Science Assessment Practice Problems

Using Questions for Sense Making in Science

This 23 minute video takes you through a way to scaffold students' understand of science concepts from the hands-on learning experience through sense-making discussion and writing prompts to test-style science assessment items.

This video is broken into three segments. Part One (~6 minutes) takes you through the process of unpacking a SC Science Performance Indicator with the intent of defining the learning goals of the standard, what the learning experience would look like, and how you would assess it. Part Two (~ 9 minutes) takes you through how to use a hands-on mini-investigation followed by a series of sense-making discussion and writing prompts to help foster conceptual understanding and make connections between the concrete learning experience and more abstract ideas. Part Three (~ 8 minutes) models how to use a standardized test-style item to extend the learning and continue to foster sense-making conversations and connections to the hands-on learning.

It is important that we NOT use practice test items to simply make quizzes and tests for our students or for skill-and-drill test practice. A far better use of these items is to not only foster sense-making dialogue and writing responses, but also help students forge connections between what they did, what they learned from what they did, and how they can extend their learning to new situations, like those reflected on test items.