The formative assessment I gave today was focused on accessing students' prior knowledge and determining students' misconception in regards to weathering and erosion. Originally, I was going to just ask some open ended questions about the big idea that I was trying to address; however, it was brought to my attention that being that open-ended on a pre-assessment might cause students to give you responses completely unrelated to the content you are going to teach. Therefore, I changed my formative assessment. I gave each student a picture of a landform that was created through the process of weathering/erosion and asked students to describe to me how they thought the structure was formed or how it got to be the way it was. I chose not to use the terms weathering or erosion within the formative assessment because I did not want students to simply regurgitate a definition they had heard before; I wanted to know if they actually understood the process, not just the label. I allowed students to draw their ideas too if they were better able to explain what they knew in that way. I also asked questions about what they had written so that I could better understand what they were actually thinking. Students came up with a wide variety of answers from earthquakes to humans to rocks falling on top of each other. The various answers given indicated to me that I need to provide ways throughout my lesson to address each of these misconceptions, give the students something to replace the misconceptions with, and help them fit this new information into their existing schemas (Conceptual Change Theory).
Based on student responses, the formative assessment I used may have been too abstract because it was a picture of something that students had not seen before. However, after reading through student responses and talking to students about their ideas, it did allow me to get a general sense of what they knew about the processes of weathering and erosion - not much. I now know that when designing my lesson, I need to provide concrete experiences for my students so they can have some kind of background knowledge to link the actual content to (Developmental Learning Theory) and I need to be sure to address those misconceptions shown in the formative assessment (Conceptual Change Theory/Constructivist Learning Theory) through picture of actual erosion and weathering that causes change in the environment. Through the formative assessment, I also learned more about where students' ZPDs might be at, which will inform how I group students. I want students to be able to work together and discuss ideas so that they will be successful in their learning. I think that student conversations about weathering and erosion will help the students who may need more supports better understand the concepts if they can hear them described in the language of their peers (Social Learning Theory).
The formative assessment gave me a lot to think about in regards to how to approach the content I am going to teach. It also addressed some other issues that students had in regards to the nature of science. After giving the formative assessment and assuring students that they were not going to get a grade, that I just wanted to know what they were thinking, several students asked me if I would tell them the answer to the question when they were done. This indicated to me that students believe there is one right answer in science that the teacher can give them, so I am going to address this in my lesson as well. While, I plan to include other aspects of the nature of science within my lesson, this was the nature of science idea that presented itself through formative assessment.
Formative assessment can be used in a variety of ways in the classroom across content areas and grade levels. In this instance, I used formative assessment to figure out what my students' prior knowledge and experiences were in regards to erosion/weathering as well as their perceptions of the nature of science. Formative assessment can (and should) be used constantly before, during, and after teaching to provide the most beneficial learning environment for your students because formative assessments can allow you to figure out what students are thinking in their heads and whether or not they are understanding the content you are teaching. In regards to my formative assessment in particular, I plan to give students the same assessment at the end of our lesson in hopes that they will apply what they learned and be able to provide a more developed and accurate description of how the structure in the picture was formed.
