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Inquiry Approach to Science

The SISL units take an inquiry approach to science in which students pose questions and hypotheses and develop their understanding of scientific phenomena over time through investigations, readings, videos, and discussion. As a teacher, this requires intentional facilitation to create space for students to do the intellectual work of science for themselves.

Each unit launches by introducing students to the anchor phenomenon through a collective experience to pique their curiosity. We are intentional about launching with a common experience to create a more equitable learning environment in which all students have relevant background knowledge to build from. Students generate and share their wonderings, which will guide their investigations over the unit. You want to make sure to model enthusiasm and curiosity and honor students’ authentic questions, even if they are far fetched or show misconceptions.

In the process of learning, students will often voice misconceptions or partial understandings. This is to be expected when students are beginning to explore a new concept. Once students begin learning from investigations and readings, those misconceptions will be challenged and their understandings will develop. Our job as teachers is to facilitate this collaborative sense-making process so that they construct meaning for themselves, rather than telling them what to think or what the “right” answer is.

This is not to say that misconceptions should remain unchallenged later on in a learning sequence, after students have conducted investigations, analyzed data, and read about the concept. However, as much as possible, facilitate students to question and challenge one another’s ideas using data from investigations and evidence from texts, and resist the temptation to correct a student yourself. Encouraging student discussion about their developing understandings provides crucial opportunities for rich language use and deeper scientific learning. You can encourage students to question misunderstandings with prompts like:

• Before the investigation, a lot of us were thinking… Now, let’s look at our data…
• ________ is arguing that …. Take a minute to look at your data in your triads and see if it supports his/her claim. Be ready to share your ideas with us in two minutes.
• We had hypothesized that… Let’s look back at the text and see if it supports that idea. Re-read the text and find evidence that either supports or refutes our hypothesis.
• Let’s look back through the earlier models we created. What’s one way your thinking has changed now that we’ve done our investigations?

Prompts like these also emphasize that as we engage in scientific inquiry, our ideas change. This is to be celebrated, because it means we’ve learned.

Science Practices and Language Development

In the units, students develop their understandings of science by engaging in the practices that scientists use to do their work. The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) outline eight Science and Engineering Practices (SEPs) that are key to scientific inquiry:

• Asking questions and defining problems
• Developing and using models
• Planning and carrying out investigations
• Analyzing and interpreting data
• Using mathematics and computational thinking
• Constructing explanations and designing solutions
• Engaging in argument from evidence
• Obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information

Doing science is a collaborative enterprise, and the SEPs provide rich opportunities for language development as students raise questions and wonderings, work together to investigate phenomena, make sense of experiences and data from investigations, learn from texts and videos, and defend their emerging theories with evidence. This approach to teaching science creates valuable opportunities for language development for students in linguistically diverse classes. We know that language is developed through meaningful interaction with others. Science provides a compelling context for these interactions as children are curious about how the world works and often highly engaged by hands-on investigations.

You will see that the SEPs spiral throughout the units. Students don’t learn scientific practices or the ways to talk about them through one-shot lessons. They need multiple opportunities to engage in these practices in a supportive community, guided by their teacher. Earlier lessons provide more scaffolded experiences with science practices, and over time, students will be able to engage in practices more independently. Students’ participation is also scaffolded by working collaboratively with their peers in a linguistically diverse classroom. Within a classroom, students will need different levels of support with science practices and with English. Over time, you will see all students develop their competence with these practices and with language.

Classroom Culture and Collaboration

Collaboration amongst students is a foundational feature of the units. This is very intentional as we see engaging students in doing science as a joint enterprise that requires mutual engagement and participation by all members of the class. This type of collaboration might be new to some students and may require extensive practice and explicit guidance. Creating a collaborative classroom culture should be viewed as an ongoing goal and not something that can be achieved after one or two lessons. If you haven’t already established class norms in your classroom, doing this before you begin teaching the first unit would be important. Here are some important ideas to consider when establishing norms in the science classroom:

• Scientists work together. The work of a scientist always involves working with others. This work includes investigating, asking questions, wondering, talking, reading and writing collaboratively.
• Scientists share ideas and take risks. Ideas are not owned by particular individuals. Instead, we develop our ideas together as we investigate and talk through what we’re thinking and learning. Often, this means putting out our wonderings or half-formed ideas that we’re not sure about. This risk taking helps push our thinking as a community, as others can build on and question our ideas.
• Scientists disagree. A big part of the work of scientists is to discuss their ideas. Often scientists have different ideas and they don’t agree with their colleagues. Respectfully disagreeing and listening to one another carefully is a big part of how scientists learn.

