COAST METRO
Regional Standards for Performance Tasks in Science, Grades K-6
DRAFT June 2009

Welcome

For the past four years the nine school districts of the Coast Metro Consortium have been engaged in a Science Project led by the Delta and Richmond school districts. The project has seen grade level teams of teachers examine their teaching practice in Science with an emphasis on developing hands-on performance tasks and developing draft regional standards for these tasks.

The draft Coast Metro Regional Standards for Performance Tasks in Science for Grades K-6 are now available for piloting and response. We hope to have draft regional standards for performance tasks in Science for grades 7-9 in spring 2010.

If you wish to pilot the regional standards for the grade level you teach, you should download the following sections:
-About the draft regional standards
-The particular grade level package
-Appendices
-Invitation to participate

Please see the “Invitation to participate” section for information about how individual teachers, school staffs, or school districts can participate in this project.

Invitation to participate in the project

The Coast Metro Consortium Science Project invites teachers across the province to participate in piloting these draft regional standards for performance tasks in Science K6 during the 2009-2010 school year.

Teachers are invited to try the tasks in this document with their classes or to develop other performance tasks. In either case, participating teachers are invited to send the Project a task write-up and class set of student work. We may use some of these examples in the final document.

Instructions and contact information

If you choose to participate in the project, here are some instructions for proceeding.

Developing a performance task:
Avoid using copyrighted materials
This project is unlikely to use copyrighted materials as we do not have the resources to get permissions. At any rate, many published tasks do not have a good match to the BC curriculum and are not performance tasks. Teachers in our project are now typically developing better activities than those in many commercially published materials. If you do use copyrighted materials, please note that and indicate the source.

Address prescribed learning outcomes for both skills & processes and content
Focus on the prescribed learning outcomes, not the achievement indicators, etc. in the IRP. Provincial curriculum is defined as the PLOs and teachers are required to teach to them; the additional materials are suggestions only and teachers have professional autonomy.

Ask yourself: Is it a performance task?
You can refer to Characteristics of Performance Tasks in Appendix 1, but if the task has students applying grade level skills and processes to grade level content, it’s a good start. We have found that simple tasks are often more effective than complex “projects”.

Address all or most of the four aspects on the scale – Skills & Processes, Attitudes & Dispositions, Making Connections, and Knowledge & Understanding of Science Concepts
Use the draft charts to help you think about how you could collect information about student performance in relation to each of the four aspects on the scale -Skills & Processes, Attitudes & Dispositions, Making Connections, and Knowledge & Understanding of Science Concepts. Some Skills and Processes, for example, recording, are easily seen in written work, but most require teacher observation. Attitudes and Dispositions are best ascertained by teacher observation and listening. Questions on Making Connections and Knowledge & Understanding of Science Concepts can be built into the task but teachers can listen and observe and question to elicit additional information. Please consider recording observations and/or what students said in conferencing or in response to questioning and prompts. These can be recorded on post-it notes and attached to the student samples.

Writing up the task:
Name of Task
Do not agonize over this; we simply need something to call it.
Teacher’s name and contact information
In case we have questions and need to contact you.

Context
Use the form “The class was working on a unit on…” or something similar to describe the context in the past tense. If there is anything quite extraordinary about the class, it could also be noted here; e.g., and ESL reception class. In deciding on the voice and amount of information, remember that your audience is your teacher colleagues.

Learning outcomes
Use the prescribed learning outcomes verbatim, even if whole outcome does not apply. Do not revise the outcome, add additional outcomes, or use achievement indicators.

Process
Use the form “Students were asked to…” to describe the task in the past tense. Again, remember that your audience is teachers.

Sending student samples:
A highlighted scale
Highlight a draft scale for each student sample and staple the highlighted scale to the student sample.

Send a signed permission form for each student
The originals of the permission forms should be retained by your school or district depending on local procedures; copies should be stapled to the student samples that you send to us.

Mail to the Coast Metro Science Project
The package you send to the Project should include a task write-up, student samples, each with a permission form and a highlighted draft scale, and your comments on the draft scale. Mail the package to:

Coast Metro Science Project
c/o Wendy Lim
School District #38 (Richmond)
7811 Granville Avenue
Richmond, BC, V6Y 3E3

Questions: Contact Anita Chapman at anitachapman@shaw.ca
Deadline for submissions: March 15, 2010