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Process Skills
| Process Skills | K | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 |
| Observation | x | x | x | x | x | x | x |
| Identifying inferences | x | x | x | x | |||
| Categorizing objects | x | x | x | x | x | x | x |
| Classifying objects | x | x | x | x | |||
| Investigating questions | x | x | x | x | x | x | x |
| Identifying variables | x | x | x | x | |||
| Conducting experiments | x | x | x | x | |||
| Designing experiments | x | x | x | ||||
| Making predictions | x | x | x | x | x | ||
| Forming hypotheses | x | ||||||
| Using resource materials | x | x | x | x | |||
| Collecting and recording data | x | x | x | x | x | x | x |
| Modeling | x | x | x | ||||
| Communicating | x | x | x | x | x | x | x |
OBSERVATIONS/INFERENCES
Observation is the foundation of science. Before students can practice other skills involved in science, they must learn how to carefully observe the world around them. This involves not only describing things, but seeing how things work, analyzing how things interact, exploring how things change, and guessing what makes them change. Observation is the starting point in science, from which all else follows. From the time they are born, children make observations of the world.
In the process of observing, children learn to connect their prior knowledge with their senses to make inferences. The distinction between observation and inference is a critical one, particularly in science. Shown a clear, colorless liquid, most children (and adults) will infer that it is water unless further observation proves this assumption wrong. An inference is a prediction based upon past experiences. In science, inferences must be tested before they can be relied upon. As we observe our world, we have different perspectives and biases based on our own experiences. For instance, if the clear liquid was being used in a lab activity or demonstration, it would be important to determine if the liquid was water or alcohol.
The inferences we draw will lead to differences in what we feel is important to observe, and differences in the way we interpret our observations. When we all agree on an observation or inference, we tentatively call that datum, or idea, a fact.
The study of science helps students understand how to use observations in ways that enhance their knowledge of their world and helps them interact within that world in positive ways. Students should make records of what they have observed. Observation without communication is meaningless for the student and those who could benefit from the observation and the perceptions of that observation.
Because students naturally observe, they can begin at the earliest grade levels to learn appropriate observation strategies. Students will start to observe by using their five senses. Students will begin to go beyond simple observations by making inferences, or an interpretation, about what they observe. They will need to be helped to distinguish between an observation and an inference made from that observation.
As students progress during the third and fourth grade years, they will be encouraged to observe how parts of the world interact and relate. Students will learn to use the observations of others through media resources such as videos, laser discs, and computers. These resources allow students to indirectly observe the many parts of the world not available for direct observation in the classroom.
As students become more sophisticated observers in fifth and sixth grade, their observations will expand to encompass the universe and the microscopic world. The students will learn to use special tools such as telescopes and microscopes to expand their range of observation. Students will begin to question things that are not easily observed and make inferences about what they think is happening. Increasing accuracy and replications will hone students’ observation skills and allow them to model the objects and ideas they are studying.
MEASURING
As students refine their ability to make observations, they need a way to quantify the data they gather.
Students can describe relationships between objects using measurement. Use of graphs, charts, diagrams and tables will help them recognize these relationships. In order to effectively share their observations with others, students will learn how to use standard measurement in recording data. Measuring units such as meters, grams and liters, and tools such as thermometers and clocks will be used. Students will learn how traditional measurements of the past are required to change to metric measurement by the scientific need for global standardization. Students will use measurement as an essential tool to help them compare, contrast, and analyze data they collect.
In grades K-2, measurement will be used to help students make comparisons. Standard measurements such as inches or centimeters, and “invented” measures such as hands or body lengths, can be used to determine the length, volume, and mass of objects. Students of this age may not perceive a thermometer or a ruler or a meter stick as a human invention or artifact. It is important that students understand that these tools exist because somebody wanted a standardized way to measure the temperature or length of things. The role of time in many natural processes of our world will also be explored. Students will experience math and science integration as they use math strategies in making measurements and see the importance of measurement in studying science concepts.
