Rise and Thrive with Science Teaching PK-5 Science and Engineering (2023) / Chapter Skim
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4 Letting Children Lead During Investigation and Design
4 Letting Children Lead During Investigation and Design
Pages 83-118
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From page 83... ...
These include planning investigations and collecting data, analyzing and interpreting data, developing and using models, constructing explanations, and arguing from evidence. Practical strategies for teaching in this way are given throughout this chapter.
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From page 84... ...
tasks and collect data set the stage for all of the other science and engineering prac tices discussed in this chapter. Planning investigations and design tasks When students plan investigations and design tasks, they will need to be involved in making important decisions like these: • What to test and how to test it; • What kinds of data they need; • How they will collect data and what kind of tools will they use; and • What will they measure and how they will measure it.
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Note, too, how children become vested in their work and develop a sense of responsibility for both the outdoor plants they observe and draw and the indoor plants they grow and monitor. Letting Children Lead During Investigation and Design 85
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. Getting a grip: A framework for designing and adapting elementary school science investigations.
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off. They talk about how many hours per day to use the light and whether or not to block out all light in Letting Children Lead During Investigation and Design 87
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During class discussions, she asked questions about which places in the wild backyard would be suitable for plant growth without telling students answers. • Within the overall plan, the teacher left some latitude for students to make choices as the investigation progressed.
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Measurements are Letting Children Lead During Investigation and Design 89
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The level of scaffolding children require will vary by age or grade level. Younger children need more structure, but even preschool children can ask questions and make predictions that will shape an investigation.
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. When students analyze data from their own investigations and design tasks, they are testing their ideas against reality.
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To help students answer their initial question, Ms. Padilla introduces a semi-structured in vestigation in which students roll marbles down long tracks made from pipe insulation.
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As a result of their investigation and data analysis, the children are now eager to develop an explanation. Letting Children Lead During Investigation and Design 93
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Strategies for helping students analyze and interpret data Children often need support in interpreting and analyzing data. The formats for representing data can help students see patterns, make comparisons, and do other analyses.
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, 80-87. Letting Children Lead During Investigation and Design 95
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More importantly, as discussed in Chapter 7, graphs can sup port students' sensemaking by helping them aggregate results across cases and identify patterns. Preschool teacher Daniel Kim used a large graph to track children's data from a plant growth unit and help them see pat terns in their data (Figure 4-5)
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From page 97... ...
Modeling can be an effective way to help students gradually gain more knowledge of a concept like sound waves that they can't see, as the following case illustrates. Notice how teacher Fredi King leads her third graders through multiple cycles of creating and refining models during a unit on the physics of sound.7 As the students conduct experiments, they add more explanatory features to their models with each iteration.
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https://ambitiousscienceteaching.org/wp-content/ Figure 4-6. An initial student model to explain how a uploads/2014/09/Models-and-Modeling-An-Introduction1.pdf; and Tools singer breaks a glass for Ambitious Science Teaching.
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Letting Children Lead During Investigation and Design 99
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• The teacher provided different types of supports to stimulate students' think ing. Examples include a sheet summarizing the main initial ideas for discussion, a before-during-after template, and sentence stems.
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, 302–325. Letting Children Lead During Investigation and Design 101
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You can support children in understand ing the strengths and limitations of a model by having them compare different models and say what each one shows and hides. You can guide children to consider the most meaningful dimensions and sideline the potentially distracting elements.
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Letting Children Lead During Investigation and Design 103
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Yet, these practices are often overlooked in elementary science classrooms. An explanation is a description of what caused a phenomenon or how a designed solution works.
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Ms. Jackson uses an unexpected result involving the chocolate chips to begin moving children toward an explanation of the role of heat.
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In a follow-up discussion, students continue to mull over the ambiguous behavior of the chocolate chips. A student named Sylvie compares the chips to ice cream: Sylvie: When I have ice cream, it's a solid, but when you leave it out, it starts melting.
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Amal: I know the amount of heat matters because I melted chocolate in a pot on the stove, and it cooked a little bit; it took a couple minutes, but it got really hot and melted into a liquid. I knew it was a liquid because it poured and it didn't keep its shape, it Letting Children Lead During Investigation and Design 107
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A few days later, the children consider what they have learned. Here are some of their ideas: • Daisy thinks the cake batter "was blocking" the chocolate chips because the chips were on the bottom and they melted just a little bit.
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From page 109... ...
-- Carla Zembal-Saul, professor of science education, Penn State University13 How can I support children in constructing explanations? 13 Children bring strengths to the work of constructing and refining explanations and design solutions, but they require support to do this work.
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Then you could read aloud a nonfiction text to connect concepts from the text to children's developing ideas. Areas where children might need extra support in constructing explanations Developing viable explanations and design solutions is often challenging for chil dren.
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The act of writing helps them Letting Children Lead During Investigation and Design 111
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From page 112... ...
A basic CER framework includes sentence stems like these: • I observed _______ when _______. (claim)
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Children might propose that a maple seed would likely travel farther outdoors because it's higher up on a maple tree than the seeds blown in a classroom. Letting Children Lead During Investigation and Design 113
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Most notably, the focus should be on developing children's ideas rather than on strictly adhering to the format of the chart. Like the CER framework, the KLEWS chart should also be phased out over time.
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, 66–71. Going beyond CER and KLEWS While the CER framework and the KLEWS chart are powerful scaffolds, they are starting points for increasing children's competence at constructing explanations and arguments.
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From page 116... ...
So, by emphasiz ing these aspects of sensemaking in instruction, you're immersing children in the real work of scientists and engineers from an early age. On a related note, when children construct models, explanations, and design solutions based on evidence, it strengthens their identities as knowledge builders, doers, and thinkers in science and engineering.
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From page 117... ...
But, as experienced researchers and practitioners emphasize, you do have to guide and support students all the way to the point of constructing explanations and arguments. Without that, they are missing vital practices of sensemaking.
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From page 118... ...
118 Rise and Thrive with Science
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