Brief Assessment Plan for a Unit of Study

Topic: Plate Tectonics Student Teacher: Diana Burton

Diagnostic Assessment Details

In what ways will I find out what students prior skills, understandings and misconceptions are about the topic?

Beginning of unit: students complete a KWL chart to show what they know about plate tectonics

Ask inquiry type questions before starting new sections in this unit to see what students already know. Example: before teaching
students about Pangea, ask them to propose a hypothesis about the movement of continents based on this quote: Fossils of the
same animals, which lived millions of years ago, can be found on the continents of South America and Africa.

Formative Assessment Details

In what ways will I use formative assessment to support learning throughout the instructional sequence? How can I use
the Performance Standards and the 6 Big AFL strategies to help me do this ?

Word sort students will sort the words crust, mantle, outer core, and inner core to show that they understand
where they all are in relation to each other.
Drawing and labeling diagrams: throughout this unit students will draw diagrams of the different ways that plates move,
and they will label them. This will let me see if students are understanding the concepts we are discussing.
Students will create an earthquake plan to test their survival skills. This will let me see if they understand what we have
discussed about the dangers that can happen with an earthquake.
Kahoot Students will play a Kahoot about plate tectonics so that I can get immediate feedback on how students are
doing in the class.
Exit Slip Students will hand-in exit slips often with different questions relating to the unit. One of the questions will ask

Summative Assessment Details

How will I evaluate whether or not students have achieved the learning intentions/outcomes? consider a balance of
representations of learning write/say/do

Class newspaper: Students will get a topic to write a newspaper article about as if they were a reporter. The topic they will be
assigned to write about will include convergent plate boundaries, divergent boundaries, transform plates, earthquakes, volcanoes,
etc. Each student will write one article and then we will arrange them into a newspaper as a class. This will also help them review
the material before there test.

Quiz: Students will write a quiz part way through the unit (this will also serve as a formative assessment to show me how they are
doing so far).
Test: Students will complete a unit test to show what they have learned throughout the unit

Reporting Details
How will I communicate the evaluation to students/sponsor teachers/parents?

I am planning to make up an excel file where I can keep all of my marks. This will make it easy for me to share it online with my
sponsor teacher.
Word sort: the students will be sorting the words: crust, upper mantle, lower mantle, and core

Drawing and labelling diagrams: students will label a diagram of the earth with the above words. They will also
draw and label convergent plate boundaries, divergent plate boundaries, and transform plate boundaries

Earthquake plan: students should include plans for food, water, shelter

Kahoot: variety of questions to see where students are. Questions will be about the different types of plate
boundaries, how earthquakes and volcanoes are formed, how sea floor spreads

Class newspaper: students will be assessed individually for this assignment according to the content. The
articles will be expected to be a minimum of 100 words and a maximum of 200.

Quiz: there will be two check points during this unit in the form of quizzes. This will happen after the first week
and third week to reinforce ideas and make sure students have understood the material.

Test: there will be an end of unit test for students to show what they have learned.