Watch as a second-grade scientific community develops arguments for what caused a town to flood. The video shares six principles for engaging students in making evidence-based arguments throughout a unit, in ways that emerge from and contribute to their evolving explanatory models of phenomena.
The argumentation principles named here center students’ divergent initial claims and value students’ experiences as valid sources of evidence in scientific sense-making. They also position science as a collective endeavor, rather than something done by select individuals.
Explore the Lawrence Hall of Science’s Argumentation Toolkit website for more resources on scientific argumentation.
How science investigations can expand beyond standard classroom activities
Tips for co-creating “gotta have” checklists with students
Several examples of sixth-grade students interacting with each other’s reasoning as they work to make sense of how sound travels.
This site is primarily funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) through Award #1907471 and #1315995