High School Science

Best Practices In Science Education

Teachers activate prior knowledge to determine misconceptions prior to teaching new content. Helping students uncover their misconceptions and then compare their misconceptions with new learning forces students to address their misconceptions. Teachers will engage students by presenting phenomena in a variety of ways and allow students to brainstorm hypotheses and propose new questions. Teachers will provide and explicitly teach some models to students, or allow students to create models. Through purposeful feedback teachers will help students refine their models. Teachers will provide students with hands on opportunities to explore phenomena. This can be guided by the teacher or left open ended for students to test their own ideas. Teachers will explicitly teach students how to organize data in tables and graphs. Teachers should provide students multiple opportunities to analyze tables and graphs to justify conclusions. Teachers will teach students how to calculate statistics (mean, median, mode, frequency, etc.) for real data sets gathered through experimentation. Teachers will provide opportunities for students to use computers to analyze large data sets or simulate phenomena that is difficult to directly measure. Teachers will model how to develop conclusions and what evidence can be used to justify the claim. Teachers will also model for students that explanations may change based on new evidence. Teachers will facilitate discussions between students where they are encouraged to state a claim and use evidence to support it. Teachers will provide students with age appropriate informational text (textbook, journals, newspapers, or other credible sources). Teachers will facilitate discussions using scientific language and provide students opportunities to support or reject other’s conclusions. Teachers will explicitly teach content related vocabulary to students. Teachers should develop and use assessments which make students thinking visible. Examples include performance assessments, exit tickets, lab reports, conclusions, etc.

Students will compare their beginning knowledge on a topic to their new knowledge, and will be able to discuss/write how their knowledge on the subject changed over time.

Combat Misconceptions

Students should ask questions of each other about the texts they read, the features of the phenomena they observe, and the conclusions they draw from their models or scientific investigations. Students will create, evaluate, and refine models. Models can include diagrams, physical replicas, mathematical representations, analogies, and computer simulations. Students should engage in investigations that range from those structured by the teacher to those that emerge from students’ own questions. Levels of exploration range from teacher-led structured inquiry to student-directed open inquiry. Students should organize and interpret raw data through tabulating, graphing, or statistical analysis. Such analysis can bring out the meaning of data - and their relevance - so that they may be used as evidence. Students use their data to calculate statistics and other numbers to expand on their recorded data. Students should also use computers an digital tools to enhance the power of mathematics by automating calculations, approximating solutions to problems that cannot be calculated precisely, and analyzing large data sets available to identify meaningful patterns. Students are expected to construct their own explanations, as well as apply standard explanations they learn about from explicit instruction and informational text. Students should argue for the explanations they construct, defend their interpretations of the associated data, and advocate for the designs they propose by citing evidence from text or experiments. Students will read, interpret, and produce scientific and technical text. Communicating information, evidence, and ideas can be done in multiple ways: using tables, diagrams, graphs, models, interactive displays, and equations as well as orally, in wiring, and through extended discussion. Students will practice academic vocabulary by reading, writing and talking. Students will use academic language, evidence from labs and informational text, demonstrations, etc. to explain scientific phenomena in writing.

Define problems and ask questions

Develop models and abstract representations

Plan and carry out investigations

Analyze and interpret data

Use mathematics and computational thinking Construct explanations and design solutions Engage in argument from evidence Obtain, evaluate and communicate information using

academic language

Use Authentic Assessment

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