The Lawrence Hall of Science will conduct a four-year project to: (1) define, field test, validate and produce formative and summative classroom assessments in grades 3-6, based on the FOSS science materials; and (2) create professional development materials that promote their effective use by teachers.
The project is timely in that it brings together curriculum developers at the Lawrence Hall of Science, eight diverse national centers that include teachers, education leaders and students, and the most recent research on assessing student learning from UC Berkeley, SRI and the NRC report, "Knowing What Students Know."
The development process will create construct maps that describe major ideas in science, construct sub-maps that describe the elements of a major idea taught in a FOSS unit, and develop progress maps that track learning through the several construct maps that constitute a complete module.
Products resulting from the work include valid and reliable formative and summative assessments, management software and professional development tools.
