Resources
California's Plan
The new science assessment will be known as CAST – California Science Test. The alternate science assessment will be known as CAAS – California Alternate Assessment for Science. Both CAST and CAAS will be administered in grades 5, 8, and once in grades 10-12. The decision on when to administer the operational high school level science assessment will be local choice. No additional guidance has been provided at this time. The CAST assessment will be computer-based and should take no more than two hours to complete. The CAAS will be classroom-based and embedded.
Pilot Assessment – Spring 2017
All 5th and 8th graders will participate in the CAST pilot or CAAS pilot. For the pilot, CDE will assign each high school a grade to be assessed in science. CDE plans to notify high schools which grade will be assessed by January 2017. CDE has reported that the sample size will be heavily weighted in 10th grade. All high schools will participate in the pilot. All students in the grade assigned to the high school will participate in the pilot.
Training tests will be available beginning January 9, 2017 for CAST and in winter 2017 for CAAS.
The CAST Pilot
- will take approximately one hour for students to complete
- will consist of 25 discrete items and one computer-based performance task.
You Can Be Involved!
CDE is recruiting classroom science teachers to participate in item writing, item review, and other science assessment development activities. If you would like to be involved in developing California's new science assessment, register yourself today at: http://caaspp.org/reviewers.html.
In the 2016–17 school year, California will pilot the new CA NGSS general assessment in grades five and eight and high school. The pilot testing for the alternate assessment for science will occur in the 2016–17 and the 2017–18 school years in elementary, middle, and high school. The additional pilot test year for the alternate is necessary to ensure a valid and fair measure of the complex three dimensional CA NGSS for students with significant cognitive disabilities. This process is in the best interest of our students, teachers, and schools as we transition to a system of assessments that will provide us with more and better information about how we can continue to increase the quality of education provided to all our students and help boost student achievement.
Source: http://www.cde.ca.gov/be/ag/ag/yr16/documents/may16item08.doc
NGSS Resources:
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http://www.nextgenstorylines.org/
Across the country, districts, schools, and teachers are working on implementing a new vision for science classrooms based on the Framework for K-12 Science and NGSS: classrooms in which teachers support students in science and engineering practices to build and use science ideas to explain real phenomena and solve real problems.
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NGSS Pheonomena http://www.ngssphenomena.com/ This site is a curated collection of phenomena for the NGSS, along with help for how to use phenomena in 3 Dimensional teaching and learning.
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American Museum of Natural History (Science Explorations) http://www.amnh.org/explore/curriculum-collections/science-explorations Science Explorations is a series of online investigations featuring the latest scientific discoveries of the Museum’s experts. Science Explorations is a collaboration between the Museum and Scholastic, the global children’s publishing, education, and media company, to promote science literacy among students in grades 3 through 10.
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American Museum of Natural History (Curriculum Collections) http://www.amnh.org/explore/curriculum-collections Collections of activities, articles, videos and more, for educators, families, students and anyone interested in teaching or learning about science.
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Teachers Try Science http://www.teacherstryscience.org/ngsslanding Teachers TryScience is a web site for teachers. This site provides free and engaging lessons, along with teaching strategies and resources, which are designed to spark students’ interest in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). What’s more, the site features collaboration tools to enable teachers to discuss and share effective instructional practices.
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National Science Teachers Association http://ngss.nsta.org/
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The Concord Consortium https://concord.org/ We're a non-profit educational technology laboratory for science, mathematics and engineering. Our pioneering work brings technology's promise into reality for education.
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Ambitious Teaching http://ambitiousscienceteaching.org/ Ambitious teaching is supported by four sets of core practices that work together throughout every unit of study. These practices start with designing units of instruction (Planning for engagement with important science ideas); they then focus on making visible what students currently know about the science being taught (Eliciting students’ ideas); they help the teacher guide sense-making talk around investigations and other kinds of lab activities or readings (Supporting on-going changes in thinking); and finally they help the teacher scaffold students’ efforts to put everything together near the end of a unit (Pressing for evidence-based explanations).