Read on to find out more about how to use different question types for Science, examples of sites you can embed into your formatives, and inspiring examples of formatives you can clone!

Take advantage of this opportunity to configure your settings and set yourself up for success. Add relevant Science standards in your Settings if you haven’t already done so, and then add the appropriate calculator in your Default Assign Options so it can be embedded in assignments. Finally, toggle on “Show math keyboard in answer choices” to display the math keyboard button beside each answer choice if you anticipate students working on numeric question types as part of your Formative use.

Here are some of our favorite question types to use in Science classes!

Students can draw, type, underline, and even upload images in a Drawing question. Teachers can likewise draw, type, and upload images to the background!

New Updates! The whiteboard has been completely redesigned. It now features precise draggable line anchors (perfect for drawing chemical bonds, force vectors, or circuit diagrams!), improved touch/trackpad support like pinch-to-zoom, and persistent grid settings for accurate graphing.

Here are some of our favorite uses for Science:

​Tip: If your Drawing question has a final answer, you can add Show Your Work to a Short Answer or Numeric question. That way, Formative can auto-grade your students' final answers (make sure you set an answer key!), but you can also see your students' work - the best of both worlds!

Use Hot Spot questions to add clickable areas to images. Students might identify appropriate organelles within cells, layers of the earth, components within a food web, elements on the periodic table and, more!

Use Drag and Drop questions to move answer choices into defined areas within an image or text. Consider using this option to have students label parts of a diagram or model with terms you’ve chosen.

You can use the Resequence question type to ask students to put steps in order for the Scientific Method, water cycle, life cycles, and more!

Use the Categorize question type to have students sort terms by category or vocabulary terms with definitions!
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Test students’ ability to perform mathematical skills relevant to your science instruction with Numeric questions.

New Updates! Numeric questions now let you set acceptable ranges for correct answers so students can be awarded credit on questions related to measurements and rounding by providing an answer within your defined acceptable range.

You can choose any question type, and add a Math equation to it by clicking on the "+" icon within the question:

Open the editor and start entering your equation!

Tip for Paid Teacher plan subscribers and School & District licensed members: If you want your students to use the same numeric keyboard to type in their answers, use the "Numeric" question type.

Paid Teacher plan subscribers and School & District licensed members can turn on access to an integrated calculator for their students to use for physics or chemistry calculations!. Click here for full details!

New Updates! You can now chat with Luna to generate science questions like those above, as well as generate images that help students practice important data analysis skills. Try prompting Luna to generate graphs, diagrams, and correlations for students to interpret.
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Have students write out a full lab conclusion or CER (Claim, Evidence, Reasoning) piece and use Grade with Luna on Free Response questions to automatically evaluate their writing against a custom scientific rubric.

Turn your unit vocabulary (cell organelles, periodic table elements) into interactive flashcards and matching games with Practice Sets. Luna can even generate them for you automatically!

Upload a science article or PDF and use the Generate Questions button to instantly extract the text and build questions from your content.

You can embed websites anywhere in a formative as a content item. Paid Teacher plan subscribers and School & District licensed members can embed them within a specific question. Check out our Embed article for instructions. 

Great Science sites that embed into formatives include:

🌟 PhET – Note: Newsela STEM subscribers can access 100+ PhET simulations in your Newsela accounts here.

You can add Safe YouTube and Khan Academy YouTube videos as content items. Paid Teacher plan subscribers and School & District licensed members can embed directly within specific questions by adding them as a video.

The Smithsonian Learning Lab also provides many learning activities and videos that can be added as a video to any question type.  

Check out these awesome formatives, created by other Science educators! Click on the title to clone them to your dashboard, and you can edit and assign them to your classes!

🌟 States of Matter Formative (6th-8th grades): students will demonstrate knowledge of the states of matter through a variety of question types.
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🌟 Biological Macromolecules Lab (9th-12th grades): this biology lab formative is a great example of using Formative to guide learning.  *Can be modified or personalized for a lab to align with your curriculum.

🌟 Reading a Weather Map (4th-6th grades): this formative uses a pdf to allow students to read a weather map and demonstrate knowledge of weather fronts.

🌟 Generic lab template (6th-12th grades): this is a template formative that you can edit to use for any lab!

🌟 Science Lessons from Formative (K-12): Explore Formative Starter Lessons featuring expert-created lesson templates. Learn the basics of Formative's lesson features with these easy-to-use resources for K-12 grade levels.

With a goal of providing teachers with high-quality, standards-aligned activities that enhance their instructional practice, we are excited to announce that we are publishing a comprehensive collection of Newsela activities in the Formative Library. This includes activities for all 100 of Newsela’s Science Explainers and 200 Primary Sources. Teachers can also now easily access these activities via the Instructional Features filter in Newsela’s search.

Click HERE to learn how to access and use these activities!

Join the Formative Science Teachers group on Facebook

Learn about School & District license features or Request a quote

Shayla Shepherd is a Professional Learning Manager at Newsela. She holds a bachelors degree in Chemistry and spent 6.5 years as a Chemistry Teacher / EdTech Coordinator with Madison Consolidated High School.