Jenny Holt 14.1

Think of a lesson plan from your licensure area. Knowing that assessment is an integral part of teaching, explain at least four informal and formal assessments that you will use in your lesson plan to provide you with feedback and involve the students in assessing their own learning. 

For this example, I will be a 4th grade teacher introducing how human activities can affect the environment. For this lesson, I'll be introducing oil spills. The students will have a chance to simulate an oil spill and learn about ways to clean it up. There are plenty of opportunities for assessment in this activity. The majority of these opportunities are just through your own observation, but I have included several examples of how to include informal and formal assessment throughout. 

On the first day, I would read to my students the beginning pages of the book Oil Spill!  By Melvin Berger. This section of the book focuses on how oil spills happen and their environmental impact. During this read-a-loud I would stop to allow the students a chance to share their inferences and predications, along with other reading comprehension strategies. Through this questioning and discussion, I would be able to informally assess how much the students already know about oil spills and what they have learned from the read a loud. I would then be able to further explain the impact oil spills have on the environment and tie that in to other related concepts such as animal habitats and the food chain. I would not finish the book, just yet, as the end pages of the book introduce terminology and practices that are used in actual oil spill clean ups, today.

On the second day, I would begin with another type of informal assessment by having the students recall what we read about the day before by having them write down what they know about oil spills in their science journal. I would encourage them to think about what they might like to know, or what questions they may have.  I could later collect them, for an overview of what may need to be retaught. This will also get them involved in their own self-assessment, as they have the opportunity to explore what they know, what they may not know yet,  and what they want to know. 

After the journaling activity, I would tell the students that today they are going to be scientists who have been called to figure out a way to clean up an oil spill. The students would work in pairs for this activity. In front of them they will have a pan of water into which you would pour vegetable oil (mixed with cocoa powder to simulate crude oil). The students are then given materials such as a coffee filter, pipe cleaners, a spoon, a pipette, a sponge, etc. At this point in the activity I would pass out a worksheet for them to record their predictions, observations, and what actually happened. This worksheet would include questions that require them to apply previous knowledge (what they know about how oil behaves with water, potential environmental impacts, etc) and would be collected at the end of the activity, making it a formal assessment. While the students are experimenting with the activity and testing their predictions I would be walking around using guiding questions to help them think about what they are observing and relating it to the real world. This again, would be a type of informal assessment. (Can you tell I am a fan of informal assessment, yet?)

At the end of the activity, we would come together as a whole group and share what each team found. We would then read the end pages of the book Oil Spill! And compare their materials that worked best to actual oil clean up methods. We would then discuss why we even need oil in the first place and what every day products it is used in (transportation when made into gasoline, plastic, aspirin, detergents...). You could extend this activity by having students think about what they could do to help prevent oil spills (using less electricity, etc.). At the end of the lesson I would ask the students to explain in their own words why we need oil, how spills can impact animals and the environment, and to identify at least 2 clean up methods using the correct terminology.  I would have them write this down on a post it as their "ticket out the door" and post it on the door as they leave for the day. This would serve as a formal assessment.