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Who ever has not used Paige Keeley's Formative Probes Books need to! I have been using them for two years now and have found them to be absolutely wonderful. I have just attended a 2 day workshop with her and found out why they are so effective. They are designed specifically to address areas that students either have troubles with or have preconceived notions. She uses the latest research and science standards to develop her probes. I give a probe at the beginning of a Unit. Students answer in their Journal in pencil. I then have several students read theirs aloud-I use the Popsicle method to select the students. Their is no "correct answer" at this point and I do not add anything to the discussion. Later in the Unit, we reread our answers. Answers are then open to discussion and students are allowed to change their answers-but in ink. I finally ask if any student would like to share their answers with the class. Again, allowing students to change or revise their answers. I assess by putting stickers on work that has shown effort and improvement---not on "correctness". When the "grade" does not involve right or wrong, they are not afraid to reach and try something outside of their comfort zone. Also, because they are allowed to revise their work, they listen and participate more fully. This takes time, but a teachers job is to guide their students in learning how to think. One last comment-Paige Keeley writes a Column in Children and Science every Journal issue about Formative Assessment. Summer 2011 of Children and Science has a great article about assessments. I highly recommend that all teachers read it!

Attachments

Formative_Assessment_Probes-With_a_Purpose.pdf (0.27 Mb)

Anyone who likes Page Keeley and her Formative Assessment Probes, I attended a workshop just recently for 2-days using several of her books. I loved this workshop and I have received a few inquiries to share any information that I might have picked up. Using notes provided by Page and my notes, I typed up a summary of what was presented. There was way more than I have included here, just too much to actually put down. We did lots of hands-on, practiced strategies, learned how to write our own probes. I now know why these probes are so effective. Once you start using them, you will see their effectiveness. By the way, these are HARD to write. I'm glad I have so many of her books with lots of stickies!!! She even signed my book Science: Formative Assessment: 75 Practical Strategies for Linking Assessment, Instruction, and Learning.

Attachments

Formative_Assessment_Probes-With_a_Purpose.pdf (0.27 Mb)

Formative_Assessment.docx (0.12 Mb)

I agree, when I stumbled on Keeley's probes, they transformed my teaching. She does such a fantastic job bringing misconceptions to the surface. My students enjoy the probes because they are engaged to find out if they are/were correct. It is such a great way to focus inquiry.

I agree with every comment about the effectiveness of the formative assessment probes. There are so many ways that teachers check for understanding as they are facilitating learning in their classrooms. I am wondering if you will share some of the other tools/strategies that you use a lot as you teach science. It would be great to come up with a handy list of tried and true formative assessment strategies that we could keep handy as we teach.

Sue mentioned above that she learned how to write these kinds of probes. Has anyone else had any experience with writing your own? Have you had success? Any advice to someone who would be trying to write one for the first time? Thanks so much!

I think that grading for effort rather than correctness is important and has a place to push students out of their comfort zone. When though if ever do you think that it could be detrimental. I think that sometimes for homework many teacher give credit as long as there is something down. This could keep some students from being afraid to try but I also think that some students will not do their best work because they think it doesn't matter how well they do as long as there is something. Maybe a way around this problem might be the addition of you get 2 points as long as you do something but can get an extra point for 75% correctness. Any thoughts?

Let me for a moment play the role of "devil's advocate" on the issue of effort. Lots of effort does not always mean effective effort. Many times students lack the knowledge or awareness of how to effectively study, solve, organize etc. It is the ineffectiveness of their effort that needs to be addressed. In some cases directly addressing the ineffectiveness is all that is needed (direct explicit instructions). Another possibility is to differentiate instruction to better align learning tasks with the skills, abilities or disposition of learners. I really worry that what is discouraging to students is not progressing despite the effort they put forth. Whether we are honest with them or not, they know. So I think it better to use differentiated instruction to design tasks where a student can be successful. Success builds self efficacy and the willingness to tackle new challenges.

