Should....be permitted to...?  Why?

Is ....accurate?  Why do you think this>

Was it wrong or right for.....?  Why do you think so?

How well did....?

What is the most important...?  Why?

What are the chances that.....?

Which of the following....?

Ø  Judge

Ø  Decide

Ø  Appraise

Ø  Evaluate

Ø  Rate

Ø  Compare

Ø  Value

Ø  Revise

Ø  Conclude

Ø  Select

Ø  Criticize

Ø  Assess

Ø  Measure

Ø  Estimate

Ø  Infer

Ø  Deduce

Ø  Score

Ø  Predict

Ø  Choose

Ø  Recommend

Ø  Determine

Evaluate  is defined as making judgments based on criteria and standards such as quality, effectiveness, efficiency and consistency.  The standards may be quantitative (is this a sufficient amount?) or qualitative (is this sufficiently effective? Of sufficient quality?)  Not all judgments are evaluative.  What differentiates here is the use of standards of performance with clearly defined criteria.

Check:  involves testing for internal inconsistencies of fallacies.  This occurs when a student tests whether or not a conclusion follows from its premises, whether data support or disconfirm a hypothesis or presented material contains parts that contradict on another.     Students look for internal inconsistencies. 

SS: An objective could be to learn to detect inconsistencies in persuasive messages.  Students might watch a television advertisement for a political candidate and point out any logical flaws in the persuasive message.

ELA:

SCI: An objective could be to learn to determine whether a scientist’s conclusion follows from the observed data.  An assessment asks a student to read a report of a chemistry experiment and determine whether or not the conclusion follows from the results of the experiment.

Math:

Assessment: This can involve operations or products given to students or ones created by the students themselves.  It can take place within the context of carrying out a solution to a problem or performing a task where one is concerned with the consistency of the actual implementation (Is this where I should be in light of what I’ve done so far?)

Critique: This involves judging a product or operation based on externally imposed criteria and standards.  A student noes the positive and negative features of a product and makes a judgment based at least partly on those features.  This is the core of critical thinking.  An example is judging the merits of a particular solution to the problem of acid rain in terms of likely effectiveness and associated costs.

SS: An objective could be to learn to evaluate a proposed solution (such as “eliminate all grading”) to a social problem (such as “how to improve K-12 educationJ in terms of effectiveness.

ELA:

SCI: An objective could be to evaluate the reasonableness of a hypothesis such as: strawberries are growing to extraordinary size because of the unusual alignment of the stars. 

Math: An objective could be to learn to judge which of two alternative methods is a more effective and efficient way of solving given problems such as judging whether it is better to find all prime factors of 60 or produce an algebraic equation to solve the problem “What are the possible ways you could multiply two whole numbers to get 60?”

Assessment: A student may be asked to critique his or her own hypotheses or creations or those generated by someone else.  This could be based on positive, negative, or both kinds of criteria and yield both positive and negative consequences.  In critiquing a school district’s proposal for year-round schools, a student would generate positive consequences such as the elimination of learning loss over summer vacation and negative consequences, such as disruption of family vacations.