19.3 Science Assessment: Formative, Summative & Performance Assessment
Key Takeaways
Assessments should match the learning goal; a skill such as using a graduated cylinder is best assessed by observing a performance.
Science notebooks, checklists, rubrics, portfolios, and student profiles show students' understanding and their participation in inquiry.
Analytic rubrics score each criterion separately and give more detailed feedback than holistic rubrics.
Sharing rubrics and exemplars before a task helps students understand what quality work looks like.
Formative assessment results should guide regrouping, reteaching, and enrichment.
Overview & Exam Relevance
Competency 006 (Science Assessment) asks you to understand the relationships among curriculum, assessment, and instruction. You must also know how to monitor students' understanding continuously with formal and informal measures, and how to use products such as projects, lab journals, rubrics, portfolios, student profiles, and checklists to evaluate learning and participation in inquiry. The competency also covers selecting performance, self-, formative, and summative assessments and communicating evaluation criteria and results to students. Expect scenario items that ask which assessment best measures a specific skill.
Science Assessment Strategies (Competency 006)
Formative versus Summative Assessment in Science
- Formative Assessment: Assessment for learning conducted continuously during the instructional sequence. Its purpose is to diagnose student misconceptions, evaluate comprehension, and immediately adjust pedagogical strategies. Examples include science probes (Page Keeley concept cartoons), entry/exit tickets, white-board sketch checks, and teacher questioning during lab facilitation.
- Summative Assessment: Assessment of learning administered at the culmination of an instructional unit or investigation cycle to evaluate cumulative student mastery against TEKS benchmarks. Examples include end-of-unit exams, summative lab reports, and standards-based projects.
Science Interactive Notebooks (INBs)
Science Interactive Notebooks serve as cognitive portfolios documenting student conceptual growth:
- Right-Side (Input / Teacher-Directed): Contains formal, teacher-provided content—lecture graphic organizers, lab safety protocols, investigation procedures, formal scientific definitions, textbook reading excerpts, and structured data tables.
- Left-Side (Output / Student-Centered): Contains student synthesis, cognitive processing, and metacognitive reflection—diagrams, concept maps, written reflections, self-generated hypotheses, drawings, and Claim-Evidence-Reasoning (CER) paragraphs.
Performance-Based Assessments (Lab Practicals)
Rather than relying solely on paper-and-pencil recall, performance-based assessments evaluate whether students can actively execute scientific process skills. A teacher assesses students using an objective rubric as they execute tasks such as correctly taring a triple-beam balance, measuring the volume of an irregular solid using water displacement in a graduated cylinder, properly focusing a compound microscope on high power, or constructing a closed electrical circuit.
The Claim-Evidence-Reasoning (CER) Framework
Developed by Katherine McNeill and Joseph Krajcik, the CER framework provides elementary students with an explicit scaffold for constructing scientific arguments:
THE CLAIM-EVIDENCE-REASONING (CER) FRAMEWORK
│
├── 1. CLAIM ──────► A concise, direct statement that answers the guiding scientific question
│ (The "What do you know?")
│
├── 2. EVIDENCE ───► Specific, measurable qualitative or quantitative empirical data from the lab
│ (The "How do you know it?")
│
└── 3. REASONING ──► The scientific law, theory, or concept that explains WHY the data supports the claim
(The "Why does your evidence make sense?")
- Claim: A direct, declarative sentence answering the guiding scientific research question. A claim must not include explanations or evidence; it is a clear assertion of the finding.
- Evidence: Observable empirical data collected during the investigation that directly supports the claim. Evidence must be specific and sufficient. It can include quantitative measurements (numbers, units, statistical averages) or qualitative sensory observations.
- Reasoning: The most cognitively rigorous component. Reasoning provides the logical justification that explicitly connects the empirical evidence to the claim by applying established scientific principles, definitions, laws, or theories. It explains why the data counts as valid evidence for the claim.
Assessment Products for Science Inquiry
| Product | What It Shows | Example Use |
|---|---|---|
| Science notebook or lab journal | Questions, predictions, data, drawings, and conclusions over time | The teacher reviews entries for evidence-based reasoning |
| Checklist | Whether specific skills or behaviors were observed | Wears goggles, reads graduated cylinder at eye level, records units |
| Rubric | Levels of quality on defined criteria | An analytic rubric for an investigation report |
| Portfolio | Growth across a unit or year | Selected notebook pages and reflections |
| Student profile | A record of a student's strengths and needs across many assessments | Used to plan small-group instruction |
| Project or performance task | Applying knowledge to design, build, or investigate | Designing a water filter and testing it |
Analytic vs. holistic rubrics: An analytic rubric scores each criterion separately (for example, the question, procedure, data, and conclusion), which gives detailed feedback. A holistic rubric gives a single overall score, which is faster but less diagnostic.
Matching the Assessment to the Learning Goal
- To assess whether students can use a tool, observe them using it (a performance assessment with a checklist), rather than giving a written test.
- To assess whether students can design a fair test, ask them to plan an investigation and identify the variables.
- To assess conceptual understanding, ask students to explain or predict ("What will happen to the shadow at 3:00 p.m., and why?").
- Self-assessment and peer assessment help students reflect on their work against the criteria.
- Formative assessment (probes, exit tickets, whiteboards, observation during discussion) guides the next lesson. Summative assessment (unit tests, final projects) evaluates mastery at the end of instruction.
Communicating Criteria and Results
Share rubrics and exemplars before students begin a task so they know what quality looks like. Give feedback that is timely, specific, and focused on the criteria ("Your conclusion states a claim but does not cite your data"). Use assessment results to plan instruction: regroup students, reteach with a new approach, or extend learning for students who have mastered the concept.
A sixth-grade student completes a lab on chemical changes and writes the following paragraph: 'The temperature of the solution dropped from 24 degrees Celsius to 16 degrees Celsius because thermal energy was absorbed from the surroundings during the endothermic reaction when the chemical bonds rearranged.' According to the Claim-Evidence-Reasoning (CER) framework, what specific component does the phrase 'because thermal energy was absorbed from the surroundings during the endothermic reaction when the chemical bonds rearranged' represent?
The empirical claim
The quantitative evidence
The experimental control
The scientific reasoning
A fifth-grade teacher wants to assess whether each student can correctly measure liquid volume with a graduated cylinder. Which assessment is most appropriate?
A multiple-choice test asking students to define volume
A performance assessment in which the teacher observes each student measuring water and records the results on a skills checklist
A take-home poster about the history of measurement
A class vote on which tool is best for measuring liquids
Sections you finish are checked off in the contents.