Grade 3-5

2009 Summer Institute Workshop

July 7-9, 2009

Schedule for the day

• Introductions and overview• Process Skills Circus• Energy Transfer Activity• What is Electricity• Overview of eesmarts• Go With the Flow• Electromagnetism Inquiry• Recycling Activity• End of the Day Go-Around

– Lunch is 12:00-12:45

Summer Institute Objectives• Experience eesmarts lessons and activities and

discuss ideas regarding how to incorporate them in the classroom.

• Actively engage participants in grade-level appropriate activities and discuss differentiations for a variety of students.

• Experience modeled activities, discuss science pedagogy and learn how to turn activities into more inquiry based lessons.

Summer Institute 2009PIMMS/Wesleyan Univerisity

Process Skills are the tools for:

• gathering information

• generating and testing new ideas

• building new knowledge

• learning scientific concepts

• constructing scientific explanations of the world

Important to Inquiry-Based Learning

Tools students use to carry out scientific investigations

Grades 3-5 Core Scientific Inquiry, Literacy and NumeracyHow is scientific knowledge created and communicated?

Content Standards Expected Performances

SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY Scientific inquiry is a thoughtful and

coordinated attempt to search out, describe, explain and predict natural phenomena.

SCIENTIFIC LITERACY Scientific literacy includes speaking,

listening, presenting, interpreting, reading and writing about science.

SCIENTIFIC NUMERACY Mathematics provides useful tools

for the description, analysis and presentation of scientific data and ideas.

1. Make observations and ask questions about objects, organisms and the environment.

2. Seek relevant information in books, magazines and electronic media.

3. Design and conduct simple investigations.4. Employ simple equipment and measuring tools to

gather data and extend the senses.5. Use data to construct reasonable explanations.6. Analyze, critique and communicate investigations

using words, graphs and drawings.7. Read and write a variety of science-related fiction

and nonfiction texts.8. Search the Web and locate relevant science

information.9. Use measurement tools and standard units (e.g.,

centimeters, meters, grams, kilograms) to describe objects and materials.

10. Use mathematics to analyze, interpret and present data.

Grades PreK-2 Core Scientific Inquiry, Literacy and NumeracyHow is scientific knowledge created and communicated?

Content Standards Expected Performances

SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY Scientific inquiry is a thoughtful and

coordinated attempt to search out, describe, explain and predict natural phenomena.

SCIENTIFIC LITERACY Scientific literacy includes speaking,

listening, presenting, interpreting, reading and writing about science.

SCIENTIFIC NUMERACY Mathematics provides useful tools for

the description, analysis and presentation of scientific data and ideas.

1. Make observations and ask questions about objects, organisms and the environment.

2. Use senses and simple measuring tools to collect data.

3. Make predictions based on observed patterns.4. Read, write, listen and speak about observations

of the natural world.5. Seek information in books, magazines and

pictures.6. Present information in words and drawings.7. Use standard tools to measure and describe

physical properties such as weight, length and temperature.

8. Use nonstandard measures to estimate and compare the sizes of objects.

9. Count, order and sort objects by their properties.10. Represent information in bar graphs.

Grades 6-8 Core Scientific Inquiry, Literacy and NumeracyHow is scientific knowledge created and communicated?

Content Standards Content Standards

SCIENTIFIC INQUIRYScientific inquiry is a thoughtful and coordinated attempt to search out, describe, explain and predict natural phenomena.Scientific inquiry progresses through a continuous process of questioning, data collection, analysis and interpretation.Scientific inquiry requires the sharing of findings and ideas for critical review by colleagues and other scientists.SCIENTIFIC LITERACYScientific literacy includes speaking, listening, presenting, interpreting, reading and writing about science.Scientific literacy also includes the ability to search for and assess the relevance and credibility of scientific information found in various print and electronic media. SCIENTIFIC NUMERACYScientific numeracy includes the ability to use mathematical operations and procedures to calculate, analyze and present scientific data and ideas.

C INQ.1 Identify questions that can be answered through scientific investigation.C INQ.2 Read, interpret and examine the credibility of scientific claims in different sources of information.

C INQ.3 Design and conduct appropriate types of scientific investigations to answer different questions.C INQ.4 Identify independent and dependent variables, and those variables that are kept constant, when designing an experiment.C INQ.5 Use appropriate tools and techniques to make observations and gather data.

