Biology End-of-Course Exam: 2014 Strategies for Describing Unintended Consequences

Background Information o Students in the classes of 2013 and 2014 are not required to pass a state science exam for the purposes of graduation. o Beginning with the class of 2015, students are required to pass the biology EOC. The biology EOC was first available to those students in the spring of 2012.

Types of Questions on the EOC

Short Answer Item Types o New Procedures o Field Study o Conclusions o Unintended Consequences o Criteria & Constraints o Test Solution o Research & Explore o Redesign

Word Wall 1) Unintended 2) Consequence 3) Effect 4) Insecticide 5) Ecosystem

Prompt

Item AttributesScore Point Effect on a part of the forest ecosystem (#1) 1 Change in another part of the forest ecosystem (#1) Effect on a part of the forest ecosystem (#2) 1 Change in another part of the forest ecosystem (#2) Total (value attributes & score points) 2/2 Attributes Score Points Unintended Consequence Attributes Unintended Consequence Attributes

Attributes o Effect on a part of the forest ecosystem o Did you describe two unintended effects (#1 and #2)? o Common reasons this point is missed: o Writing only a single unintended effect or none at all

Attributes o Changes in another part of the forest ecosystem o Did you describe how the unintended effect causes a change (+/-) in another part of the ecosystem? o Common reasons this point is missed: o Many students (80.2%) often do not attempt to describe how the unintended consequences could affect a “specified” part of the given system (e.g. ecosystem). o Some only described a vague effect.

Rubric

Grading Student Answers: 2 point response

Grading Student Answers: 1 point response

Grading Student Answers: 0 point response

Takeaways 1) Describe both a plausible unintended consequence and how it might affect another area of the system (e.g. ecosystem). 2) Pair this “cause and effect” pair very clearly. For example, number each as (#1 of 2) and (#2 of 2). 3) Be sure to count four individual responses (2 x 2).

How would you score this response?

Sources 1) Science Assessment Updates for 2014: Biology End-of-Course (EOC) Exam o (Downloaded 3/6/16) 2) Lessons Learned from Scoring Student Work 2014 o (Downloaded 3/6/16)

Correspondence 0 0 Kentridge High School 0 Kent School District #415 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License