Formative Assessment

Formative Assessment


Identifying and responding to the students learning needs. Teachers make 'frequent' interactive assessments of student understanding. This enables teachers to adjust their teaching strategies to accommodate to the various learning styles of students in the class. Students are also actively involved in the process, helping them to develop certain skills to benefit them to learn better.

Implementing FA into the classroom

Module 9.3: Blueprint of Life

Statement: 'Cloning' is the most beneficial means to reproduce

Four corners: Agree/strongly Agree; Disagree/Strongly Disagree: discussion between groups

Students unsure: Stay seated.

This form of formative assessment will allow the teacher to assess current progress of students in the class. The teacher can make notes as to who is having problems understanding of the concepts and can spend more time with those unsure of the concept.    

Biology Misconceptions

Biology Misconception
Students believe that the colour of veins is blue. A widely held misconception is that the colour of deoxygenated human blood, the blood returning to the heart and lungs in veins, is blue. This concept of blue blood has been illustrated in text books to distinguish arteries from veins to help students understand the concept. (ENC) Blood is either dark red (venous) or bright red (arterial), but if we were to illustrate this in textx to help teach students they could get mixed up between which blood vessel carries deoxygenated blood and which vessel carries oxygenated blood. As blue and red are complete opposites it's easier for students to understand that veins carry deoxygenated blood to the heart and lungs and arteries carry oxygenated blood away from the heart and lungs.

Another reason this is a widely held misconception is that when you look at the blood vessels in your hands, arms and legs they look blue. Therefore, why don't we bleed blue blood? That has been a question I encountered on my last practical. I was even unaware as to why it was. After that, I found that larger blood vessels that are further away from the skins surface appear to be blue because light is refracted by the skin and the vessel walls.

How to address the misconception
You can ask what colour the veins and arteries are, have a visual of the circulatory system on the board and ask students what is wrong with the picture, explain to students that the reason for colouring veins blue is a technique used to help emphasise that veins carry deoxgenated blood and arteries carry oxygenated blood, ask them if veins are blue why don't we bleed blue blood?, use other examples where refraction changes the colour of something. 

ENC-http://www.enc.org/features/focus/archive/misconceptions/document.shtm?input=FOC-003301-answers

Syllabus point

compare the structure of arteries,

capillaries and veins in relation to their

function (9.2.2)

BOS Stage 6 Support Document

This document provides a very valuable resource for teachers as it interprets the stage 6 science syllabus for teachers in a very clear and succinct manner. It also offers advice to those who are writing units of work by providing a scaffold of how the unit should be set out. The document also provides a model of what a scope and sequence as well as how an assessment schedule should be set out.

 The support document does not provide program for each unit encountered in the stage 6 syllabus, but it does offer examples from other  KLAs in the stage 6 science syllabus. For example, it does provide an example of Module 9.2 'Senior science' syllabus. However the same scaffold will be used for any of the stage 6 science courses. It will only differ in the content.

In conclusion, the document is very useful for teachers writing up units of work for their students as it 'breaks down' the syllabus so that a teacher can make sense of the Stage 6 Biology Syllabus or any other KLA in science. If I were to write up a program for Module 8.5, I would be able to determine how to write it up to incorporate all the syllabus outcomes required of the students.
    

Week 2

Syllabus point: Discuss the ways in which developments in scientific knowledge may conflict with the ideas about the origins of life. (Module: 8.4-Life on Earth)

This is a discussion which has caused quite a lot of heated discussion between people taking sides of either science or religion. This bullet point would be great for values to be integrated into the teaching the bullet point because it gives students a chance to listen to others opinions and respect that others have different opinions regarding the concept.

A possible teaching strategy could be to separate the class into debating teams (randomly) as those who may have views that are different to the side they have been put in they can observe how the other side thinks. Students select 5 people from their group to debate for their side. Each group will go out and research their side of the argument. So one side could debate that different cultures and science are complete opposites in their views; whereas the other side could look at the point of view is that science and different cultures views on the topic aren't complete polar opposites.