Science EOG Review Note Pages

As I wrap up my first year teaching in North Carolina, I have started to prepare for our End of Grade (EOG) assessments. In Maryland, our 5th grade state science assessment was given in March, so we barely got through all of the content, which means we definitely didn't have much time for review.

In NC, we take state assessments the last week of school. This means we have plenty of time to review all of the content that we have learned. North Carolina also has their own science standards instead of following the NGSS, which I have been using the past 5 years or so.

It has been fun teaching different topics and I have definitely had to teach myself quite a few things before teaching the kids (hello weather unit!). I decided I wanted to find a quick, easy way to review the content that we have learned this year, but could not find exactly what I was looking for online. So this weekend I used one of my new favorite tool: Canva!

I created one-page scaffolded note pages that students can use their notes or my unit teacher slides to complete. I also created a teacher model for students who need more support in completing the pages.

As I was adding the note pages to TPT, I was able to connect some of them to the middle school NGSS standards. 

Here are the topics:

- Cells

- Heredity

- Body Systems

- Ecosystems

- Matter

- Force and Motion

- Heat Transfer

- Weather

I listed the note pages individually on TPT, as well as, them all grouped together. I usually like to share my resources for free, but this one took quite a few hours of my time and let's be honest I am not getting a paycheck this summer!

Click the name of each topic above to see the listings, or click here for the entire bundle.

Technology Spotlight: Quizizz

www.quizizz.com

Quizizz is an online, free gamified quiz platform that can be used from anywhere. My favorite thing is that the quizzes are student-paced, so while it is a competition, students can still work at their own pace. The questions will show up on each student's screen.

You can search from tons of quizzes that are already created or choose to create your own quiz with your own questions or pull the questions from those quizzes that have already been created. There are 5 question types: multiple choice, check box, fill in the blank, poll, and open ended. The poll and open ended are not graded, but are a great check-in or exit ticket type of question where students can share their opinions, give explanations, or tell you how they are feeling.

Once students are taking a quiz, you can see a very detailed report section in your teacher dashboard live as they are taking it or view it afterwards once they have finished.

This is a great tool for quick, informative assessments, especially during this upcoming school year where you may be teaching virtually, in small groups, or socially distanced in your classroom.

I put this presentation together for my school and thought I would share it with you all.

Find more help with Quizizz at their Help Center found here: https://quizizz.zendesk.com/hc/en-us

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Technology Spotlight: Kahoot

I'm so excited to be leading a guiding coalition on educational technology. I will be working with the same group of educators each month and introducing different tools they can use in their classrooms. This month I focused on assessment. I introduced Edulastic for my intermediate teachers and Kahoot for my primary teachers.

Since I've already done a post about Edulastic, I'd thought I would focus this post on Kahoot.

You can see my step by step guide below for Kahoot that walks you through how to create an account, creating quizzes, and viewing reports.

When using Kahoot, one thing to keep in mind is that you must wait for all users to enter the game room before you begin a game. Another thing to consider when choosing Kahoot as a tool is the fact that the answer choices that your students choose from are projected on the screen and the students only have the color choices on their screen. This may be good for primary students who need a simpler format when using a Web tool like this. The students are all answering the same question at the same time, so when they have answered a question they must wait for the others to answer before moving on. Again this may be good for primary grade levels where the teacher wants more control, but your intermediate students may get bored while waiting. Intermediate students may benefit from Kahoot if given a chance to create their own Kahoot for the class since the platform for creating quizzes is very easy to use.

Another modification for primary students, especially when first using Kahoot, have students complete the assessment as a small group or with a partner, ie. one device per 2-4 students.

Kahoot Step-by-Step Guide

Check back soon for my post on Quizizz so you can see which one you like best!

Technology Spotlight: Edulastic

 

www.edulastic.com

I first learned about Edulastic at a workshop I attended back in January. We didn't get a chance to go over it in detail at the workshop, so I looked it up and explored it on my own.  As soon as I began exploring I was like where has this been all of my teaching life?!

Edulastic is a website that allows you to create assessments online. I work for a Google county, so the first thing I liked was that I (and my students) could sign in with Google with one-click. It also connects to Google Classroom so you can easily add a class and then push assignments to Google Classroom.

There is an assessment library where you can search for previously created assessments or create a new assessment with previously created questions. The function I used the most, though, was creating my own assessments and questions.

You can create assessments for any content area and attached standards from Common Core, NGSS, or state-specific standards. Another feature I absolutely love is Collection option. When you create an assessment you can keep it private to only yourself, you can share it on a school level so that other teachers in your school who have an account with Edulastic can see the assessments (we used this a lot on my grade level team), you can share it on a District level if there are other teachers in your district who have signed up, and/or make the assessment Public so that anyone with an Edulastic account can access it.

The assessments I used and tried with my students this year were in Science, Math, and Reading. This program helps prepare students for the PARCC and MISA (our version of the science assessment for NGSS). You can create classic questions types with items like: multiple choice/selection, essay, true/false, or text drop down. There are also math technology enhanced items like: numeric, expressions, fractions, graphs, label an image, multi-part, or drawing. (these would also be great for science) Lastly, there are ELA technology enhanced items like: passage based, editing task, matching, re-sequencing.

The thing that I have been looking for forever it passage based responses that would allow the reading passage to be next to the question similar to how it is designed on the PARCC assessments. Well with this program you can do that! Did I mention that it also grades the assessments for you?? (except for the written responses obviously)

Under the Assignment tab, you can see which students have completed assignments, see the responses that students have submitted, grade the open-ended/written response questions, and then release the grades to the students so that they can see their scores. 

Another feature is the Reports section. This section allows you to see a Mastery Report by standard. This allows you to quickly and easily see what standards the students have mastered and which ones they need to work on.

I am sure there are features that I am missing and/or haven't discovered yet. I am really looking forward to using Edulastic more next year!