Hi everyone, This year we have implemented the NGSS into our 8th grade earth science curriculum and are starting to work on the assessment piece. Does anyone have some good performance task activities or resources that you have used in your school/district?
I am interested to see what responses you get to this question. I have not found anything that has already been written but have come cross many projects where the work is being started. One site, in addition to what may be found on the NSTA site, is the Lewis Center for Academic Excellence. http://www.lewiscenter.org/AAE/Departments/Science/Teaching-the-Next-Generations-Science/ They have a link to a site that walks you through the process of developing a performance task assessment. https://sites.google.com/a/pitt.k12.nc.us/performancetaskassessments/create-a-performance-task We (the Michigan Earth Science Teachers Association) are in the early stages of this work ourselves and currently have nothing to share. Michigan has still not adopted NGSS so we are moving slowly.
I am a Science Coach at a K-8 Center. We just inherited 8th grade this year. Our school district uses Speedbag by JJ Bootcamp series. It is aligned with the NGSSS standards and have activities, assessments, graphic organizers and foldables to help the students master the benchmarks that are annually assessed for 8th grade. It's a great resource!
Chris, I could better answer your question if I knew what performance understandings are you trying to assess in this performance assessment? What specific practices are we looking at? In MS Earth Systems , there are two performance expectations for Develop a Model and one for Construct A Scientific Explanations. Hmm. I am not exactly sure what develop a model should look like in MS. Transitioning to NGSS is not going to be easy all the time. I am finding myself deep into whatever PD I can find. In all honesty, I will reveal myself as an elementary educator who is sometimes working with middle school teachers so I thought I would take a stab at your question. I am hoping to attend the Virtual Conference in November that NSTA is offering on the practices just to learn more more. I wanted to go to the Area Conferences but $ is an issue. The Virtual conference is affordable and I do not have to travel. Living in Vermont , that is a bonus. Anyway I will stop babbling. I do think you need to identify the practices students are doing as instruction before you can figure out which practice you should be assessing. Kathy
Thanks Cris that is so similar to Idaho. We have not adopted the NGSS, but our district has decided to go ahead with them. Thanks for the site on how to start with performance tasks in mind
Thanks Joe I will look into this resource! I really appreciate it
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