I am trying to use more formative assessments in my classroom this year and am liking what I see in my students. They are asking more questions after a quick formative assessment check especially when I encourage them to ask any questions that they have 'because somebody else will have that same question'.

I've started using a strategy called 'logging-in' developed by Sally Berman which has the students state the objective from the previous class and whether or not they are able to meet it. Has anybody successfully done independent formative assessment checks? In other words, students check their own understanding without always being prompted by the teacher. I think this is a very important part of education and haven't heard many strategies about student-facilitated formative assessment. I would love to hear what people have done in the classroom to encourage student-driven learning monitoring.

One of the most important uses of formative assessment is in addressing misconceptions. Cognitive science and experience tells us that teaching over misconceptions is ineffective. In order to effectively address misconceptions, we must first have students recall them into working memory where they can be re-processed and corrected before being returned to long term memory. When misconceptions are not first called up from long term memory, they remain alongside the new information. The problem is that new learning is more fragile and more easily forgotten, leaving the older misconception in place. If you doubt this happens, refer to the Private Universe Project http://www.learner.org/resources/series28.html. One of the strategies I find most useful is to follow formative assessment with guided inquiry, showing the logical inconsistency of a misconception. As Tina mentions above differentiated instruction works well in that students arrive at a misconceptions in a variety of ways and are best served when the path to understanding addresses this.

I have not used this yet, but and trying to integrate Standards based grading this year in my physics classes. I will check out these resources. So far I have been using Marzano.

Hi Matthew and welcome to the discussion threads.
You asked, 'Sue mentioned above that she learned how to write these kinds of probes. Has anyone else had any experience with writing your own? Have you had success? Any advice to someone who would be trying to write one for the first time? Thanks so much!'
Hi Matthew,
I recently participated in a Page Keeley webinar on Probes. She has so many books out now, that I have a feeling one could find a probe for every teaching occasion (so to speak). An astronomy probe book is on the horizon. I know she has a website(Uncovering Student Ideas), and she provides her email there. It would be interesting to know how she got started and if she follows some sort of template or graphic organizer as she writes her probes. If you have time, let us know what you find out.
Carolyn

Hello Matthew and Others, The conversation about writing your own probes seems like a good place for me to jump into the conversation! First of all let me explain that the probes in the Uncovering Student Ideas series are developed using a very systematic process from the Curriculum Topic Study (CTS) project- a set of NSF-funded tools and resources that link core ideas in the standards to research on learning www.curriculumtopicstudy.org . The best way to learn how this process is used to develop probes is to read the introduction to Uncovering STudent Ideas in Science- Volume 1 which is available as a freedownload from NSTA (I will attach it here). You can see from this introduction that the probes are specifically designed to elicit research-identified common misconceptions (which informs the development of the distracters). Go to page 4 to read more about the development process. It's not an easy, quick process and requires a lot of background research that needs to be done before developing the probe. Then there are the different formats I use- justified list, familiar phenomenon, friendly talk, P-E-O-E, thought experiment, vernacular vs. scientific word probes, etc. However, it is a great PD exercise to develop one of your own and the Leader's Guide to Science Curriculum Topic Study actually includes the full module and materials for facilitating probe development. By the way, the teacher notes I include with each probe are mostly the results of doing a full CTS to develop a bank of probes on a similar topic. Each probe usually goes through at least 5 iterations until I get it just right. On an average, I would say each probe I write, along with its accompanying teacher notes takes at least 12 hours of work. There are a lot of other careful considerations that go into the technical aspects such as word choice, sentence structure, context, etc. For teachers who want to develop similar probes, I suggest starting with the justified list format. One of the reasons I started this series was because I felt teachers needed a bank of well-constructed, research-informed probes that were field tested with diverse students and could be used across a variety of K-12 (and teacher education) contexts. There is a lot that goes into getting one "just right" and busy teachers usually don't have the time needed to put into probe development at the degree I (and my co-authors) have put into this work. So- I hope by having an extensive bank of probes to choose from, this will help foster the effective use of formative assessment (with the Astronomy book coming out in March 2012 there will be 220 total probes and more will keep coming!) There is also a USI web site at www.uncoveringstudentideas.org . I welcome teachers (and those who work with teacher) to share ways they have used the probes or FACTs (formative assessment classroom techniques)which I post under Shared Resources on the web site. If you develop a probe that meets the USI criteria (and has been tried with students) that you would be willing to share, please contact me through the web site. I hope this answered some of your questions about developing probes. I encourage everyone who uses USI to try developing one- it's a great PD exercise and one that you can collaborate with colleagues on. I think after you try one using the systematic process for connecting a core idea with research-identified misconceptions and taking into account what the research says about students' thinking about various phenomena, you will have an even greater appreciation for the ones that are already available! I'd be glad to address other questions you might have about the probes as well! Happy holidays. Page Keeley

