Joost+Monen+APP

Interpreting the validity of “Scientific Discoveries” in the News.
 * Title: **

** Grade Level, Subject Area, Context for Assessment: ** This assessment would be part of the science curriculum. The final assessment would be done near the end of senior year, but the skills necessary to successfully complete the assessment would be scaffolded over several years starting in 10th.

** Summary of the Assessment (1 - 3 lines): ** Students are given a recent news article, which makes a grand scientific claim. The evidence supporting this claim is very vague in the article, and in no way should convince a reader of the validity of the study. Students must read this article, and in so doing, they must identify the primary sources and the key question that is being addressed by the researchers (or claimed to be addressed). Students must then conduct research to 1) assess the credibility of the sources 2) Find the primary research articles referred to in the news article 3) Read and interpret the primary sources 4) Draw conclusions from the article based on their data, not their conclusions and 5) Evaluate the validity of the initial news article given the primary information.

** Student Skills, Knowledge, and/or Attitudes to be Assessed: ** Ability to ask key questions Identify Sources Assess the credibility of sources Evaluate validity of the article Interpret and understand primary scientific sources Understanding of statistics Understanding of scientific techniques Ability to research/look up material/techniques that are unfamiliar in order to understand the context of the material Ability to draw conclusions based on the evidence available, not on the conclusions made by the article.

** Criteria/Rubric for Evaluation **** (you must be signed in to Wikispaces to upload a document): ** See attached excel file.

** Format/Structure of the Assessment: ** I mentioned this below (in Timetable for Implementation).

** Timetable for Implementation: ** As mentioned above, this assessment will be given towards the end of senior year, but scaffolded up to that point. There are numerous skills that students must develop in order to successfully complete each element of the assignment. As a first step, it is important that I provide students with the articles, as well as all of the background information and primary sources. Having both news articles that are accurate as well as completely inaccurate, will give students the understanding that much of what is in the news is misrepresented, while much of it is accurate. In science it’s also important to realize that data can be interpreted many different ways, which often leads to inaccurate conclusions. The skill of figuring out the questionsi, is a skill that I continually have students figure out when they are conducting lab activities, so they should become increasingly familiar with this over time. Understanding statistics is something that they will learn in math class as well as in lab activities over time. The understanding of lab techniques and interpreting the data, is where science content comes into play. By senior year, they should have the knowledge to be able to understand basic techniques and how to interpret them scientifically. If they encounter something that they have never come across before, they should have the research skills to be able to figure it out. The assessment itself will be a take home assessment at the end of the year where they will be provided an article, a textbook, and the internet. These are all the tools they should need to complete the assessment successfully, along with the knowledge they have gained over the years. They will be given a week to complete the assignment and will not be allowed to work with anyone. Any questions they have should be directed to the teacher and nobody else. They will work on the honors system.

** Challenges, Questions, Support Needed: ** The support I would need, is that all of the science teachers are on board with this authentic assessment so that it can be coordinated over a 3 year curriculum to prepare students. Additionally, over the summer, staff would need a very large percentage of time in August to focus solely on curriculum planning so that the scaffolding of this authentic assessment would flow well with the content throughout the science curriculum

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