Jump to assessment resources below.
Effective science teaching and learning prepares students to achieve the learning goals of today’s science standards by asking students to make sense of the world around them, using both knowledge and practice, rather than by asking them merely to recite memorized facts or conduct a laboratory investigation to confirm what they already learned in a lecture.
Assessments are important signals to both teachers and students about what we value most in student learning experiences. What we value about the shift from “learning about” to “figuring out” in instruction needs to be reflected in assessments.
Equitable assessments — designed to be meaningful, empowering, accessible, and fair — can give educators better information about what all students know and can do in science.
The NextGenScience team continues to support educators across the country in using the Science Task Screener and Science Task Prescreen tools* to:
- Build understanding of classroom tasks that measure student proficiency in today’s science standards.
- Develop, select, or modify tasks that ask students to demonstrate a targeted grade-appropriate, three-dimensional performance.
- Apply a coherent system of assessments to efficiently gather information for different audiences and purposes (e.g., classroom teachers to inform instruction or district and state leaders to inform programmatic and policy decisions).
*These tools were developed when the NextGenScience team was a part of Achieve.
Assessment Resources Guide
| I Want to: | I Should Learn about the Following Resource: |
|---|---|
Thoroughly evaluate a science assessment task to select or modify it for use in the classroom or in professional learning. Provide a group of reviewers with a common set of features students should be expected to demonstrate under today’s science standards. |
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Conduct a quick review of an assessment task to identify any “red flags” commonly found in science assessment tasks and determine whether a more thorough review is warranted. |
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See examples of tasks that measure student progress toward today’s science standards and resources about features of high-quality assessments. |
Tennessee District Science Network Assessment Task Library
In early 2019, NextGenScience launched the Tennessee District Science Network (TDSciN), a group of six districts in Tennessee working collaboratively to improve their science programs and move towards the vision of science education reflected in the Tennessee Academic Standards for Science.
As part of this work, teachers from each district collaborated in cross-district educator workgroups to develop a library of assessment tasks. These tasks and accompanying resources can deepen educators’ understanding of classroom tasks that measure student proficiency in today’s science standards. To learn more about the work of TDSciN and to see the Task Library, click here.
To see more resources of implementing assessments designed for today’s science standards click here.