3D Assessment Examples for Climate Science Learning

In collaboration with the ClimeTime Initiative, we have created a shared Google Drive folder with assessments designed to support climate change science teaching and learning. These assessments are intended to support educators in understanding the nature of equitable assessment practices in the context of climate science learning across a range of grade levels and topics. The ClimeTime Initiative Assessment Project has further details.

Access the full folder here or individual assessments below.

Elementary School

• Breathing Easier: This task is for 4th grade elementary students studying natural resources (renewable/nonrenewable) and/or air pollution. It is designed to reveal and develop students abilities to utilize multiple sources of data to support a claim.
• Flooded Playground: This task is for 4th grade students. It is designed to assess students abilities to generate and compare multiple solutions to a problem considering criteria and constraints.
• Growing Plants: This task is for late-elementary (3-5) students, especially while studying about the needs of plants. Students use a simulation as a model of an investigation into the Reveal and develop student abilities to model the interactions within and between human body systems.
• Patterns in Weather: This task is targeted to students in pre-K to kindergarten classroom or other setting where the same teacher sees the same students daily. Collecting weather data across time supports data collection and analysis practices. Students can use their own data to look for patterns across time.
• Trash Talk: This task is for 5th grade students. After class discussions about trash, litter, and available programs for recycling and composting, students collect trash and sort it into “recycling,” “food waste/compostable,” and “landfill.”
• Washington River: This task is for fourth grade students. It is designed to assess students’ ability to identify erosion from observational data and assess student understanding of the causes and effects of erosion.
• Weather and Regions: This task is for third grade students. It is designed to assess students’ ability to understand weather data and use data to describe climate patterns.

Middle School

• Lake Youngs: This task is for middle school students, especially while studying body systems or algal blooms. It is designed to reveal and develop student abilities to model the interactions within and between human body systems.
• Melting Ice: This task is for middle school students studying energy transfer and/or particle motion. It is designed to assess students understanding of energy transfer and develop skills creating or modifying a model to describe an energy transfer phenomenon.
• Modeling Temperature Change: This task is for students in grades 6-8 studying energy transfers. It is designed to evaluate student understanding of thermal energy transfer and reveal and develop student abilities to model thermal energy.
• We've got Water: This task is targeted to students in grades 6–8 studying ecology and human impacts on the environment. It is designed to gather information about students’ ability to identify relationships between a human activity and environmental impacts on water resources.

High School

• Acidic Seas: This task is for high school chemistry students studying pH and/or equilibrium or for high school environmental science students studying ocean acidification. It is designed to explore student understanding of and solutions for ocean acidification.
• Carbon Footprint: This task is designed for high school students studying the impacts of human activities on the carbon cycle and/or global warming. This is designed to assess student modeling practices and assess student thinking around human impacts on the carbon cycle and/or global warming
• Climate and Human Health: This assessment is designed for high school students studying climate change and/or the effects of environmental conditions on humans. After discussing climate change and local impacts, students explore the Department of Health’s Washington Tracking Network (WTN) to see if there are correlations between air quality and asthma hospitalization rates. Students incorporate what they have learned to develop an argument using claim, evidence, and reasoning.
• Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) Facility Proposal: This task is for high school students, especially in Chemistry or Environmental Science. It is designed to help them learn about student connections related to natural gas energy systems and marine-land environments in the context of tribal-urban communities and to reveal and develop student abilities to compare and develop arguments for managing energy needs.

Plus, the folder includes templates for these assessments that you can download and use to create your own.