How Will I Know What's Been Learned?
Here are some assessment strategies you might consider:
Have students keep design folders with sketches, pages from web sites, notes, and measurement records. Ask students to pick two items from their folder and tell you why they selected each one and explain what it shows.
Observe students as they design and test their ramps. Listen to their comments and questions and use them to engage students in conversations about what they are doing and discovering.
As preparation for the science process and content section of your state assessment in science have students write research reports. Ask them to include answers to the following questions:
What did you predict?
What did you do?
What data did you collect?
What did you learn?
- Have students make oral presentations that include the following:
Introduction—gets the audience's attention.
Key ideas—provides details.
Evidence—tells the audience what the researcher found.
Conclusion—reminds the audience what the talk was about.
- Integrate the challenge into language arts. During the challenge, have students create "Challenge Word Lists"
with terms and definitions that are important or new to them. At the end of the challenge, ask students to write paragraphs
that use correct technical vocabulary to describe what they did and discovered. Look for the following elements:
Title—tells what the paragraphs are about.
Topic sentence—gives the main idea of each paragraph.
Supporting sentences—give ideas or reasons to support the main idea in the topic sentence.
Detail sentences—give extra information about particular supporting sentences.
Concluding sentence—sums up the paragraph.
- On Marble Roll Day, have students put their ramps in a long line starting with the ramp that resulted
in the marble rolling the greatest distance. Then discuss as a class which ramps worked the best and why.
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