Inquiry Work Samples – Water 3
Inquiry Work Samples – Water
What is a work sample?
State requirements
• "Teachers are expected to provide instruction and classroom assessment in all four dimensions of the scoring guide.”
What does an inquiry work sample look like?
• Work sample is essentially a lab report written by the student to show what he/she did and what he/she learned from that experience.
• Lab work
- may be done in class as part of a team experiment
- may be based on experiment which is in a module
- should provide student or group of students an opportunity to develop and investigate their own hypothesis or question
- should provide students an opportunity to modify or extend a procedure they have already used, or to invent a new procedure
• Written report
- must be the student's individual work
- may be the result of one or more rewrites
• Lab reports at all levels, K–12, follow the same format
§ Forming a question or hypothesis
· Provides background information to explain origin of question/hypothesis
· Develops a question or hypothesis that can be tested
· Clearly communicates ideas
§ Designing the investigation
· Describes a logical procedure
· Develops an experimental plan that addresses the hypothesis/question
· Clearly communicates ideas
§ Collecting and presenting data
· Records reasonable data
· Designs a data table
· Transforms original data into a more useful format (graph, chart, percentages, etc)
§ Analyzing and interpreting results
· Responds to question/hypothesis with some support from data
· Summarizes results accurately
Integrating work samples into the module
Water Observations
Part 2
You will need a data table here. Talk through the design of the data table with the students so they can see why the table looks the way it does.
Part 3
Writing a summary of what they learned would give the students practice in writing the conclusion to their experiment. Try to have them support their statements with specific data whenever possible.
Extensions
The math extension will give students an opportunity to organize some data and then make a graph showing the data.
Hot Water, Cold Water
Part 1
The student sheet for this activity provides a drawing of the thermometer for the students to add information to. It would be a good idea to also have the students draw the best picture oft heir thermometer they can. Labeling the drawing helps make the drawing convey more information.
Part 2
Again, having the students draw and label diagrams is good practice.
Part 3
Before and after pictures of the syringe and vial provide a good way to show what happened in this investigation.
Can the student write a sentence or two describing what happens to water as it freezes?
Water Vapor
Part 2
Another data table is needed. Can the students design this one? They can if you talk them through the process.
Can the students write a clear summary that relates air temperature to evaporation rate? Again, encourage them to use actual data in their summary.
Part 3
How does the surface area influence the rate of evaporation? The students should be able to explain this in a few sentences. Their answer should be supported with some numerical data.
Waterworks
Part 2
Drawing and labeling a diagram of their successful water wheel gives the students another opportunity to practice science drawing.
Part 4
The last activity in the module challenges the students to design and conduct their own investigation. They should be able to come up with a question or hypothesis to investigate and design a procedure to test their thinking. After displaying their data, they should be able to reach some conclusions based on their data. All you need to do to make this into an official work sample is have the students write their report on the work sample form.
Some of the activities that are listed on the “Project Ideas” student page will not generate numerical data. Without number data, the students can’t make the data tables and data transformations called for in the scoring guide. If you want to get scorable work samples from this activity, you will need to restrict investigations to those that will generate numerical results.
C:\Documents and Settings\Owner\My Documents\School\Elementary Project\Modules\4-Water\Inquiry Work Sample - Water.doc 4/4/2007