WHAT AM I DOING TO HELP KIDS ACHIEVE?
HOW DO I KNOW WHEN THEY ARE THERE?
WHAT IS THE EVIDENCE?
Just finished the gas law card sort...interesting results. First, I had them do the sort in pairs and then some more quantitative gas law problems on their own. They then had to check and critique each other's gas law problems (think peer edit). About the card sort..
Students had some great interactions. Sometimes they can teach each other far better than I can. They seemed to do very well on the sort and answering the questions. I found that we need to work more on specifically answering the questions and working on short answers. They got many of the correct answer but did not necessarily answer the entire question. Every question always has two parts...essentially "What is the answer and how do you know?". They did a good job of answering the first one but on the "supporting data" they would just say "see data card". My fear is this is not enough for most short answer standardize tests.
The big question is, "How did I know they learned anything?". I think next time I would do some sort of formative assessment in the beginning to know exactly where they are at with gas laws and these concepts. I am pretty sure it is new to them but with some fast "formative" assessment drills in the beginning (from Paige Keeley's books) I think I would get a better feel for the progress gained.
So what are the "take aways" from this one??? Next time and in the future...work in formative assessment and discuss and model how to answer short answer questions.
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