A central part of developing a strong classroom culture with genuine collaboration is to pay close attention to how students are grouped in the classroom. The SISL curriculum recommends grouping students in triads. This is very intentional. We want to create small groups where, regardless of students’ language proficiency, they will have opportunities to both produce language and hear language and participate actively in investigations and discussions. Here are some important things to consider when grouping students in triads:

• Consider English proficiency. Students who are learning English benefit from hearing models. Grouping students heterogeneously provides access and engagement with more fluent models of English.
• Consider students’ home languages. Recently arrived newcomer students and other more emergent users of English may be more reticent to participate in their second language. Grouping them with other students who speak their home language gives them the opportunity to engage in the science ideas in their home language.
• Consider social and emotional skills. Just as our students bring a range of linguistic and academic competencies to our class, they have a range of social and emotional skills. A student may be a strong English model, but may need explicit support and feedback learning to be open to others’ thinking and be patient with students who may need more time to process and formulate ideas. English learners benefit from working with students who are comfortable sharing ideas openly, know how to invite others’ into discussion, recognize that everyone has something to contribute regardless of language proficiency, and are patient and empathetic.
• Take the time to observe quiet students. We often make assumptions about students who don’t participate regularly in whole-class discussions. We assume they don’t understand or don’t have the language to share their ideas. Take time to observe these students in different activities and notice what engagement and understanding look like for them. Is the student using their science notebook? Are they touching the phenomenon being observed? How is their body language? Do they separate from the group or does their body language suggest they are interested and engaged? How are their facial expressions? Do they talk and share in the group? Is there a particular person in the group they share with more? Is there a group member who dominates the conversation? Asking questions like these can help us recognize the ways in which quieter students are highly engaged in their learning and ways we can affirm and expand their contributions to the class’ learning.
• Collaboration can be challenging, but it can be learned. Just like academic learning, students bring different experiences, strengths, and challenges to the task of collaboration. As teachers, it is part of our job to support students in developing this important skill, and science provides an authentic and motivating context for working on collaborative skills. Some students need specific support, guidance, and accountability to work productively with others. Make sure your expectations are explicit and that students have regular opportunities to debrief and reflect on their collaboration. It can be helpful to have groups regularly reflect on what they need to work on, set goals, and reflect on their goals to improve their collaboration.
• Be flexible and responsive. It is possible that these groups will hold for the entirety of a unit, but it is also possible that you will need to change them part-way through a unit. Make note of what you are observing and learning about your students’ collaborative work and make responsive changes based on your observations and student feedback. Sometimes a group can be pushed to reflect on difficult dynamics and improve their collaboration over time. Other times, you may want to regroup students to interrupt unhealthy or unproductive group dynamics.

Language Norms and Expectations

Although we have designed the units to explicitly support linguistically diverse students and provide affordances for language development, the primary work of students in the units is learning science. We want both students’ and teacher’s focus to be on the learning and exploring of science ideas and science practices and not on the accuracy of the language that expresses these ideas. Here are some things to consider when observing and supporting the language use of your linguistically diverse students:

• We don’t talk in sentences. We often tell students to speak in complete sentences but in ordinary interactions, skilled speakers build on each other’s utterances. Spoken language, unlike written language, is organized into utterances—not sentences. Using complete sentences is not an indication of deeper understanding. Consider the following interaction between two skilled users of English who are predicting how the color and shape of food will change over time:

Theo: Color?

Javier: The banana, the banana will turn black.

Theo: Yeah. Actually I think the banana and the, uh, the banana and oran— uh, spoiled food will turn black and turn into soil.

Javier: Mmm hmm. Composting.

Theo: (with excitement) Yeah, THAT’s the word! Composting, not disintegrate. Disintegrate is melting away. Acid.

Javier: The shape? (Chuckles.) It’s just going to be no shape. It’s just soil.

Theo and Javier are highly engaged in using their knowledge of the world to make predictions. They speak in utterances that build on one another to construct meaning together. When children are talking with one another about their ideas, resist the urge to stop their talk and correct it or to require them to rephrase their idea in a complete sentence. Give them ample opportunity to share their ideas uninterrupted.

• We learn vocabulary in context. You will notice that the units do not include lists of vocabulary to be pre-taught. This is intentional. We know that vocabulary is developed in use and in context. Vocabulary in science often describes complex scientific concepts. Students first develop their understanding of those concepts through investigations and readings, then learn the words to describe them. The curriculum gives students ample opportunity to use and develop the language necessary to talk about their developing science ideas.
• Our goal isn’t accuracy. A focus on accuracy shuts down student discussion and sense-making. Students can learn and express scientific concepts without accurate English. We know accurate language production takes a long time for second language learners, and focusing on it inhibits their participation. Learning a language requires low-stakes opportunities to try out and use language in a supportive community.

