You need to find out which angle shows the largest increase in temperature. You need to design an experiment that shows that. It’s a design challenge.

I mean, it’s going up. The temperature’s going up.

[Student] Oh, my god, really?

[Student] What temperature is it at?

At the Stanford Center of Assessment, Learning, and Equity we produce some curriculum that was aligned to the new standards that had just come out at that point. The curriculum really engages students, and I think that some of that comes from having interesting projects that they’re working on and providing the options, the choice, the decision making. And really turning over some agency to them. This really is a whole different way of thinking about science education.

What we were committed to was adopting and using a curriculum that would break the cycle of predictability of who would succeed in science courses based upon their gender and ethnicity.

[Holthuis] Performance assessment is one that engages students, is really rich, and measures much more than just what do you know, what facts can you tell me or regurgitate.

You’re designing an angle of incoming light experiment.

They’re really often projects. They ask students to bring in skills, they ask them to bring in their content, to make connections, and to pool all that together into a larger product.

The assessment itself is really taking the information that they’ve learned and applying it. So, as opposed to giving them a page and saying fill in this blank,
circle this letter, give me this definition.

It’s going up really fast.

It’s at about 79.

[Student] It’s at 90 degrees.

‘Cause really any kid can memorize any of that information, but can they apply it to an actual real-world application?

We recognize that students walk in the door of this classroom with issues of status behind them. That they recognize themselves as being a science person or a non-science person.

So, this would be a 90 angle or a right angle, and then when it goes out…

And that it’s through student discourse and group work that they will start to dispel those beliefs about not only themselves but about their peers.

So that’s where we developed, and why we developed, an entire unit for teachers to implement at the start of the year where they help students think about what kind of behaviors are expected of you when you’re working in small groups.

It has to be a direct angle to the experiment.

Direct angle? Or are their any other angles?

Well, you could do any other angle, but…

The group roles really help kids understand that they have a task and they really can’t just be idle and by themselves and hide in a corner.

So, my job is the recorder/reporter. So, with that job, I have to write down all our notes and all our step-by-step stuff like this.

Right, they have to actually participate in order to achieve whatever it is
that they’re trying to achieve.

Ongoing professional development is coming from the communities of teachers at science collaborating, making decisions about their own practice, and then also giving us feedback.

The roadblock I find with some of the students who finish really quickly, is that they’re doing it because they want to do that piece, they want to do an extra piece that they’re interested in.

To have somebody who has been involved in the development of the curriculum, that same person takes it back to their own classroom and tries it out, you get really deep insight. It makes for much more robust curriculum, because you’re getting away
from content, content, content and saying, okay, do you know the content,
and can you do something with it?

[Teacher] I think it’s been really fruitful. The students seem to have a much more focused perspective on what we’re supposed to do. I have a much more focused perspective on what we’re supposed to do.

[Holthuis] It has really supported student learning tremendously.

Aptos Middle School