See how a second-grade classroom flexibly uses scaffolds to support the co-development of students’ scientific arguments and models. Scaffolds include zoom-in models and a variety of sentence stems that prompt for integration of evidence, reasoning, and/or causal thinking.
Scaffolds can promote students’ full participation in scientific activity, like the young students generating and supporting claims rooted inside of developing explanatory models here. This is part of dismantling barriers and gatekeepers that limit who participates in science and how.
Read more about the CER framework (claims, evidence, reasoning) and a fifth-grade example here: McNeill, K. L., & Martin, D. M. (2011). Claims, evidence, and reasoning: Demystifying data during a unit on simple machines. Science and Children, 48(8), 52-56.
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