Local Site Evaluation Survey

1. The instructional strategies and activities respected students’ prior knowledge and the preconceptions inherent therein.

[teacher indicates knowledge of typical misconceptions and addresses them and teacher surfaces misconceptions of current students with formative assessment (+); teacher organizes instruction without consideration of misconceptions (-).]

2. The lesson was designed to engage students as members of a learning community.

[teacher engages with students and has students engage with eachother around science content (+); little to no interaction between students or students and teacher (-).]

3. This lesson encouraged students to seek and value alternative modes of investigation or of problem solving.

[teacher actively encourages or introduces different approaches or solutions (+); teacher encourages one solution or approach (-).]

4. The lesson involved fundamental concepts of the subject.

[teacher regularly connects and asks students to connect activities to “big ideas” or fundamental ideas in the discipline (+); teacher treats activities as self-contained learning experiences (-).]

5. Students were directly engaged with scientific phenomenon.

[students engage in hands-on investigations of key science phenomenon (+); students are shown demonstrations or are given descriptions of phenomenon (-).]

6. The lesson promoted strongly coherent conceptual understanding.

[teacher stresses connections between concepts (+); teacher does not address conceptual connections (-).]

7. The teacher had a solid grasp of the subject matter content inherent in the lesson.

[teacher approaches content in multiple ways and is able to respond to student’s ideas with clear explanations (+); teacher is linear in their approach to content and does not consider student’s questions (-).]

8. Students used a variety of means (models, drawings, graphs, symbols, concrete materials, manipulatives, etc.) to represent phenomena.

[students are asked to make multiple representations of ideas and describe or explain connections between representations (+); students work with one type of representation at a time with little to no emphais on different representations of phenomenon (-).]

9. Intellectual rigor, constructive criticism, and the challenging of ideas were valued.

[students are engaged with the ideas of other students in constructive ways including debate and discussion (+); student ideas are evaluated by the teacher with little or no probing for evidence or support or interaction with other students (-).]

10. There was a high proportion of student talk and a significant amount of it occurred between and among students

[much of the classroom talk is by students and a majority is student to student (+); most of the classroom talk is by the teacher (-).]

11. Student questions and comments often determined the focus and direction of classroom discourse.

[the focus of science lesson, in particular the conversations, is students’ ideas (+); the focus of the science lesson is correct scientific ideas (-).]

12. Students were asked to support explanations they made with evidence of some kind (empirical or conceptual).

[students are asked to support their ideas with evidence and conceptual explanations (+); students ideas are evaluated as correct or incorrect (-).]

13. Students were encouraged to generate conjectures, alternative solution strategies, and/or different ways of interpreting evidence.

[multiple student ideas are generated and evaluated during classroom discussions (+); students are not asked to generate ideas about the content of the lesson (-).]

14. The teacher acted as a resource person, working to support and enhance student investigations.

[teacher provides ideas and resources to students to allow them to pursue their own ideas (+); teacher focuses students on a correct line of investigation (-).]