A National Science Foundation Update
This brief gives an overview—and by no means a comprehensive one—of several NGSS-aligned projects in the areas of curriculum, instruction, assessment, and professional development.
This brief gives an overview—and by no means a comprehensive one—of several NGSS-aligned projects in the areas of curriculum, instruction, assessment, and professional development.
Computer programming for young children has grown in popularity among both education researchers and product developers, but still relatively little is known about how to assess and track young children’s learning through coding. This study presents an assessment tool to track Kindergarten through second grade students’ learning after engaging in a programming curriculum. Researchers worked with N=57 Kindergarten through second grade students over seven weeks to implement a curriculum using ScratchJr to introduce concepts of sequencing to create animated stories, collages, and games.
A paper on the prototype evolution of the ScratchJr programming environment.
Automated assessment of student learning has become the subject of increasing attention. Students’ textual responses to short answer questions offer a rich source of data for assessment. However, automatically analyzing textual constructed responses poses significant computational challenges, exacerbated by the disfluencies that occur prominently in elementary students’ writing. With robust text analytics, there is the potential to analyze a student’s text responses and accurately predict his or her future success.
This paper presents a novel application of the soft cardinality text analytics method to support assessment of text.
Real-time formative assessment of student learning has become the subject of increasing attention. Students’ textual responses to short answer questions offer a rich source of data for formative assessment. However, automatically analyzing textual constructed responses poses significant computational challenges, and the difficulty of generating accurate assessments is exacerbated by the disfluencies that occur prominently in elementary students’ writing. With robust text analytics, there is the potential to accurately analyze students’ text responses and predict students’ future success.
This paper presents WriteEval, a hybrid text analytics method for analyzing student-constructed responses.
Growing attention to preK mathematics and increased focus on standards in the US may be leading policy makers, administrators, and practitioners down the wrong path when it comes to assessing young children. The temptation to rely on standardised assessment practices may result in misguided understandings about what children actually know about mathematics.
Webinar Recording:
http://edc.adobeconnect.com/p3qr9x4upr5/
This webinar, led by Edith Gummer (formerly of NSF), discusses the guidelines outlined in the report co-authored by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education and the National Science Foundation.
Leaders of three DR K-12 projects identify successful instructional strategies for using technology-enhanced curriculum materials, games, and models to achieve the NGSS practices.
The media, the public, and, indeed, many teachers have significantly criticized the introduction of the Common Core, citing concerns such as that it overcomplicates simple topics, diminishes innovation, and ignores equity issues. Following the recent introduction of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), we need compelling examples and powerful research to prevent premature criticism and ensure successful implementation.
Presenters discuss how their projects contribute systemically to the design, implementation, and evaluation of quality elementary science programs.
Quality elementary science programs are faced with the challenge of adapting and/or building upon the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) in order to provide an essential foundation for student learning and interest in science. As such, these science programs must address how the practices of science can be linked with cross-cutting concepts through meaningful learning contexts that, of necessity, evolve progressively across grades.
