Using criterion referenced assessment in a living environment curriculum.

Abstract

This purpose of this curriculum project was to design Criterion Referenced Assessment’s (CRA's) to be implemented into a New York State (NYS) Living Environment Curriculum to provide an ongoing means of formative assessment. All CRA’s within the project are aligned with the NYS Living Environment curriculum objectives and standards. CRA data can provide teachers with information that can influence their future instructional decisions. For the project, twenty-four daily CRA’s were made and four units were developed in connection to the four Living Environment units of Ecology, Mitosis, Meiosis, and DNA/RNA. By design, answers for each CRA are provided, as well as, two scoring matrices to link CRA scores to re-teaching strategies based on student group and test question scores. The data obtained from the CRA’s will then be utilized by the teachers to influence future instructional decisions as well as help students recognize what more is needed to be learned in order to meet criterion mastery. Limitations of this project are developing CRA’s for a partial amount of the NYS Living Environment curriculum (four units) and just two scoring matrices. Therefore, further research can be conducted to investigate whether or not the creation of CRA’s for the complete Living Environment curriculum and additional scoring matrices further enhanced the feedback mechanism of the project. Furthermore, an empirical study on the effectiveness of this tool on student state tests scores and implementing this tool into other content areas can be conducted.