As students in the third and fourth grades study the natural and synthetic world, they will use measurement to help form their own opinions about important decisions. Are humans using the resources of the world wisely? Measurement will help students see how technological advances have changed life throughout history, and help them recognize the costs and benefits of various technologies.
As fifth and sixth graders learn to make observations with increasing precision, they will need to have a well-developed understanding of measurement in order to record and understand the data that is collected. Their observations at this level will encompass a much wider range of scales, from astronomical to microscopic. Scale will be an important tool as students try to visualize objects that are very small, large, or far away. Measurement will be a critical tool as students design their own experiments and draw inferences from their observations.
SORTING/CATEGORIZING/CLASSIFYING
From the time we are very young, we need to organize the world around us into parts and categories to make sense of our surroundings. When given a set of random objects, most students will impose some kind of order on them. Humans from earliest history have made records of this kind of sorting and categorizing. As science investigates the world in greater detail, more information has been obtained about the materials that make up this planet and worlds beyond. As categories have expanded, it has become necessary to develop classifications using very specific characteristics of such things as plants, animals, rocks, and stars.
The processes of sorting and classifying, while often considered simple observation, is of critical importance in deciding what we think is important to notice and to know when we “do science.” In a very real way, these processes determine what we can know. When we classify things, we start to compare, contrast, and analyze things in ways that help us create an understanding of what objects are and how they function. A good classification scheme can also help predict additional information. For example, the development of the periodic table, a classification for the chemical elements, pointed out several missing elements. Searches were undertaken for these unknown elements, and they were eventually found. When a classification scheme is no longer effective in organizing the information that exists, or in accommodating new information, a new scheme is developed. For example, two kingdoms were once considered sufficient to categorize all living things. A third kingdom was proposed when protists became too difficult to classify as plants or animals. Scientists now use a five kingdom system.
In grades K-2, students will do simple exercises by comparing objects and looking for their similarities and differences. They will note that different people may sort a single group of objects in different ways. This is an appropriate time to point out that there are no ways of sorting that are necessarily “right” or “wrong,” though some ways may be more useful than others depending on the purpose of the sorting.
Students will spend a lot of time in grades 3-4 on the specific skill of classification. In fourth grade, they will develop classification systems for plants and animals. Students at this point will be encouraged to recognize the ways in which classification is a necessary skill and what it has meant to the development of science. As students develop their own classification schemes, they will note that some are easier to use and more useful for some purposes than others. This is an appropriate time to stress that all classification schemes have been developed by people to help make the world understandable.
EXPLORING/INVESTIGATING/IDENTIFYING VARIABLES/EXPERIMENTING
Exploring is a process in science that is often neglected. Exploring can involve looking at or watching an environment and its parts, or browsing through a library for an interesting topic to learn about. Exploration is, in many ways, difficult to distinguish from play. The explorer determines the direction of her/his exploration and the branches that are subsequently followed. The importance of exploration lies in our ability to point out things that are not known, either to us as explorers in particular, or to the world in general. The sense of discovery that can arise from this experience can be an important motivation in science.
Because of curricular constraints, teachers traditionally have not allowed students sufficient time to explore the world around them. The process of exploration should begin in kindergarten and develop as a child proceeds from grade to grade, growing into experimentation and finally broader, more comprehensive investigations. Explorations are fun for students, but time consuming for classes. However, the need for adequate amounts of time cannot be emphasized enough. Only when students have had time to explore do questions arise that lead to investigations. As children explore and investigate they recognize variables. These variables can be used in designing experiments that will help them understand the topic they are investigating. Often a teacher’s main role is to stand out of the way, occasionally asking questions to help lead a students along productive lines of thought.
