By providing a variety of strategies, scenarios, student samples,
classroom video clips from across all science content areas, rubrics,
and guidelines this book provides teachers with the tools to
successfully support young scientists to use evidence to construct
scientific explanations.
With the view that children are capable young scientists, authors
encourage science teaching in ways that nurture students' curiosity
about how the natural world works including research-based approaches to
support all K-5 children constructing scientific explanations via talk
and writing. Grounded in NSF-funded research, this book/DVD provides K-5
teachers with a framework for explanation (Claim, Evidence, Reasoning)
that they can use to organize everything from planning to instructional
strategies and from scaffolds to assessment. Because the framework
addresses not only having students learn scientific explanations but
also construct them from evidence and evaluate them, it is considered to
build upon the new NRC framework for K-12 science education, the
national standards, and reform documents in science education, as well
as national standards in literacy around argumentation and persuasion,
including the Common Core Standards for English Language Arts (Common
Core State Standards Initiative, 2010).The chapters guide teachers step
by step through presenting the framework for students, identifying
opportunities to incorporate scientific explanation into lessons,
providing curricular scaffolds (that fade over time) to support all
students including ELLs and students with special needs, developing
scientific explanation assessment tasks, and using the information from
assessment tasks to inform instruction.
ABOUT THE VIDEO
All of the video clips associated with this text were filmed in
elementary grade classrooms in central, rural Pennsylvania. None of the
lessons were staged or scripted. The video was not professionally
recorded or produced given that our aim was to be as non-intrusive as
possible in the classrooms in which we were guests. Permissions were
secured for all students and teachers appearing in the video clips. We
hope those that view the videos are as grateful as we are that these
teachers were willing to share their attempts to integrate scientific
explanation into their science teaching practices, providing us with
insights that would not be possible without these images. They are the
true heroes of this work. - Carla L. Zembal-Saul, Katherine McNeill,
and Kimber Hershberger