Tag Archives: reflective assessment

Dave Pierson successfully defends masters thesis

IMG_1075Congratulations to Dave Pierson for successfully defending his masters thesis entitled Elementary teachers’ assessment actions and elementary science education: Formative assessment enactment in elementary science.  Dave used RAES-Iowa project data to conduct a comparative case study investigating elementary teachers’ reasoning about students’ ideas and classroom formative assessment practices.  His committee members were myself, Soonhye Park, Associate Professor of Science Education in the University of Iowa College of Education, and Gabrielle Ludwig, Professor in the UI Department of Occupational and Environmental Health.  Dave, great work on this substantial accomplishment!

RAES-Iowa Year 1 Summer Institute

In the summer of 2012, 36 3rd-6th grade teachers from 4 area districts and 14 buildings joined RAES project team members Cory Forbes, Christopher Soldat, Jeanne Bancroft, Kathy Long, Charlie Stanier, Mandy Biggers, Jaime Sabel, and Laura Zangori for 7 days of collaborative work to begin learning to use Reflective Assessment, a formative assessment strategy developed by the Lawrence Hall of Science (LHS) for use with FOSS science modules. The summer institute focused on the Earth science content strand, within which teachers engaged with relevant content as learners, experimented with engaging in ‘high-leverage’ formative assessment practices, and planned to begin implementing Reflective Assessment in their enactment of their Earth science modules in the 2012-2013 academic year. We want to again thank all project partners, including the University of Iowa (UI) Colleges of Education and Engineering, Grant Wood Area Education Agency (GWAEA) and Van Allen Science Teaching Center (VAST Center), LHS at the University of California-Berkeley, the UI Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research (CGRER), Iowa City Community School District (ICCSD), Washington Community Schools (WCSD), Clear Creek Amana Community School District (CCACSD), Highland Community School District (HCSD), and St. James School. A special thanks go out to Mark Brockmeyer and the Iowa City Schools for allowing us to hold the Summer Institute at the ICCSD Educational Services Building and to Kim Lange for joining us in July (while visiting from Germany) and providing helpful feedback.

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RAES-Iowa project funded

RAESlogoThe Reflective Assessment for Elementary Science in Iowa (RAES-Iowa) project has been funded. More information about the project can be found here. I am thrilled to be working with an amazing group of project partners from the University of Iowa and CGRER, GWAEA and the VAST Center, FOSS at the Lawrence Hall of Science, and elementary teachers from the Iowa City Community School District (ICCSD), Washington Community Schools (WCSD), Clear Creek Amana Community School District (CCACSD), Highland Community School District (HCSD), and St. James School on this project. The first workshops for teachers begin June 13 in Iowa City!