Formative assessment questions provide a useful lens into students' minds regarding what they are thinking about chemistry. By ascertaining what students are thinking, teachers can make decisions regarding what to do with what they learn. The members of ACCT (Assessing for Change in Chemical Thinking) presented a ChemEd X Talk on May 26th to discuss how they categorize formative assessment questions in order to plan out their classes more deliberately and better design purposefully written formative assessments that align with their curricular goals. You can watch the edited recording of ACCT's Talk below and find more resources here.
ChemEd X Talk Recording: Edited video of ACCT's ChemEd X Talk. ChemEd X Vimeo Channel (6/1/2021)
Figure 1: Example formative assessment survey form.
Participants were asked to complete a survey form before the ChemEd X Talk requesting input on formative assessments that would be discussed during the Talk. See figure 1 for one example of the four that were shared. These formative assessments were previously outlined in Scott Balicki's blog post, What do you want to know about your students' chemical thinking? Categorizing chemistry formative assessments. The ACCT team discussed the survey results during their presentation.
One of the presenters, Scott Balicki, has published several blog posts about ACCT content on ChemEd X that provide a good entry point for understanding the project.
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Students have answered the question, but what are they thinking?
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The exploding Pringles design challenge: Formative assessment with a bang! (The Pringles Design Challenge was specifically referenced within the ChemEd X Talk as a laboratory activity that can be used as a formative assessment.)
Interested readers can find a great deal of valuable ACCT content on the ACCT Collection page housed on the ChemEd X platform. See the list below for specific types of resources within that content.
- Resources for doing formative assessment in the classroom
- Studying teachers that enact formative assessment
- Analyzing how students' use chemical thinking
- About the ACCT project
At least one of the attendees of this Talk expressed that engaging students in class discussion can be difficult so we are sharing a few resources related to that topic beyond those available within the ACCT content as well.
- Using the Talk Science Primer in a Chemistry Classroom
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How “The Learning Pit” Can Help Establish a Culture for Learning
About the Presenters
Scott Balicki, Gregory Banks, Michael Clinchot, Marianne Dunne and Robert Huie, members of ACCT, represent a NSF-funded collaboration between university researchers, graduate and postdoctoral students, and high school and middle school teachers. ACCT focuses on fostering chemical thinking in middle school, high school and undergraduate classrooms through strategic formative assessment usage. To accomplish this they develop resources, tools, and professional development for teachers of chemistry to foster students’ chemical thinking. They also study how chemistry teachers’ reasoning about formative assessment changes and how chemistry teachers shift to emphasize formative assessment as a lever for change.
Scott Balicki, Marianne Dunne, Greg Banks, Robert Huie & Michael Clinchot
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To find the schedule of future ChemEd X Talks as well as more recordings of previous Talks, see the ChemEd X Talks schedule.