Assessments

The Amplify Science curriculum was constructed to develop deep science knowledge and understanding, not merely touching on each science concept, but allowing for a depth of coverage in a variety of modalities for each. The program’s system of assessments tied to unit learning progressions (called Progress Builds, more below) provides an innovative means of supporting all students in developing this deep understanding. By aligning instruction to focused, meaningful, and standards-based learning goals through the use of instructionally embedded, multi-modal assessment opportunities and carefully sequenced Progress Builds, Amplify Science ensures that every student is achieving the level of understanding required by each unit.

On-the-Fly Assessments (formative): Three-dimensional tasks integrated throughout the lessons. On-the-Fly Assessment opportunities are designed to help a teacher make sense of student activity during a learning experience (e.g., student-to-student talk, writing, model construction) and to provide evidence of how a student is coming to understand core concepts and developing dexterity with SEPs and CCCs.

End-of-chapter assessments (formative): Variety of multidimensional performance tasks, intended to assess student progress, occurring at the end of each chapter. Examples include written scientific explanations, argumentation, developing and using models, and designing engineering solutions.

Student Self-Assessments (formative): One per chapter; brief meta-cognitive opportunities for students to reflect on their own learning, ask questions, and reveal ongoing thoughts about unit content.

End-of-Unit Assessment (summative): Targeted conversations (K–1), written responses (grades 2–5) or a combination of auto-scored multiple-choice questions and rubric-scored written responses (grades 6–8). Summative assessments for each unit are designed to provide valid, reliable, and fair measures of students’ progress and attainment of three-dimensional learning.

3-D Investigation Assessments (summative): Embedded in one unit at each grade level, these summative assessments provide students with an open-ended opportunity to show what they’ve learned by planning and conducting their own scientific investigation of a scientific phenomenon. For these three-dimensional performance tasks, we have also provided teachers with assessment guidance and rubrics for scoring student work. Across K-5, these assessments occur in the units: Sunlight and Weather (Kindergarten); Light and Sound (Grade 1); Plant and Animal Relationships (Grade 2); Balancing Forces (Grade 3); Vision and Light (Grade 4); and Patterns of Earth and Sky (Grade 5). Across 6-8, these assessments may be found in the units: Thermal Energy; Ocean, Atmosphere, and Climate; Populations and Resources; and Force and Motion.

The variety of assessments for each unit are designed to work together as a system. While all of them work toward assessment of a coherent set of learning goals, defined by the Progress Build, individual assessment opportunities intentionally span a range of modalities (e.g., multiple choice constructed-response questions, performance tasks, informal observation) and assess content at different grain sizes (e.g., comprehensive of unit content, chapter-level understanding, and individual concepts or elements of practices. For more information on each type of assessment opportunity, see “How assessment opportunities work together.”