Science Task Prescreen
Task Title: Frost Heaves and Connecticut Stone Walls Task
Grade: High School
Date: 2026-04-15
SEP: Planning and Carrying Out Investigations
DCI: ESS2.A: Earth Materials and Systems
CCC: Cause and Effect
Task Purpose: To evaluate students’ ability to plan and conduct a systematic investigation of how the properties of water (specifically its expansion upon freezing) affect Earth materials and surface processes, using the frost heaving phenomenon in Connecticut as the anchoring context.
Instructions
- Before you begin: Complete the task as a student would. Then, consider any support materials provided to teachers or students, such as contextual information about the task and answer keys/rubrics.
- Prescreen: Answer the following high-level questions to identify any major red flags (🚩) in your task. If you find one or more red flags, consider the purpose of the task and the evidence gathered to determine whether the task warrants a deeper dive.
Prescreen Questionnaire
| Question | Yes | No |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Is there a phenomenon or problem driving the task? | [x] | [ ] 🚩 |
| 2. Can the majority of the task be answered without using information provided by the task scenario? | [ ] 🚩 | [x] |
| 3. Can significant portions of the task be answered successfully by using rote knowledge (e.g., definitions, prescriptive or memorized procedure)? | [ ] 🚩 | [x] |
| 4. Does the majority of the task require students to use reasoning to successfully complete the task? | [x] | [ ] 🚩 |
| 5. Does the task require students to use some understanding of disciplinary core ideas to successfully complete the task? | [x] | [ ] 🚩 |
| 6. Do students have to use at least one science and engineering practice to successfully complete the task? | [x] | [ ] 🚩 |
| 7. Are the dimensions assessed separately in the majority of the task? | [ ] 🚩 | [x] |
| 8. Is the task coherent and comprehensible from the student perspective? | [x] | [ ] 🚩 |
Recommendation
Based on your assessment needs and the task purpose recorded above, make a recommendation about this task moving forward (choose one):
- Warrants further review.
- Should not be used.
Summary
Summarize your evidence and reasoning:
The task is anchored in a compelling, locally relevant phenomenon: the mysterious annual appearance of new rocks in Connecticut farm fields, which led to the construction of over 50,000 miles of stone walls. Students cannot answer the task questions without actively running the interactive simulation, manipulating variables (soil moisture, winter severity, soil type), collecting data from the Chart.js graph and Data Log table, and analyzing patterns across multiple controlled trials. The task avoids rote memorization by requiring students to design a systematic investigation isolating one variable at a time, interpret an unknown “Mystery Soil” through comparative analysis, and construct a multi-step causal explanation integrating the SEP (planning investigations), DCI (water’s expansion upon freezing), and CCC (cause and effect) together. The three dimensions are integrated throughout rather than assessed separately. Since no red flags were triggered, the task warrants further, deeper review using the full Task Screener.