Attachments

USI_Volume_1_Introduction_to_Formative_Assessment_Probes.pdf (0.64 Mb)

Hello All, I read all of your post and downloaded the attachments to read about the assessment probes. I am very excited to read and learn more about using the probes with my students. I will check back in to let you know how I am progressing. Thank you SO much, Chris

Hi Matthew, I know you asked about writing your own probes. I have had some success using discrepant events as a probe. I usually use a live or recorded demo (youtube), student labs, or even computer simulations. Off the top of my head, I have had students predict where they think an egg will land (Newton's 1st Law, http://www.stevespanglerscience.com/experiment/egg-drop-inertia-trick), I introduce the demo or lab and then ask students to make predictions about what they think will happen. It's not a nice, neat worksheet but you can easily create one. Hope this helps. Students can make their predictions in a variety of ways. I have used some of Page Keeley's formative assessment methods here. There is one of hers that I particularly like using. I present the problem with a list of possible choices (you can provide this list or have students brainstorm them) Each student is then given a sticky note and are asked to write down which choice they think is correct. Stress that no names are needed - this really encourages students to participate because it helps eliminate their fear of everyone seeing that their "wrong". The sticky notes are collected and put on the board to create a bar graph. It's great because everyone participates and I can quickly see what all of my students are thinking. It's kind of like homemade clickers. Thanks Page Keeley!!!

Souds interesting i am going to check it out

I have just finished reading and reflecting the whole formative assessment thread. I am wondering about an important piece that seems to be be missing from the discussion. let's assume you are getting ready to begin a new unit, or you re doing a check in on a concept you have been working on... what is going to happen differently in your instruction due to the information you have gathered? How will you/I move the student forward? Kathy

I just purchased the formative assessment probes for life science and physical science. They are so helpful!

Thank you to everyone for sharing these resources!

Kathy that is an excellent question. Formative assessment is all about moving students forward, and it isn't about us moving the kids it is about the kids moving themselves. Students need to be able to assess their learning. We need to help them set goals for their learning and help them learn to identify areas they need to improve. I find it very exciting as I observe students during their work, ask questions to check their understanding and listen to them question each other about their answers and ideas. I find formative assessment lets me really understand the learners in my classroom because of the dialogue we have with each other.

I have recently found (the last 2 years) that it is incredibly helpful to give a pretest when I start the unit for 2 reasons. It helps me know what the kids already have a handle on. But more importantly it helps the kids know what to focus on during the unit. It also shows me and the students how much actual growth they did during the unit. My students are much more engaged in the learning when they know they will find out how much they learned by the end of it.

Kathleen, I think it is important to only grade actual outcome. I agree with the post that said, the students know when they don't know and, over the years I've found, that they tend to deflate when they know you are giving them credit for effort that did not achieve the goal. The trick is to really scaffold them into the skills needed for success. They appreciate being held to a standard and then actually achieving that standard. My litmus test is honesty. When kids are not hitting the standard I tell them and give them help, tutoring, suggestions on how to increase their proficiency to get to the goal. They appreciate that and work hard to get there.

One other thought. I have a t-shirt that says, "If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you." When students ask me, "Is it good enough?" I ask them, "If you were packing your own parachute, would it be good enough?" Then I tell them. Any job worth doing, is worth doing well.