These 21st century information, communication and media literacy skills are becoming more and more important in the classroom. What better way to address and teach these skills than through the use of authentic assessments in the science classroom. According to Jon Mueller an authentic assessment is one in which "students are asked to perform real-world tasks that demonstrate meaningful application of essential knowledge and skills." Sampson and Grooms have created the Generate an Argument Instructional Model to address authenticity by having a teacher create an assignment where with a problem, instructions and real data that is given to a group of students. The students must then analyze the data, create an argument and justify their reasons while effectively communicating this to the class. This allows them to practice skills otherwise neglected in most science classrooms but is real, engaging and challenging.
Bu incorporating this activity into my classroom it addresses the various STS (Science, Technology and Society) outcomes in my program of studies, where it requires students to "analyze and interpret" data and "use appropriate numeric, symbolic, graphical and linguistic modes of representation to communicate findings and conclusions." Although extremely valuable, activities that are well planned and effective take considerable time on the teacher's part as care has to be taken to find quality data.
For my Generating an Argument assignment I am 'playing' with the idea of having students analyze particle tracks from particle physics laboratories...here is a picture of the data I would share with them. I'm just not sure how I would phrase the instructions, hence a work in progress. Any comments on this idea?
Ooooooo, pretty picture. I love teaching bits of String Theory and nuclear chemistry interwoven into my unit on Atomic Theory. I'm not quite sure how to get students to the point of analyzing a photo like this. I am considering using data from the transuranic elements and have my students defend the classification of these as elements based on various properties. The various interactive Periodic Tables should help with this. I'll follow along to see how you flesh all of this out.
ReplyDeleteMichele
Michele
ReplyDeleteHey love your idea on classifying the elements, intrigued to see your project. As for getting my students to analyze particle tracks, what I was thinking of doing was giving them a list of potential particles and sebsequent data such as charge, mass, etc. and asking them to argue their case for what types of particles produced the paths given in the pictures. I would also let them know that it is a bubble chamber that is placed in an external magnetic field, but not give them the direction of the field. What do you think?