Class Discussions

Class discussions are a crucial step in many lessons, as the classroom community works together to understand scientific phenomena. Because class discussions are so important for sense-making and an opportunity for language development, it is crucial to maximize student engagement in them. Without intentional facilitation, it is easy to fall into a pattern where only a handful of volunteers participate in discussions while other students disengage.

The SISL curriculum intentionally provides different formats for students to share ideas and participate in the class’ scientific thinking—writing and drawing observations and ideas in their science notebooks, talking in their triads, creating and sharing scientific models, and participating in whole-class discussions. Providing opportunities for individual thinking and small group discussion are essential to maximizing the engagement of quieter students and English learners. The triads provide students with a safe space to get ideas from each other, hear language modeled by their peers, and to try out their own ideas and language before having to share with the larger group. We do not recommend requiring students to participate if they have not had an opportunity to first talk with their triads.

After triad discussions, you will often see directions to choose students to share the ideas or questions from their triad with the whole class. This is an intentional move to increase student participation and engagement and hold all students accountable for attending to the discussion and participating in their triads. Make sure to share clear expectations with students about what you expect them to share during small and large group conversations. Directions like “discuss in your group” are often too vague. Let students know beforehand that you expect them to contribute to the conversation (i.e., During your small group work, share one of your observations with your group. When we come back to the whole class, I’m going to ask you to share an observation—either what you shared in your group or an observation one of your groupmates shared).

You will also see several “science talks” in the units. Science talks are class discussions in which students share, defend, and challenge one other’s emerging scientific claims using evidence from investigations and texts. Students prepare for science talks in their triads by writing their initial claims and identifying evidence they can use to support their claims. This preparation work is key to supporting English learners and more reticent students.

The goal of a science talk is for the community to work together to deepen their understanding of the phenomenon. It is important to de-emphasize being “right” and to emphasize using evidence to back up claims. The goal is to learn and when a student changes their initial claim, that shows they learned and is something to be celebrated.

Your role as a teacher is to facilitate this discussion, not to be the final authority on what’s right or wrong. By working through the evidence, students will determine what claims are more or less sound. Because the goal is for students to question and challenge each other using evidence, we recommend having students sit in a circle for science talks. Students also call on one another to encourage more student-to-student discourse. These routines help students focus on talking to each other, rather than to the teacher.

Facilitating investigations

One of the science and engineering practices is “planning and carrying out investigations.” The SISL curriculum engages students in multiple investigations, both to develop their scientific understandings and to develop their competence with this science practice. We always launch investigations by situating them in students’ questions and learning so far and explaining the purpose of the investigation. It is important that students learn that science experiments are not just fun activities, but are crucial ways of learning.

Another essential part of students learning to carry out investigations is learning to follow procedures and eventually to develop procedures for their own investigations. A scientific procedure is a particular type of science genre and students need to learn how to use and develop them to guide their inquiries. In addition to the investigation’s purpose, materials, and steps, procedures also include a plan for recording observations, as well as any measurement data. SISL investigation procedures are formatted with images to support students’ comprehension. Our goal is for students to learn to read and follow the steps of a procedure collaboratively in their groups, rather than the teacher having to walk them through and model each step. Before you start the units, you’ll want to consider your students’ experience with science investigations and how much support they may need initially. In your first investigations, you may want to read the procedure as a class and model particular steps that you foresee will be confusing. As students develop more independence, you can direct students to read the procedures in their triads and note questions and then bring the class together to clarify questions.

An important logistical consideration with inquiry-based science teaching is how to manage materials efficiently and safely. Take time to think through and teach routines for passing out materials and cleaning up after investigations that will work for your classroom. You may want to set up a materials station where one person from each triad goes to collect and return materials. For investigations that require many materials, we recommend organizing materials beforehand on trays, so that each triad receives a tray with what they need to conduct the investigation.

Approach to Reading

Each cluster of lessons includes a reading. These texts are meant to augment students’ understanding of the guiding question and are usually placed after students have engaged in some hands-on exploration. The texts often provide scientific understandings that students cannot develop solely from hands-on investigations, such as the understanding that all matter is made of particles that are too small for us to see with our eyes. These readings may be challenging for students but we have designed a series of steps to support students in learning from science text. Over time, students will become more familiar and facile with this approach to reading.

