PART III
SAMPLE ITEMS
Following are a series of sample questions for each content area domain (life, earth, physical science) and strand (e.g., ecosystems, structure of matter, astronomy). These sample items are meant to help elucidate the breadth and depth of questions that students can expect to find on the CAPT. The items may be reproduced and used as part of regular classroom instruction and assessment. These sample items may be used to help assess students’ understanding of the CAPT strands and to provide practice in answering CAPT-like questions.
This packet includes samples of both open-ended and multiple-choice questions. While the multiple-choice items in this packet are both clustered and "stand alone," it must be remembered that on the CAPT all multiple-choice items will be clustered. The questions within a cluster will assess students’ understanding in a number of different strands.
I.
CONCEPTUAL UNDERSTANDING AND APPLICATION OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE
- •Describe natural phenomena with appropriate scientific terms.
- •Explain natural phenomena with scientific concepts.
- •Predict future events based on scientific knowledge.
- •Apply scientific reasoning and knowledge.
- •Interpret and communicate scientific information using words, equations, graphs and charts.
II.
EXPERIMENTATION
- •Recognize and define problems for scientific investigations.
- •Design appropriate procedures to solve the problem.
- •Predict the results based on knowledge of problem-related content.
- •Conduct investigations, collect data and record observations.
- •Interpret data, draw conclusions and assess their validity.
All of the above processes in the following content areas:
29 to 31