JoinAll Assessment resources
Blog Post
Seeking a New Way to Assess Science at All Levels
The word assessment can prompt feelings of dread, mistrust, or outright hate in many teachers. That’s distressing, as quality instruction includes quality assessment. Unfortunately, we have allowed assessment to become the “tail that wags the dog...
By Cindy Workosky
Blog Post
Kentucky’s Systems Approach to Assessing Three-Dimensional Standards
One thing is clear about our multi-dimensional standards: They require a complex and thoughtful approach to assessment. No single, conventional, summative test can be expected to provide reliable data sufficient enough to satisfy the demands of all p...
By Cindy Workosky
Journal Article
This column focuses on promoting learning through assessment. This month’s issue discusses the formative assessment probe “Can You Pick It up With a Magnet?” which is designed to find out what types of materials students think interact with mag...
Blog Post
It's Elementary: Investigating Student Work
Teachers wear many hats in the classroom. We are doctors, therapists, IT technicians, politicians, and entertainers, but the one hat we wear that is essential for student learning is the detective’s hat. As detectives, we gather and analyze evidenc...
By Cindy Workosky
Blog Post
It is truly an exciting time in science education. Science educators across the country are adapting to a new vision of how students learn science guided by the Framework for K–12 Science Education (Framework). As a result, science instruction is c...
By Cindy Workosky
Journal Article
Methods and Strategies: Ask the Right Question
This column provides ideas and techniques to enhance your science teaching. This month’s issue shows how teachers can use literature and higher-level thinking questions to enhance science instruction....
NSTA Press Book
Picture-Perfect STEM Lessons, 3-5: Using Children’s Books to Inspire STEM Learning
"Teachers in our district have been fans of Picture-Perfect Science for years, and it’s made a huge impact on how they fit science into their school day. We are so excited to do more of the same with these Picture-Perfect STEM books!"—Chris Gible...
By Emily Morgan, Karen Ansberry
NSTA Press Book
The Power of Investigating: Guiding Authentic Assessments
Children want to explore, dig, build, play, and wonder. To do this they need to touch, feel, see, observe, listen, manipulate, plan, and create. How does a teacher build and maintain a learning environment that will help students investigate meaningf...
By Julie V. McGough, Lisa M. Nyberg
NSTA Press Book
Problem-Based Learning in the Earth and Space Science Classroom, K–12
Implementing PBL is difficult for teachers, and few curriculum guides are available to support their efforts. This book fills that gap by providing the kinds of strategies and examples teachers need to facilitate open-ended inquiry in their science c...
By Tom J. McConnell, Joyce Parker, Janet Eberhardt