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  • Is It Food?

    Lesson Plan |

    The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about food. The probe is designed to find out if students use a scientific definition of food to distinguish food items from nonfood items.

  • Comparing Cubes

    Lesson Plan |

    The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about properties of matter. The probe is designed to find out which properties students think will change if the size of an object made from the same…

  • What Is a Hypothesis?

    Lesson Plan |

    The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about hypotheses. The probe is designed to find out if students understand what a hypothesis is, when it is used, and how it is developed.

  • Summer Talk

    Lesson Plan |

    The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about seasons. The probe can be used to determine whether students recognize the effect of the Earth’s tilt on its axis and the resulting intensity of…

  • Is It Made of Parts?

    Lesson Plan |

    The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit children’s developing ideas about structure in living systems. The probe is designed to find out if students recognize that living things are made up of parts.

  • Why Is My Shadow Always Changing?

    Lesson Plan |

  • Mass, Volume, and Density

    Lesson Plan |

    The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about density. The probe is designed to find out whether students have commonly held ideas about mass, volume, shape, and other properties that interfere…

  • What’s in the Bubbles?

    Lesson Plan |

    The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about particles during a phase change. The probe is designed to find out if students recognize that the bubbles formed when water boils are the result of…

  • Ice-Cold Lemonade

    Lesson Plan |

    The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about transfer of energy. The probe is designed to determine whether students recognize that heat flows from warmer objects or areas to cooler ones.

  • Is It a Theory?

    Lesson Plan |

    The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about the nature of science. The probe is designed to find out if students distinguish scientific theories from the common use of the word theory and if…

  • Baby Mice

    Lesson Plan |

    The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about heredity. The probe is designed to reveal how students think organisms inherit observable traits.

  • Will It Form a New Substance?

    Lesson Plan |

    The purpose of this assessment probe is to elicit students’ ideas about chemical change. The probe is designed to find out how students determine whether a new substance with a different chemical makeup is formed when…

  • Spaceships

    Lesson Plan |

    This probe is designed to elicit students’ ideas about changing the direction of motion in the absence of air. Many students will have seen movies or television shows in which spaceships turn by banking or using wing…

  • Force and Motion Ideas

    Lesson Plan |

    The purpose of this assessment probe is to comprehensively elicit students’ ideas about the relationship between force and motion. The list of possible answers includes several distracters that are based on learning…

  • Why Do Some Objects Stick to the Refrigerator?

    Lesson Plan |

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