How Will I Know What's Been Learned?

Here are some assessment strategies you might consider:

• Observe students as they design and test methods for measuring height. Listen to their discussions, comments, and questions. Engage students in conversations about what they are doing and discovering.

• Use the challenge as preparation for sections of state proficiency tests that focus on science as a process of inquiry. Ask students to use the following questions to summarize what they have learned.

  What did you predict?
  What did you do?
  What did you learn?

  Encourage students to use evidence to support their answers to each question.

• Have students create collages of the challenge. Suggest that they use pictures, objects, and words to depict what they did, the data they collected, and what they learned.

• On Measuring Day have students present and describe how they measured their height. Encourage them to discuss what they did, how well their method worked, and what they would do to improve it.

• Integrate the challenge into language arts. At the end of the challenge, ask students to write paragraph(s) about what they did and discovered. Look for the following elements:

  Title—tells what the paragraph(s) is/are about.
  Topic sentence—gives the main idea of the paragraph(s).
  Supporting sentences—give ideas or reasons to support the main idea in the topic sentence.
  Concluding sentence—sums up the paragraph(s).
  

  Before students begin to write, give them time to talk their ideas through with you or another student. Circulate among students as they work and discuss their sentences with them.

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