Use the following suggestions to assess student understanding and learning at the beginning, middle, and end of the Level B lessons.
Pre-Assessment
Use students’ comparisons in Step 2 of the Engage: Growing Up Green activity to determine their understanding of what plants need to grow. Reflect on their responses to the questions posed in Step 3 to assess their initial ideas about seasonal changes in trees.
Formative Assessment
- Periodically analyze students’ tree journals, noting:
- Detail in students’ observations and how appropriately they identify observed patterns over time.
- How accurately they record daylight data and observations.
- During 3: Every Tree for Itself, assess whether students’ conclusions about plant needs are supported by their observations.
- During 4: Bursting Buds, assess the appropriateness and detail of students’ observations.
Final Performance Assessment
Part 1: Assess students’ understanding of the changes in daylight hours over the course of the year using the Daylight Hours student page. If this was not completed as part of the 4: Bursting Buds activity, provide students with copies of the student page and show them how to use the data previously collected in their My Tree Journals to complete it. Then, challenge students to graph the data using the template provided.
Part 2: Give students copies of the Seasons Tree Chart student page (or paper plates folded in quarters and labeled with the four seasons). Using the labeled paper plate and the Daylight Hours student page, instruct students to:
- Draw a picture that represents how your tree looked in the Fall, Winter, and Spring, adding as much detail as you can.
- In each quadrant—Fall, Winter, and Spring – write a sentence that describes what is happening with the hours of daylight and the tree in each season. For example: In the fall, the leaves on my tree turned red and fell off and the days got shorter. In the winter, my tree was bare and the days started to get longer, but it was cold.
- In the Summer quadrant, predict what your tree will look like and what will happen with the hours of daylight.
Use the suggested Performance Assessment Sample Rubric teacher page to score student results.
