As students get older, they are often encouraged to write exclusively in words. In science, however, “writing through pictures” is a vital tool for sense making. Diagrams, graphs, drawings, maps, and tables can frequently communicate ideas in much more complete and complex ways than words alone.
When students use graphics to represent their ideas, the process can often help them to clarify their own understandings. Drawing, in particular, can catalyze students’ abilities to develop and verbally articulate new theories and explanations, and to make essential connections. This is true for students from kindergarten through high school.
Exemplary high school curricula offer a diverse array of graphic assessment tools. In an ecosystems unit, students might diagram an ecosystem using biotic factors, abiotic factors, trophic levels, and energy flow, for example. In a force and motion unit, students might create graphs depicting position versus time for the motion described during a specified time period. Such graphics provide windows into student understanding; in addition, they provide insight into what activities will best serve students’ learning needs.
Learn more about the types of graphic assessments used on standardized tests.
Diagrams
Concept mapping is an integral part of the Insights in Biology assessment process. Concept maps and diagrams are designed to help students see the connections between related concepts, helping them organize information, identify relationships between concepts, make connections to relevant experiences outside of class, and, mostly, identify gaps in their own understanding. The concept map can serve as a good baseline assessment by helping to identify students’ prior conceptions and assessing their understanding. It can also serve as an embedded assessment by helping students figure out where they are in their understanding at any point during the module.
In the “What on Earth?” module, in Learning Experience 3 (Round and Round They Go), students are asked to create an ecosystem concept map with 15 different terms. A scoring rubric is provided for the teacher.
Learn more about this example of a Diagram.
Drawings/Graphs
Throughout Minds-On Physics, drawings and graphs are used throughout the curriculum. Students create their own sketches for given situations and learn to represent and describe motion, for example, through the use of graphs. In other words, students are learning how to translate from the verbal to the graphical.
In the "Motion" module, for example, students are asked to sketch what motion looks like based on either prior experiences or observations they make during an activity. Students are asked to sketch position versus time, to label regions and critical points, and to sketch the situation and indicate the path of the object. They are further asked to make sketches of a toy car and rubber band, a vertical spring, and a marble and ramp.
Learn more about this example of a Drawing/Graph.