As a student comes into kindergarten, he/she is anxious to explore his/her world. The kindergartner wants time to look at and watch things like water, air, insects, worms, plants, etc. As the children watch and explore these things using their five senses, they will naturally ask many questions. If children are given time to explore their questions, their desire to move onto investigations increases. It is important that students are not given all the answers. This helps them accept that sometimes the only way to get an answer is to find it for themselves. Students’ explorations often lead them to questions that have never been answered. In science, we want children to question, and design ways to answer their own questions.
In the third and fourth grades, students will begin to investigate what they have explored. The teacher will need to model questioning strategies and help students develop their own questions. As students find questions they want to answer, they should think about how to answer their questions. Variables will start to become a factor in investigations as students start to ask, “What if?” In the fourth grade, students might investigate variables in a water cycle and what might happen if parts of the water cycle were absent or impacted by changes such as temperature.
Fifth and sixth graders will design experiments reflecting their increasingly sophisticated understanding of variables. Investigations that may involve several different experiments will help them understand the complex interplay of variables and interactions that is characteristic of the world outside the laboratory. Sixth graders will plan experiments that will manipulate variables in the study of heat and microorganisms.
QUESTIONING/PREDICTING/FORMULATING HYPOTHESES
A word we often hear in the context of science education is “inquiry.” This suggests the importance of questioning science. Inquiry can mean that we simply ask a question. It can also include the logical follow-up: finding a means to answer our question. Often it is helpful to have a tentative answer, or hypothesis, as we try to answer our question. Typically a hypothesis is defined as “an educated guess.” Any student can generate a guess if they don’t feel threatened by being wrong. The word “educated,” however, implies that students generate better hypotheses as they have more science experiences and move to more advanced developmental stages. In science, we use other peoples’ investigations and our own prior knowledge to make predictions about what we expect to observe. As we become more sophisticated at asking questions and making predictions, we improve our ability to make careful hypotheses from which we design experiments.
In the primary grades, it is important that we encourage students to ask questions. Often it may be best NOT to answer their questions, but to respond with “I really don’t know, what do you think?” or “I may know, but I could be wrong. Why don’t you watch and see?” This is especially important to do in primary grades, so students do not assume there is always a known answer. Answers may not be known, or they may be changing as scientists gather new information. In addition this type of teacher behavior models questioning and inquiry. As we help primary children develop questioning strategies, teachers can help them by asking, “Why do you think that happened?” “Is there a way you could find that out?” “What do you think will happen?”
As students progress to third and fourth grade, it is important that they use personal science journals as a way to predict what will happen. Before students begin any investigation, especially when an investigation involves variables, they need to record what they think will happen. This is an exciting process for students ad one that is often neglected in science instruction. After students have used their journal to record their prediction and their initial reasoning, they can compare what really happens and see where their prediction differed. This will help them learn two fundamental aspects of science: testing predictions and the uncertainty or tentativeness of predictions.
Science in the fifth and sixth grades should see increased emphasis on formulating hypotheses. Hypothesizing is important for experiments where students can actually see results, and for questions that science has not found answers to such as technological concerns and questions about space. Sixth graders will specifically formulate hypotheses about microorganisms and identify variables and appropriate controls to determine relationships among the variables. They will also understand how previous scientists have contributed to our ability to formulate hypotheses.
USING RESOURCES/GATHERING INFORMATION
In science, we study not only the world available to our immediate perception, but worlds with scales beyond our ability to comprehend, and worlds that are difficult or impossible to perceive in the classroom. In addition, there are parts of the world that are not available in our location. For example, there are plants, animals, and minerals elsewhere that are not found in our state. Few have seen the word from the top of Mount Everest or watched a tornado or avalanche. Yet these things exist and we want to share them with our students. Through the use of resources such as videos and video discs, resource and reference books, computers and software, photographs and pictures, maps, artifacts and specimens, models, and additional resources offered off-site by public and private institutions, we can begin to share parts of our world that are not readily available in our classrooms.
