Examining Curriculum Materials: Food For Plants

Examining Curriculum Materials: VI: Probing Student Understanding

Learning Goal: Benchmark: 5E6-8 #1: Food provides the fuel and the building material for all organisms. Plants use the energy from light to make sugars from carbon dioxide and water. This food can be used immediately or stored for later use.

Name of material: Food for Plants by Kathy Roth

Major Criterion	Indicators - What must a material do to meet the criterion?	Yes or No	Justification and Citation How does the material meet this indicator? OR Why does this material fail to meet this indicator? Be sure to give specific examples
Criterion B: Probing student understanding Does the material include assessment tasks that require application of ideas and avoid allowing students a trivial way out, like using a formula or repeating a memorized term from the text without understanding it?	1. The material provides assessment questions and/or tasks that focus on the use of the knowledge and/or skills specified in the learning goals (for example, they ask students to apply, explain, etc).	Yes	The pre-test and post-test ask questions that focus on most learning goals. EX: Qst 3 - Explain why plants need food to live and grow. Qst 7 is an application problem requiring use of knowledge about how plants make food in order to describe what would happen to seeds grown in a dark closet.
	2. The material includes questions and/or tasks that students have not previously encountered.	Yes	On the pre-test, most of the tasks are probably novel to most students. On the post-test, students have encountered the questions once on the pre-test. On the post-test, most of the questions are similar to tasks found in the activities. However, #10 describes an experiment not done in the activities.
	3. The material includes questions and/or tasks that students do not use the exact context in which students were taught the learning goals.	Yes	Many of the questions are removed from any context. EX: Qst 11 simply asks where plants get food. The activities covered this learning goal in context of the bean experiment, grass seed experiment, and calories experiment, which are not present in the assessment question.
	4. The material includes assessment questions and/or tasks likely to provide evidence about whether or not students hold any commonly held student ideas that are relevant to the learning goals and described in the learning research literature.	Yes	Both pre and post assessments contain questions designed to determine if students hold commonly held student ideas. EX Qst 11- Circle where plants get food (soil, air, water, make it themselves, no idea).