3125.C, CODE, STEM Teaching Tools: ACESSE Resource C: Making Science Instruction Compelling for All Students: Using Cultural Formative Assessment to Build on Learner Interest and Experience

(Open Education Resources for Science Education PD) This was copied directly from the website:  "How can science instruction be meaningfully connected to the out-of-school lives of students? What role do students’ cultures play in science learning? How might teachers use formative assessments to root science learning in students’ cultural contexts, interests, and identities? This open educational resource is designed to help educators develop cultural formative assessments that build on students’ pre-existing interests, identities, and experiences.

This session highlights cultural dimensions of science learning and showcases a general instructional technique for formative assessment called “self-documentation”—where students collect information related to a particular theme in their everyday lives. It describes an example use case of a self-documentation activity and how it was incorporated into a culturally diverse classroom. The session also highlights different assessment approaches and guides educators in thinking about particular goals for incorporating cultural formative assessment into their own practice.

This resource is designed to be used as a 2 to 2.5 hour professional development session for educators. The module includes all of the resources that PD facilitators need to adapt and run the sessions—including slides, speaker notes, facilitator guide, embedded resources, and sample student work. It may be more useful for educators after they have already participated in the following professional development session: ACESSE A: Introduction to Formative Assessment to Support Equitable 3D Instruction.

The professional development module supports the following specific goals for educators: Learn how to promote equity and social justice as the focal point of NGSS implementation work by focusing on learning and teaching as an inherently cultural process; Develop a shared understanding of how cultural formative assessment can reveal the interests, experiences, and identities of students; Understand how and when to use different kinds of cultural formative assessment to guide instruction — and ‘overlap’ the curriculum with the lives of youth." Always review materials extensively before using them to align with goals, grade level appropriateness, topics, etc.