Recall Knowledge: Assessment: I

Assessment tasks, like instructional tasks, are response-demand activities that function as explicit manifestations of students’ implicit and unobservable cognitive processes. Assessment tasks for Recall-Knowledge objectives are designed to cue students’ retrieval from their long term-term memories of the target information that is appropriate for the objective. Students who adequately perform the assessment task for an objective thereby demonstrate their mastery of the objective, and that they are not likely to gain much from instruction for the objective. And students who perform the assessment task inadequately show that they are likely to benefit from instruction for the objective.

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Preparing an assessment task for a Recall-Knowledge objective is a useful way of identifying the target information students will be helped to encode into their long-term memories and later retrieve. This is especially true when objectives are not stated explicitly, such as this one.

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OBJECTIVE

Recall Knowledge: Know about the three parts of leaves.

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By itself, this objective does not clearly specify the target information that is appropriate for the objective. In designing the assessment task for the Recall-Knowledge objective, one is guided by the selection that is intended to be used in instructing for the objective.

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SELECTION

LEAVES

Leaves on plants have three parts. The lamina is the flat blade of the leaf. The petiole is the stalk that supports the lamina. The veins are the small tubes that branch out from the petiole. The main job of leaves is to make food for the plant. They make food by using the sun’s energy to turn carbon dioxide and water into sugar. The sugar is then taken to the rest of the plant and used as food. The lamina contains chlorophyll, which is what makes sugar from carbon dioxide and water. Chlorophyll is what gives leaves their green color. The veins carry the sugar between cells in the lamina to the petiole. The veins also support the lamina. The petiole connects the lamina to the rest of the plant. It carries sugar from the veins to the rest of the plant.

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Based on this selection, it appears that the target information is entirely verbal, there are no visual drawings or pictures. Here is a reasonable identification of the important verbal information in the selection. Different people might identify different target information.

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TARGET INFORMATION FOR OBJECTIVE

1. Chlorophyll gives leaves their green color.

2. The lamina is the flat blade of a leaf.

3. The petiole is the stalk that supports the lamina.

4. Chlorophyll makes sugar from carbon dioxide and water.

5. Veins carry sugar between the cells in the lamina and the petiole.

6. Veins support the lamina.

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Here is an assessment task for the identified target information.

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ASSESSMENT TASK FOR OBJECTIVE

1. What gives leaves their green color?

2. What is the lamina of a leaf?

3. What is the petiole of a leaf?

4. What does chlorophyll do?

5. What two things do veins do?

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Students’ answers should contain the essential content identified as the target information, although their specific wordings will differ.

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The assessment task and its adequate response manifest in explicit terms the target information that students should be able to retrieve from their long-term memories. Instruction for the objective will begin when students are unable to perform the assessment task adequately. Instruction for the objective will end when students are able to perform the assessment task adequately.