Defining new visions for science, mathematics, and language arts education, the authors provide a clearly articulated set of performance assessments, allowing teachers to assess students' knowledge and abilities through investigation, problem solving, inventiveness, and inquiry. Featuring activities that promote higher-order thinking skills and help develop more complex cognitive functions, this resource offers more than 20 ready-to-use assessments linked to national standards with tools that include: o Learning logs o Portfolios o Peer interview strategies o Teacher-student sample interviews o Problems to solve both individually and as a group.
Elizabeth Hammerman is a dedicated science educator and consultant. Her professional background includes teaching science at the middle school and high school levels and over 20 years of experience teaching university science education courses and co-directing funded grant projects. She has done extensive professional development with teachers in the field, specializing in curriculum development and implementation, performance assessment, and effective teaching and learning. The need for high-quality professional development programs and materials in science education became apparent throughout the many projects and professional relationships with teachers who were eager to increase their knowledge base, skills, and confidence for teaching science more effectively. Hammerman has co-authored a book on performance assessment in science and authored a database of science assessment tasks. She has published articles, presented programs at national conferences, consulted nationally, and developed curriculum and assessments for cutting-edge school districts and commercial products. Since relocating to North Carolina in 1999, Hammerman has been a math/science consultant for a consortium of seven county school systems, has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in teacher education and science education, served as director of education and professional development for Virtual Learning Systems, and worked as a consultant for the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. She is actively involved in professional development and continues to work on a series of professional development books for science education for Corwin Press.
Foreword by Robert E. Yager Introduction Part I. Theory 1. What Is Science? 2. New Visions for Mathematics and Language Literacy 3. Developing Rubrics for Teaching and Assessment Performance Tasks 4. Putting It All Together: Integrated Performance Tasks for Learning and Assessment Part II. Application 5. Adventuring Back in Time 6. The Dog Washing Business 7. May the Force Be With You 8. Water, Water Everywhere 9. A Wholesome Partnership 10. A-W-L for One and One for A-W-L 11. The Mysterious Package 12. Up, Up, and Away 13. Role-ing Through Science and Technology Appendix A. Answers to Criterion-Referenced Tests References
"An excellent resource for science teachers. Includes user-friendly, ready-to-use assessments, complete with analytical rubrics that can be adapted to almost any classroom!" -- Melissa Miller, Science Teacher "Designing and using performance assessment tools can be very challenging for beginning teachers. The authors offer a fantastic starting point for all science educators to examine their current method of assessment and apply new and different types of authentic assessment strategies across the curriculum." -- Sheila Smith, Science Specialist/National Science Foundation Project Director "Teachers who are exploring new ways of integrating mathematics and writing into their science curriculum will be well served by this book. The activities are general enough to provide creative teachers with numerous ideas for incorporating the various tools into their own curricular activities." -- NSTA Recommends, January 2008 "The instructional templates and plans offered will enable readers to incorporate the key ideas into their current lessons." -- Curriculum Connections, Spring 2008
