Teaching Vocabulary

“Vocab.”

Have you heard colleagues, pre-service teachers, and students use this term? Have you watched students cringe inwardly when they hear it, as they assume there will be a session of copying definitions from a textbook or Google?

Experimental/Investigative Question

What is the question you want to answer?
What are your expectations for an answer, or claim, in the conclusion?

Writing the Claim: Claim, Evidence, Reasoning

A claim is an answer to a question. Just about any question, actually.

You’ve come up with a question to investigate. You’ve gathered data, either from your own procedure and methodology, or perhaps from data compiled by others. You may have organized those data in a way that points to a pattern. Voila! Proof, right?

Nope.

Back to School Activities NOT To Do

It’s the first day of school.

You welcome students at the door and show them to their seats. You pass out books and materials, introduce yourself. You read the syllabus and get your kids motivated with an icebreaker. Right?

Nope. Not me.

Student Collaboration: Building a Classroom Culture

I took a hot minute (read: decades) to learn to foster a culture of collaboration in my classroom. I learned the most important pieces of the puzzle pretty much by coincidence.

Claim Evidence Reasoning – the Terms

All teachers give lab safety instruction, right? Students learn to wear chemical splash goggles whenever chemicals, glassware, or heat are present. They learn what to wear on lab day, how to handle flames and glassware and chemicals, and how to operate and lab equipment they may need.

From Scientific Method to Claim Evidence Reasoning

Since recorded time, humans have been curious about the natural world. They observed phenomena and sought explanations for what they saw. How is scientific knowledge developed? How is this knowledge changed as scientists find new evidence?

Science Literacy

We all know what literacy is, right? What about literacy in science?