Performance assessments are an integral part of exemplary science curricula. Designed to provide opportunities for students to use their knowledge in problem situations, performance evaluations are helpful in assessing how students apply what they know, and how they demonstrate the abilities and skills necessary to do scientific inquiry. They also allow students who may have difficulty writing to show their understanding and skills. Teachers observe the students performing the task, and then judge the quality of the students' work based on an agreed-upon set of criteria or a rubric.
Most states have opted not to include hands-on activities as part of their state assessment, yet the tests still contain items that are real-world based and presented in written form. These assessment items require students to either go through a process or think about what they would do in order to solve a novel problem. The examples below come from the states of Colorado, Massachusetts, Ohio, and New York.
Jeopardy: Identify the Concept Behind an Investigation
Determine If a Material Will Float
Critique a Procedure
Design a Tennis Ball Experiment
Also included is one example of a hands-on performance assessment task that asks students to measure mass, determine volume, and calculate density of two different soaps. While the observation and the scoring of students’ performance assessments can be time consuming, they do provide a unique view of student thinking that is rich and authentic. For this reason, few states include hands-on performance assessment items on their middle-grades science tests. The following example is from the state of New York.
Calculate and Compare the Densities of Two Different
Soaps
