When it comes to 3D assessments, phenomena-driven questions are essential. Assessing 3D skills requires a shift from the traditional testing model to one that better reflects the student’s ability to make sense of the world around them. How can we create meaningful assessments with NGSS phenomena that help students understand the concepts they’ve learned in class and apply them to real-world examples? This blog post will explore some ideas about phenomena and sensemaking for 3D assessments.

Guidelines for 3 Dimensional Assessments

There are specific attributes to determine if a phenomenon is optimal for your assessments:

• Novel: If students have seen the phenomena before, assessing their knowledge application won’t be helpful.
• Multiple Dimensions: Students must apply the Cross-Cutting Concepts, the Science and Engineering Practices, and the Disciplinary Core Ideas when analyzing phenomena.
• Grappling with Uncertainty: If there is no uncertainty within the phenomena, and they are just repeating and representing knowledge, there is no sense-making involved in their analysis.

NGSS Phenomena Needs to be Novel

One question to ask yourself when designing assessments: Do students need the phenomena to answer questions?

This “phenomena” is not a specific instance of something happening in the natural world, but a very general example. If the students have already studied thermodynamics or heat, they’ve probably come across this example in the past. This question is asking students to recall a model they’ve likely seen before (i.e. longer arrows moving away from dots, to represent the particles moving faster) and asking students to make sense of a novel phenomena by explaining HOW or WHY something is happening.

This is a specific, and likely novel example of something happening in the natural world. They have to see the motion through a GIF, and explain the change in motion by applying the learned concepts in the DCI and explaining how or why the balloon moves through the Modeling SEP.

For help finding high quality phenomena, check out our article on Finding Phenomena for the NGSS, where we’ve listed a few great sources where you can find NGSS phenomena for every Performance Expectation.

NGSS Phenomena Allows Students to Use Multiple Dimensions

Using multiple dimensions in questions is essential for students to engage in sensemaking. Students should demonstrate an understanding of the DCI through the lens of the CCC or SEP. Stem teaching tools has some great question stems for the Crosscutting Concepts and question stems for the Science and Engineering Practices. Here are some guidelines for how to leverage the dimensions throughout a unit:

• Beginning of unit: Focus on students understanding the basic science concepts. Ask questions about student knowledge, around the DCIs, and have student represent the ideas you talk about in class through an SEP or CCC (i.e. Draw a model of the phenomena we discussed in class today, or Explain the patterns you saw in the phenomena we discussed in class today).
• Middle of the unit: Ask students 2 dimensional questions, with a novel phenomena, so they can start to draw connections between the DCIs and the CCCs or SEPs.
• End of unit: Ask questions around a novel phenomena that integrate all three dimensions (SEPs, DCIs, & CCCs) to measure student mastery of the performance expectation.

Authentic Uncertainty

After we’ve found a novel phenomena and given students multi-dimensional questions, we need to ensure they’re authentically engaging in sensemaking.

If questions engage students in authentic uncertainty, they will always ask for a justification of “how” or “why” something in the natural world is happening. These questions go beyond things students know or don’t know and instead ask them to explain how or why the things they know are applied in this novel context.

For example:
Not engaging in authentic uncertainty: Draw a model to show what happens when water heats up on the stove:

Engaging in authentic uncertainty: Ue a model to explain how the movement of particles and changes in heat energy appear to shrink a balloon that’s dipped in liquid nitrogen.

In the context of 3D assessments, sense-making requires students to combine knowledge and experiences in order to make connections between what they know and what they observe. When assessing students through 3 dimensions, educators should ensure their questions focus around a novel phenomena, ask students to use multiple dimensions, and engage students in authentic uncertainty.