Alternative assessments for taxonomy

This article has a compilation of compelling tasks that the author used with her students to teach classification. Brief descriptions of each task are given, but it is up to the reader to de... See More

This article has a compilation of compelling tasks that the author used with her students to teach classification. Brief descriptions of each task are given, but it is up to the reader to develop rubrics to grade these assessments. In the original unit, the author divided her class into teams and gave each team a task. This could also be used as an alternative assessment at the end of a traditional unit. While originally designed for a middle school classroom, these tasks could also be used with younger high school students.

Diverse activities lead to student sharing

The author has divided up a classification unit into parts such that student teams teach the class about biological classification schemes. It is a very busy and ambitious lesson plan but ha... See More

The author has divided up a classification unit into parts such that student teams teach the class about biological classification schemes. It is a very busy and ambitious lesson plan but has the benefit of keeping everyone busy on projects that jigsaw at the end into a whole. The description of the assessment is vague and does not clearly explain how students are evaluated. The lesson could be used for middle-high school.