Lessons and units should build on discoveries from prior life experiences and/or background knowledge, student investigations and concepts covered in prior units and, when applicable, prior grade bands.
Outcome
Students will call on disciplinary literacy skills to allow them to communicate scientifically.
| Feature | Expanding Implementation | Implementation | Beginning Implementation | No Implementation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4A | Students interact with each other and use appropriate disciplinary language/vocabulary when they conduct investigations; represent and interpret data; negotiate understanding; gather additional information; and develop explanations, models, and arguments. | Students interact through structured whole-class discussions and small group work to defend their claims with evidence and use their interactions to negotiate understanding and/or to revise their explanations/models/arguments. Students’ use of disciplinary language/vocabulary is an after-thought instead of a focus of the interactions. | Supports interact through structured whole-class discussions and small group work but the interactions do not promote student discourse that allows for negotiating understanding or providing peer feedback. | Students interact predominantly with the teacher through answering questions that communicate their understanding of science content or processes. Students experience science vocabulary as information/facts to be learned through disconnected practice or memorization. |
| 4B | Students use journals/notebooks to record and reflect on data/evidence. Students appropriately communicate scientific ideas/designs to different audiences through multiple modes of expressions including drawing, writing, video, etc. and use self, peer or teacher feedback to revise their understanding or to improve their communication skills. | Students utilize science notebooks/journals as a way to record information in words, drawings, graphs, etc and as a way to organize their own ideas and explanations, but do not have the opportunity to use peer or teacher feedback to revise their understanding or to improve their communication skills. | Students use journals/notebooks to record and organize information and build on these ideas throughout their learning. | Students record information on worksheets or in class notes but do not refer to these items in subsequent learning experiences. |
| 4C | Students create, evaluate, or analyze mathematical models and/or graphical displays of data in their explanations which encourage conceptual understanding, vocabulary development, and mathematical or computational thinking. | Students use scientific formulas, make calculations, and appropriately represent and analyze data to deepen their conceptual understanding. | Students perform mathematical calculations, graph their data and make sense of various displays of data but their analysis does not advance conceptual understanding. | Students use mathematical calculations to determine correct answers. Students learn graphing skills in isolation of context (i.e. there is a measurement and graphing unit). |
| 4D | Students are able to obtain, evaluate, and utilize resources to assist in making sense of phenomena. Students look to a variety of expert resources to provide evidence for their scientific claims. | Students utilize a variety of sources of information to support their scientific claims but these sources are typically supplied by a teacher. | Students utilize teacher-provided expert texts to answer questions. | Students use their textbook as the predominant/sole source of information to analyze or interpret data or to construct their scientific explanations. |
Feature 4A Resources
STEM Starts Early: Grounding Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math Education in Early Childhood
Supporting Scientific Thinking and Inquiry of Toddlers and Preschoolers through Play
Ambitious Science Teaching was developed by the University of Washington to provide tools and resources that support rigorous science instruction at the elementary, middle school and high school levels. This site provides classroom video examples and educator-developed lessons. There are also tools for planning and scaffolding instruction.
Appendix M of the NGSS provides grade-specific connections of the science standards to literacy standards for science and technical subjects.
Promoting Student Science Talk in the Classroom
Talk Science Primer describes the research behind and strategies that support student engagement in productive classroom discourse
Integrating Literacy Strategies into Science Instruction are videos and related resources showing classroom examples of incorporating paraphrasing, summarizing, using interactive read-alouds and more.
Ready, Set, SCIENCE! Putting Research to Work in K-8 Science Classrooms is a foundational synthesis of research into teaching and learning science in kindergarten through eighth grade. Based on a National Research Council report, this book summarizes a body of findings from the learning sciences and builds detailed cases of science educators at work to make the implications of research clear, accessible, and stimulating for a broad range of science educators.
Feature 4B Resources
Appendix M of the NGSS provides grade-specific connections of the science standards to literacy standards for science and technical subjects.
Integrating Literacy Strategies into Science Instruction are videos and related resources showing classroom examples of incorporating paraphrasing, summarizing, using interactive read-alouds and more.
Feature 4C Resources
Appendix L of the NGSS provides grade-specific connections of the science standards to the mathematics standards.
Practices Resource in Science and Math (PRISM) - Descriptions, videos and strategies associated with each science and engineering practice and each mathematical practice. The faculty, staff and students from the University of California, Davis and teachers from Dixon Unified School District and Davis Joint Unified School District who developed this site also provide a framework and shifts that incorporate both the SEPs and mathematical practices.
Feature 4D Resources
Appendix M of the NGSS provides grade-specific connections of the science standards to literacy standards for science and technical subjects.
Created 2018 through the work of M. Sanderman, P. Christensen, K. Kilibarda; Updated 2020 through the work of E. Hall, M. Sanderman, T. Jarrett, S. Nelson, K. Schmidt