I can use scientific concepts to explain and support a conclusion I drew from experimental data.
After a few rounds of scoring, it seemed that they were interpreting the objective to read this way:
I can list many science words in the part of the presentation labeled "explanation."
Although we had worked on what this objective looked like for a solid week, with much practice, direct instruction, discussion, more practice, more discussion, and scoring of past lab write-ups to be had, it seems that this notion of "more science words = better explanation" kept rearing its ugly head. The goal was analysis of data and synthesis of science concepts to form a coherent explanation, but my students were being wowed by words that barely had even the remotest connections to science (i.e., "faster" and "hotter" and, my personal favorite, "more efficiently/effective").
But I had to remind myself that these skills don't develop in one week. They take time, precious time, to develop--and I'm just at the start of this process of learning how to learn with them. I also needed this reminder from Art Costa:
We must constantly remind ourselves that the ultimate purpose of evaluation is to have students learn to become self-evaluative. If students graduate from our schools still dependent upon others to tell them when they are adequate, good, or excellent, then we've missed the whole point of what self-directed learning is about.
The students don't really want to score each other. "Why can't you do it?" they implore. When I hear this from now on I will tell them that they need to learn how to tell if they have learned or not. That they need to be able to determine, on their own, what they know and what they don't know. I won't bore them with the fancy word "metacognition." I'll just tell them that if I let them graduate relying on someone else to tell them if they have truly learned and how well they have learned it, then they are entering their adult world at a severe disadvantage.
Besides, I'm not going to be the final judge and jury of their scores, the evil gradekeeper, the nutty teacher-clown spinning the "wheel of grades." I hereby resign from all of these aforementioned grade-related duties. Like I've said before, learning belongs to students, and they should be able to evaluate and assess their own learning.
I'm through giving out scores that aren't mine to give.