- STEM teaching tools offers ideas for science assessments:
- Check with content specific associations (eg. biology (NABT), chemistry (AACT), physics (AAPT), environmental science (NAAEE), etc.) for suggestions. They require paid memberships, but many teachers already have them.
Supporting Articles:
How do you assess students while remote teaching? The following two resources from Edutopia provide ideas and framing to help you navigate this.