Formative Assessment Probes: Where Did the Water Go?

Journal Article | June 2012

This column focuses on promoting learning through assessment. This month’s issue discusses how formative assessment relates to standards-based teaching and learning.

Formative Assessment Probes: Soil and Dirt: The Same or Different?

Journal Article | February 2015

This column focuses on promoting learning through assessment. This month’s issue explores children's commonly held ideas about soil.

Formative Assessment Probes: Where Do I Put the Switch?

Journal Article | August 2015

This column focuses on promoting learning through assessment. This month’s issue discusses using formative assessment probes that may surface and challenge ideas confronted during the engineering design process.

Formative Assessment Probes: Mountaintop Fossil: A Puzzling Phenomenon

Journal Article | November 2015

This column focuses on promoting learning through assessment. This month’s issue describes using formative assement probes to uncover several ways of thinking about the puzzling discovery of a marine fossil on top of a…

Formative Assessment Probes: Uncovering Students' Concept of Matter

Journal Article | December 2015

This column focuses on promoting learning through assessment. This month’s probe can be used to elicit young children's ideas about matter. The probe reveals commonly held ideas elementary students have about the types…

Formative Assessment Probes: Is It a Theory? Speaking the Language of Science

Journal Article | August 2014

This column focuses on promoting learning through assessment. This month’s issue focuses on a probe that is designed to find out if students (and teachers) distinguish scientific theories from the common use of the word…

Formative Assessment Probes: Is It a Solid? Claim Cards and Argumentation

Journal Article | June 2013

This column focuses on promoting learning through assessment. This month’s issue discusses students' ideas about solids and the macroscopic properties they use to decide whether a material is a solid.

Formative Assessment Probes: Does It Have a Life Cycle?

Journal Article | October 2010

If life continues from generation to generation, then all plants and animals must go through a life cycle, even though it may be different from organism to organism. Is this what students have “learned,” or do they have…