8 Ways to Amp Up Science Assessments

Sometimes, tests just aren’t enough—especially in science class, where inquiry and reasoning are important skills for students to develop. While multiple-choice and fill-in-the-blank tests can reveal knowledge, they can fall short on assessing abstract, complex skills like conceptual understanding and the ability to apply learning to new situations.

“Think of assessment as analogous to photography. Like the results on a test, a picture can be informative; however, no single photo can provide a complete portrayal of a situation,” writes veteran educator and consultant Jay McTighe in ASCD. “What we need is a photo album of evidence on student learning, not a snapshot—a collection of multiple measures, appropriately aligned to different types of learning outcomes that matter.”

Incorporating alternative assessments throughout the school year—like performance tasks or projects—also sends an important message to students about learning priorities. “If we claim to value critical thinking, creative problem-solving, oral communication, and the ability to work effectively in groups, then we need to teach and assess those outcomes,” notes McTighe. Across the curriculum, when assessments consist mostly of “single-correct answer” tests, we may inadvertently signal that “rote learning and formulaic responses” are what we value most.

Meanwhile, adding an element of choice into assessments when possible can increase student buy-in, says science teacher Amy Szczepanski, who decided to let her students “choose their own final and everything about it—the subject, how they would represent their knowledge, and how they would be graded.” The results were astounding, she writes, with students producing final projects ranging from a Minecraft model of DNA to a project about the chemistry of photography.

From video projects to classroom discussions and debates, here are a range of creative, engaging assessments to try out in science class this year.

Get in Character

Traditional oral reports have their place in science class, of course, but oral assessments can also be quite creative—especially when students can act out, debate, or dramatize what they’ve learned.

In a unit on ecology, middle school teacher Jessica Guidry has students role-play as scientists who have been selected to present at the United Nations. The UN has decided to “eliminate one biome to make room for the world’s growing human population,” and so the student scientists are tasked with “persuading the members of the UN to keep their chosen biome alive.” In their oral presentations, accompanied by visuals, students describe how their biome benefits the world, giving details on its flora and fauna.

Record a Video

Video projects are versatile, skill-building, “and a lot more fun than writing a paper every time,” writes educator Jill Staake. How-to videos, for example, allow students to describe the steps to a process “with enough detail that someone watching would be able to copy their method and receive similar results,” Staake writes. That could involve a step-by-step guide to re-creating a particular lab from class, or even something more abstract, like a “how to photosynthesize” tutorial aimed at an audience of plants. Or, if your typical end-of-unit output is a written research report, consider letting students deliver a video report instead.

Another option is a stop motion video, where students take repeated photos of paper or cardboard cutouts moving around the page, which lets them illustrate their understanding of complicated concepts.

Make Like a Sketch Artist

During a lecture on ferns in his high school biology class, high school teacher John Dorroh noticed several students doodling instead of taking notes. “When class was over, I asked one of the doodlers if I could see his notebook,” writes Dorroh. “I was flabbergasted to see that he’d made a series of spot-on sketches on the life cycle of ferns.”

As a result, Dorroh decided to give his students the option to be assessed via art throughout the semester. They could create posters, detailed sketches, picture books, and more. To tie the art specifically to what they learned in class, “they had to attach an Art Fact Sheet that included 10 facts from the content for that objective that were evident” in their art, Dorroh writes. “On a poster of a typical animal cell, for example, they might write, ‘Animal cells have mitochondria that are involved in energy production.’” 

Be a Science Storyteller

When students are given the opportunity to write creatively about science, they can make interesting and unexpected connections. Middle school science teacher Anthony Cody has students write short stories about a group of astronauts surviving on a specific planet—Neptune, for example. These stories allow them to showcase what they learned about a planet’s atmosphere, temperature, gravity, and more. To assess science students’ outputs, Dorroh recommends having them attach a “Writing Fact Sheet” and “underline the facts from the content for that objective, numbering each one for easy identification.”

Besides astronaut voyages, Cody suggests several other creative writing prompts that can slot into science lessons—like a first-person account of a day in the life of a particular animal or a story detailing the journey of a bite of food through the body.

Create One-Pagers

Instead of writing lengthy reports, students can “share their most important takeaways on a single piece of blank paper,” writes educator Betsy Potash. On their one-pager, “students might include quotations, ideas, images, analysis, or key names and dates,” Potash writes, adding that “students remember more when they’ve mixed language and imagery.”

This exercise forces students to distill the most important ideas—and consider how to present them effectively and concisely. Alternatively, break the subject into many parts, and ask students to create a one-pager for one subset of the material—then hang all the finished pages next to each other.

Talk It Through Together

A well-structured classroom discussion can offer a valuable opportunity to assess student learning. “My first foray into discussion assessment involved the cellular energy unit in my biology course,” writes high school science teacher Rebecca Hall. In addition to helping Hall assess her students’ grasp of the material, discussions allowed students to “explore, share understandings, and learn” from each other, she writes.

To get started with discussion assessments, Hall recommends selecting a few “meaty questions”—roughly six questions in a 90-minute period. She tells her students the questions in advance, and they each choose three or four of the six to focus on. On the day of the discussion, “every student is called on for the questions they prepared, but students may participate in all questions.” Hall opts not to deduct points when students express ideas that are incorrect; instead, students can only earn points during the discussion.

Design Collaborative Posters

For a playful spin on a science class staple, consider a group poster project. “This is a great way for students to show off what they learned—and it can be fun,” writes educator Bethany Lau; the group format allows kids to build on each other’s knowledge and correct misconceptions their peers might have about the material. In groups of two to four, have students use a variety of colored markers to create their posters in class, either on poster board, construction paper, or large dry-erase boards. Each small group can be assigned a different topic from the lesson—like a different planet or different state of matter. Afterward, students can present their posters to the entire class.

Teach It to Younger Kids

To show their mastery of a topic, Cody asks his middle school students to write and illustrate science-related storybooks for younger students—like “a children’s book explaining acids and bases so that a fourth grader could understand, using examples of chemical reactions, and diagrams showing how the reactions occur.” Alternatively, students might visit an early-grade classroom to deliver mini-lessons on what they’ve learned—and create brief assessments or quizzes to pass out, suggests high school teacher Jason Abril.

Teaching as assessment can work throughout a unit, not just at the end. “As my students learn about a given topic, they have to translate, teach, and develop activities for younger students on the same topic,” writes science teacher Tracey Muise—developing a “challenge box” of science-related station activities for younger students at their school.

SHARE YOUR STRATEGIES!

Is there an alternative form of science assessment that has worked well in your classroom? Let us know in the comments!