As students get older, they are often encouraged to write exclusively in words. In science, however, “writing through pictures” is a vital tool for sense making. Drawings, diagrams, graphs, maps, and tables can communicate ideas in much more complete and complex ways than words alone.
When students use graphics to represent their ideas, the process can often help them to clarify their own understandings. Graphics catalyze students’ abilities to develop and verbally articulate new theories and explanations and to make essential connections. This is true for students from kindergarten through high school.
Learn more about the types of graphic assessments used on standardized tests.
Drawings
Insights modules include evaluation of student’s drawings as part of the assessment framework. For example, in the grades-K–1 Living Things module, the introductory assessment is a drawing. Children are asked to draw a plant in the middle of a piece of paper. Then they draw around it all the things that it needs to grow. As a way to assess children’s emerging understanding of the sense, they are asked to circle anything in the picture that they think they could smell and mark anything they could hear with an “X.” Criteria for evaluating the student responses are included, and teachers use the Assessment Record provided to keep track of their evaluations.
Learn more about this example of a drawing assessment.
Some STC modules include “before” and “after” drawings as part of their assessment. For instance, in the grade-3 Plant and Development module, children are asked to make a drawing of what they think a bee looks like. As part of a later lesson, they observe a real bee with a hand lens and look for specific body parts. Then, at the end of the module, children are asked to make a second drawing of a bee based on their observations. They compare these later drawings with their previous drawings and discuss how their drawings and their understanding of bees has changed. Some instruction about how to compare the drawings in provided for teachers. They use their own forms or record books for recording their evaluations.
Learn more about this example of a drawing assessment.
Diagrams
T.R.A.C.S. modules include diagramming activities as a way of evaluating pre-instruction knowledge. For example, in the grade-5 Investigating Human Systems module, students are asked to make a diagram of the human musculo-skeletal system (without using the names of specific muscles or bones). The students are asked to envision what is underneath their skin and to try to represent it. Later in the module, students make life-sized body outlines and map the body systems. Teachers are encouraged to compare the earlier diagrams with the body maps. Some instruction about how to compare the diagrams is included in the Assessment Indicators section of the Outcomes chart, and a checklist sheet is provided for recording teachers’ evaluations.
Learn more about this example of a diagram assessment.
Some of the FOSS modules include diagram reading as part of the assessment. For example, as part of the summative assessment for the grades-5–6 Mixtures and Solutions module, students are asked to compare and extract data from the Venn diagrams of two imaginary students. The Venn diagrams are intended to represent the relationship between mixtures and solutions and include four different liquids. Two diagrams are presented, and questions are asked about how to read them and if the representations are accurate. A scoring rubric helps teachers interpret the responses, and a record sheet is provided which they can use to keep track of their assessments.
Learn
more about this example of a diagram assessment.
