Task Annotation Project in Science - High School (9-12)

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Each task includes a carefully annotated version as well as a document that summarizes reviewers’ takeaways from the task evaluation. When possible, task summaries include links to the source site so educators may access the most recent publicly available versions as tasks are revised based on feedback. Click the links below to access each task.

  • Energy and Matter Across Disciplines (PS, LS, ENG)
    • This task is a classroom-embedded transfer task focused on energy and matter flows in life and physical science systems. Prior to the class time recorded here, students had been considering energy within life science systems. To elicit evidence of how students’ understanding of energy and matter flow is evolving, this task asks students to transfer that understanding between life and physical science contexts by working with a group to 1) create and describe the mechanisms underlying their design of a Rube Goldberg machine, and 2) connect ideas and observations from both science domains to construct an argument for which organism is the most efficient source of energy for a human and why (connected back to the organism’s role within its ecosystem). The task includes both individual and group artifacts of student thinking.   
  • Evaporative Cooling (PS, Chemistry)
    • This task asks students to address how particle motion is changing as the temperature of ice changes over the course of a hot day by describing how particles behave at different points on a temperature/time graph. This task is intended to be used as an assessment of student understanding of an unpacked "part" (learning performance) of a performance expectation (PE).  This task was developed by the team at CREATE for STEM at Michigan State University.  
  • Periodic Trends (PS, Chemistry)
    • This task, students are asked to consider why lithium, magnesium, and sodium react with water in such different ways, focusing on patterns of element properties reflected by the periodic table and how they contribute to reactivity in chemical reactions. This task is intended to be used as an assessment of student understanding of an unpacked "part" (the learning performance described) of a performance expectation (PE).  This task was developed by the team at CREATE for STEM at Michigan State University.
  • Conservation of Matter (PS, Chemistry)
    • This task asks students to describe why, when a certain amount of iron wool is burned, the resulting substance has more mass that the iron wool did in the first place. This task is intended to be used as an assessment of student understanding of an unpacked "part" (learning performance) of a performance expectation (PE).  This task was developed by the team at CREATE for STEM at Michigan State University.  
  • Force and Motion (PS, Physics)
    • The task asks students to use their understanding of analyzing and interpreting data, constructing explanations, and ideas about what happens when objects collide to make sense of an investigation conducted by a [fictional] student named Sam about why it is so important to wear helmets when bike riding. Throughout the task, students are asked to consider aspects of Sam’s experimental design, collected data, and conclusions as a mechanism to elicit students’ sense-making. This task is intended to be used as an assessment of student understanding of an unpacked "part" of a performance expectation (the learning performance described).  This task was developed by the team at CREATE for STEM at Michigan State University.  
  • MagLev (PS, Physics)
    • This task asks students to use data and their understanding of magnetic fields to account for the movement and relative of positions of magnets interacting at a distance. This task is intended to be used as an assessment of student understanding of an unpacked "part" (learning performance) of a performance expectation (PE). This task was developed by the team at CREATE for STEM at Michigan State University.  
  • Interactions (PS, instructionally embedded)
    • The Interactions unit as a whole is designed to supports high school students in using three-dimensional learning to make sense of phenomena and solve problems by evaluating their own ideas. Students conduct investigations, collect evidence, and use the evidence to evaluate claims. In response, the teacher’s role shifts away from providing information and toward guiding students as they learn to use evidence to support and their ideas about the phenomenon or problem. The curriculum is designed to give teachers frequent insight into their students’ progress so they have the information they need to provide this guidance. 

      Here, we discuss one activity from Investigation 3 in Unit 1. The four activities in Investigation 3 are all tied to the driving question: What are all materials made of? In Activity 2, examined here, students observe a surprising phenomenon when they make three combinations of substances. When they combine water with water and ethanol with ethanol, the substances increase in volume by a predictable amount. But when they combine ethanol with water, the volume increase is smaller than expected. Students develop, evaluate, and refine a model to explain this phenomenon. 

  • Bacteria Exit Ticket (LS)
    • These tasks are classroom-embedded student exit ticket—a short assessment at the conclusion of lesson 5 and 7 in the storyline unit “Why Don’t Antibiotics Work Like They Used To?”. Each exit ticket is designed as a quick, formative check on student understanding after they have figured out key information related to how bacteria grow and react to antibiotics. 
  • Evolution of Swallows (LS)
    • This task, administered as a summative transfer task as part of the unit NextGen Storylines unit “Why Don’t Antibiotics Work Like They Used To?” asks students to consider a phenomenon observed in Nebraska: a dramatic change in the number of swallows killed along a highway [roadkill]. Throughout the course of the task, students are asked to consider the interplay between environmental pressures—in the form of building of highways and cars driving quickly—and population changes in trait, specifically around wing span, to explain why the proportion of local swallow populations impacted by car-related deaths has changed over a multi-decade period. Through this lens, students are asked to demonstrate their understanding of adaptation to interpret data about swallow traits and population changes, and to connect evidence presented in the task with their conceptual understanding of natural selection to posit and support a possible explanation for the observed phenomenon. 
  • Tibetan Plateau (LS)
    • This task, intended to be administered as a summative transfer assessment completed at the end of Bend 2 of the NextGen Storylines unit “Why Don’t Antibiotics Work Like They Used To?”, asks students to consider how the environmental features of Tibet may have interacted with the traits of people living there over time. As students work through the task, students have to consider information about the patterns of survival and prevalence of people with different sized blood vessels to use as evidence to support ideas about how the elevation of Tibet has shaped traits in populations that have lived there over time.  
  • Two Species or One? (LS)
    • This task, administered as a summative transfer assessment completed at the end of Bend 2 of the NextGen Storylines unit “Why Don’t Antibiotics Work Like They Used To?”, asks students to consider a phenomenon-based problem: bird population decline on Norfolk Island in the South Pacific. Throughout the task, students consider data about genetic and physical similarities and differences to make supported claims about whether a population of birds found on Norfolk Island be issued special protections as a species, or if they should be considered part of others species’ populations.
  • Galapagos Ground Finches (LS)
    • This task, administered as a summative transfer assessment completed at the end of Bend 1 or 2 of the NextGen Storylines unit “Why Don’t Antibiotics Work Like They Used To?”, asks students to consider changes in finch beak length and wing length to make a claim regarding which trait has changed the most over time and provide an account—through both explanation and a prediction—for how food availability may have influenced the change in observed beak length in the population. The task depends on the evaluation of four graphs that show the distribution of beak and wing length in 1973 and 1978.  The task appears to be assessing knowledge the students learned during instruction, and connects closely related phenomena concerning trait changes in birds (Juncos) and how this relates to survival advantages (limited/near transfer).