Biological - NIH Office of Science Education - National Institutes of ...

shot” of what the students understand and how
far they have come from where they began. In
reality, the evaluation of students’ conceptual
understanding and ability to use skills begins with
the Engage lesson and continues throughout each
stage of the model. However, combined with the
students’ written work and performance of tasks
throughout the module, the Evaluate lesson can
serve as a summative assessment of what students
know and can do.
The Evaluate lesson in this module, Lesson 5,
Sleepiness and Driving: What You Don’t Know Can
Kill You, provides an opportunity for students to
• demonstrate what they understand about sleep
and how well they can apply their knowledge to
solve a problem;
• share their current thinking with others;
• assess their own progress by comparing their
current understanding with their prior knowledge;
and
• ask questions that take them deeper into a
concept.
To review the relationship of the 5E Instructional
Model to the concepts presented in the module,
see the chart Conceptual Flow of the Lessons, on
page 4.
When you use the 5E Instructional Model, you
engage in practices that are nontraditional. In
response, students also participate in their learning
in ways that are different from those seen in a
traditional classroom. The charts on pages 10 and
11, What the Teacher Does and What the Students
Do, outline these differences.
How Does the Module Support
Ongoing Assessment?
Because teachers will use this module in many
ways and at a variety of points in their curriculum,
the most appropriate mechanism for assessing
student learning occurs informally throughout
the lessons, rather than something that happens
more formally just once at the end of the module.
Accordingly, specific assessment components are
integrated into the lessons. These “embedded”
assessment opportunities include one or more of
the following strategies:
• performance-based activities (for example,
developing graphs or participating in a discussion
of health effects or social policies);
• oral presentations to the class (for example, presenting
experimental results); and
• written assignments (for example, answering
questions or writing about demonstrations).
These strategies allow you to assess a variety of
aspects of the learning process, such as students’
prior knowledge and current understanding,
problem-solving and critical-thinking skills, level
of understanding, communication skills, and ability
to synthesize ideas and apply their understanding
to a new situation.
An assessment icon and an annotation
that describes the aspect of learning
that you can assess appear in the margin
beside the step in which each
embedded assessment occurs.
How Can Controversial Topics
Be Handled in the Classroom?
Teachers sometimes feel that the discussion of
values is inappropriate in the science classroom
or that it detracts from the learning of “real” science.
The lessons in this module, however, are
based upon the conviction that there is much to
be gained by involving students in analyzing
issues of science, technology, and society. Society
expects all citizens to participate in the democratic
process, and our educational system must
provide opportunities for students to learn to
deal with contentious issues with civility, objectivity,
and fairness. Likewise, students need to
learn that science intersects with life in many
ways.
In this module, students have a variety of opportunities
to discuss, interpret, and evaluate basic
science and health issues, some in the light of values
and ethics. As students encounter issues about
which they feel strongly, some discussions might
become controversial. How much controversy
develops will depend on many factors, such as
how similar the students are with respect to
socioeconomic status, perspectives, value systems,
and religious preferences. In addition, the
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Implementing the Module