On a Practical Method to Link Performance-Based Assessment and the Rating on the Permanent Record Card in the Seventh Grader's Biology Class

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to propose a method to link assessment data of the student's work and the rating on his or her permanent record card. This method assesses the student's work from two points of view, a micro-viewpoint and a macro-viewpoint. We taught biology to seventh graders with this method. The findings of this study are as follows: (1) When we used this method, we assessed the student's work only once every three classes. It was not much additional work for teachers. (2) We regarded performance-based assessment as important as paper tests. When analyzing the correlation between the rating of performance-based assessment and the score of regular tests, we found that performance-based assessment helped us to assess the student's academic achievement more than paper tests alone. (3) As we introduced performance-based assessment, students learned about inquiry, experiment, conclusion, and presentation. And we found that some students showed inference ability, which can be called reading literacy. Although it is usually difficult to develop this kind of ability by using lecture-style classes, this method helped students in this respect.