Steps for Reading:

• Making predictions. Before reading, students will examine images and make predictions using the headings in the text. They discuss and share their predictions in triads and in the whole class. This pre-reading discussion is essential for surfacing and sharing relevant background knowledge that will support their comprehension of the text. It also builds their skill with a reading strategy that will support their reading of texts throughout their educational careers.
• Using margin questions to guide reading. As students read the text, they will write responses to the questions in the margins. These questions are intended to draw their attention to the most important information in the text. For each question, they should also highlight or underline the part of the text that helped them answer the question. This text format helps students understand that they (1) read for a specific purpose, (2) need to be able to point to places in the text where they found information, and (3) do not need to know every word in order to find the information they are seeking. Remember, students are reading to identify specific pieces of information that the article presents. This means that students do not need to understand every word they read or even be able to decode every word that they read. It is important for English learners to learn to read for meaning and for a specific purpose, instead of feeling paralyzed when they don’t know some of the words.
• Discussing questions. After reading individually, students come together in their triads to discuss their responses and come to agreement citing evidence from the text. As triads discuss, circulate to encourage them to cite evidence for their ideas and to use the text if they have disagreements (i.e., asking What part of the text made you think that?)
• Returning to texts. Although students read a text in one lesson, they are often asked to return to the text as they develop scientific arguments and create models in later lessons. As they return to the text for particular purposes, their understanding of scientific concepts deepens.

For each text, we have also provided a second version that is modified for newcomer students. These readings include shortened text and more scaffolded questions like yes/no questions and choice questions. We recommend only providing these versions to recently-arrived students who are just beginning to learn English. Expanding and bridging English learners need to be given access to grade-level texts with the scaffolding provided by our reading protocol.

Approach to Writing

Throughout the units, students use their Science and Engineering Notebooks (SENs) to collect their ideas, questions, and observations. The SENs are not a place for polished writing, but rather a place where students write for themselves to keep track of their own learning. When you introduce the SENs to your students, explain that there are two types of writing. Sometimes you write for yourself, to help you remember or make sense of ideas, and other times you write to share their ideas with others. When students write in their SENs, the focus should be on capturing their ideas, not worrying about spelling, grammar, or punctuation. Scientists often record their emerging ideas in a combination of words, phrases, and drawings or models, not in fully formed, polished paragraphs.

Because students refer back to the information and data in their SENs, it is important to keep them organized. Model and remind students to put a date and title for each entry. Students also record their thinking in handouts. To support students’ organization, you can have students tape or glue these handouts into their SENs or give them a folder to use for their handouts. They will frequently be returning to work from previous lessons, so it is important that students organize their documentation and can easily find it.

Students also engage in writing for others at key points in the units. Students frequently make models to explain scientific processes to others. Models are an important genre of scientific writing with specific conventions for presenting information (e.g., clear labels and keys, zoom-ins or close-ups to provide more detailed views of important parts of the model). Take time to point out these features to your students so they begin using them in their own models.

At the end of the units, students will create a final product or presentation to share their learning with an authentic audience. These culminating experiences can take a variety of formats, such as slide presentations, persuasive letters, or formal discussions with adult decision makers or stakeholders. Each of these is a genre of speaking or writing, with a specific purpose, and conventional ways of organizing itself and using language. Be sure to take some time with your class to analyze examples of the genre before they begin writing. You may be teaching one of these genres in language arts and/or have taught one of these genres previously. If so, this is a wonderful opportunity to practice the genre with different content and in an authentic context. This repeated practice is crucial for students’ mastery of the various genres that they are asked to engage with in school.

Learning Targets and Formative Assessment

At the beginning of each cluster, you will see the relevant NGSS Performance Expectations (PEs) that students will engage with in that cluster. The PEs integrate science content and disciplinary practices. Students do not master a PE in a single lesson, rather the content represents big concepts in science that students will develop over time through multiple investigations, discussions, and engagements with readings or videos. We also outline the Science and Engineering Practices (SEPs) that students will engage in in each cluster. The SEPs spiral throughout the clusters, because students develop competence with these practices over time as they engage in the real work of science.

Each lesson has one or two specific learning targets, or objectives, which are outlined in the cluster overview, as well as at the beginning of each lesson. These articulate the key learning students should gain from each lesson as they work toward the NGSS PEs. The learning targets are written in student-friendly language and can be posted and shared with students at the beginning of each lesson, depending on your school’s expectations and practices around learning objectives.

We hope that having clear learning targets will help you assess and reflect on students’ learning in order to inform your teaching. In most lessons, students complete work in their SEN that you can use as a formative assessment. If students are struggling with a learning target, you can see whether an upcoming lesson will spiral back to the concept and make decisions about how to adjust your instruction.