C INQ.6 Use mathematical operations to analyze and interpret data. C INQ.7 Identify and present relationships between variables in appropriate graphs.

C INQ.8 Draw conclusions and identify sources of error.C INQ.9Provide explanations to investigated problems or questions.

C INQ.1 Communicate about science in different formats, using relevant science vocabulary, supporting evidence and clear logic.

Take Home Messages

■ Students use process skills to build a conceptual understanding of science content.

■ Students of all ages use all of the process skills. Each skill can be practiced at simple and increasingly complex levels.

■ Process skills are not used separately but as intertwined, coherent sets of skills.

■ Teachers can redesign activities to help students develop stronger process skills.

Three part to this workshop

• Process Circus-work with pairs and rotate through six activities that use a variety of process skills

• Develop a common vocabulary of process skills

• Practice identifying process skills and modify science activities to help your students raise their skills to higher levels

• Observing

• Questioning

• Hypothesizing

• Predicting

• Planning and Investigating

• Interpreting

• Communicating

Process Skills

Process Circus• Working in pairs do the

experiment at each station.• Using the Process skills

Identification sheet check all the process skill experienced in each station.

• For each station circle the process skill that is used for the underlined set of directions.

• No More than twenty minutes to complete activities

Group Discussion

Working in new groups, discuss what you identified as the main process skill at each station. Note areas of agreement or disagreement.

Tools to assist: Process Skills Identification Sheet Directions for Activities at the Stations

10 minutes

Process Skills Identification

Process Skills Identification

Process skills are not practiced discretely.

Someone who is observing, for example, may be doing some predicting and hypothesizing, and possibly even

interpreting, virtually simultaneously. Pulling the skills apart and distinguishing them from one another can prove tricky.

Process Skills Identification Continued

In actual practice what we call process skills are not individual skills but combinations, or blends, of several skills. But as teachers, we need to address the skills separately so that we can identify where students are in their development of each skill in order to focus on helping them strengthen particular skills.

Group Discussion

• Discuss the skills further by comparing the way you have been talking about the process skills with the way the skills are described on the hand outs

• Remember these are descriptors of what learners are doing when they use certain process skills

Approx. 10 min.

How Hypothesizing, Predicting, and Interpreting Differ

Process Skills Definitions

In order to work effectively with processskills in the classroom, and to create afoundation for discussion of process with your peers, it’s important to develop acommon language to describe these

skills.

Process Skills: Definition and Examples-13a-13c

Definitions and Examples

Small Groups

• In groups of 2, discuss these definitions and examples. How do these definitions fit with your own understanding of the skills? How close were your thoughts to the stated definitions. During your discussion, pay attention to those skills you had disagreements or confusion about.

Student Learning: Condensation Anecdote

Read Over Each Paragraph and Underline the Process Skills

Observed10-15mins

Why Process Skills Are Emphasized

• They are important in learning science content– As intellectual tools for generating and testing new

ideas and for building new knowledge

• Research on learning indicates students change their ideas when they find their present ideas do not sufficiently describe or explain an event or observation– Look to anecdote, students use previous knowledge

to help explain and eliminated those ideas when they did not explain condensation

Importance Continued

• Process skills play a critical role in learning science content– In the Anecdote, observing skills were need to notice

that there was a film of water on the outside of a cold class; questioning skills were necessary to pose questions to be investigated; planning, investigating and interpreting skills in order to rule out the hypothesis that water leaks out of glasses or to conclude that temperature was a factor ;hypothesizing skills help to make the connection between the water on the outside of the glass and water on the windshield of a car on a cold morning.

Indicators of Development of Process Skills

Level 4Level 5

Changing the level

Let’s Share Your Results

Working in Grade Level Groups

• Look at the Observing levels 1-6 on your hand out and make the descriptors more student friendly

• For example:At grade 6-8 level two might be: uses more than one sense to observe traits of an object. Or to help not English speaking students:

When students are doing good science, they are getting a workout of their process skills in the service of learning the science content. Students don’t start with strong process skills. We as teachers have to work on developing there skills – ratchet those skills to higher developmental levels.

Take Home Messages

■ Students use process skills to build a conceptual understanding of science content.

■ Students of all ages use all of the process skills. Each skill can be practiced at simple and increasingly complex levels.

■ Process skills are not used separately but as intertwined, coherent sets of skills.

■ Teachers can redesign activities to help students develop stronger process skills.