As we start to use resources in the primary grades, the teacher will be instrumental in supplying resources that are meaningful. Resources such as laser discs, pictures, and physical models will help students begin to understand the diversity of objects and ideas that science studies. It is important for the teacher to tie the new parts of the word they are learning about to parts that are familiar to them in their own world. An example might be to have children compare animals in Australia to animals that are in their own area- finding the ones that are alike and the ones that are completely different. It is important to remember that there may be a way to make these experiences more meaningful by trips to the zoo, aviary, etc. (which are themselves further examples of resources.)
In grades three and four, students will begin to use resources such as encyclopedias, dictionaries, magazines, and books on specific topics. The teacher will also want to explore the use of different Instructional Television series broadcast on public TV. Some of these have been taped by the State Office of Education for distribution at little or no cost. Each teacher or school could develop a library of these science videos. Laser discs and computers are another great resource for students to learn more about the science concepts they are studying.
In fifth and sixth grades, students should be conducting library research to find information about the science concepts they are studying. Students will want to spend more time looking through books and detailed laser disc presentations on specific science topics, along with interacting with various computer programs. Field trips through museums and other appropriate off-site resources may help students in their study of science.
COLLECTING, ORGANIZING, RECORDING AND, ANALYZING DATA
As we teach science in elementary schools, we need to teach children the importance of using data. Early on, children can begin this practice by putting the information of using data. Early on, children can begin this practice by putting the information they gather and use on chalkboards and charts. As students progress in the role of scientists, they can explore the data they have collected. Teachers can help by taking care that this process is not tedious for students. Let them design ways to collect, organize, and record data. Help them understand that recording data is an important mechanism for processing and organizing information and communicating it to others. If Thomas Edison had not recorded the many materials he tested for a lightbulb filament, he would not have been successful in finding a useful material. Data collected by one scientist is often helpful for other scientists. We can do great experiments, but if we have recorded no data, it cannot be shared with others, and its importance is lost.
Sharing data is important. Help students record their discoveries. In the primary grades this can be done with object graphs, charts and picture graphs. Children automatically pick out patterns on a graph and thus naturally fall into the habit of analyzing data. Students can record changes or cycles by drawing pictures. Temperature or rain measurements can be charted by the hour or day to show how weather changes through time.
Third and fourth graders will use visual data to record habitat changes in Utah and in our world. By drawing murals of different habitats, data can be collected (the animals, plants, landforms), recorded (create all the parts of the habitat with visual representations), organized (put things in the right place using the right scale in the habitat), and analyzed (compare habitats). Students will also begin recording written information in their journals. As fourth graders study classification, they will practice all the steps involved with using data- especially organizing- in order to create classification schemes.
When fifth and sixth graders design experiments, they should make sure that the data is collected, organized, recorded, and analyzed. These students should be ready to make careful records of the interactions they observe, organize the information in a way that makes sense to them or to members of their group, then analyze their data in order to determine what this information might mean. From this analysis, students can make inferences that suggest further experiments. This process will help fifth and sixth grade students see how science research increases science knowledge, and point out the ultimate limitation of data: how we use it.
MODELING
Models are used to develop an understanding of the things they represent. Physical models are the most easily understood by elementary students. However, older students and teachers should be aware that there are two other types of models: conceptual and mathematical. Models can be used to study things that are difficult to examine due to problems in scale (spatial or temporal), are dangerous to work with in the classroom or in “real life,” or are impossible to work with due to complexity. An important part of using models is to recognize the differences between the model and the real thing, and to use these differences to improve our understanding.
Scientists use all three types of models to study problems that many students will be aware of such as atmospheric science and climate change, groundwater use, engineering, and ecological management.
Students can use physical models to study these same things and more day-to-day objects and ideas such as traffic, populations, and parts of the body and growth. For example, students may have a mental picture of what they will do, look like, and be like as adults. This is a conceptual model. Statistics and graphs might help students determine how tall they will be and how long they will live. These are mathematical models.
Modeling is especially important in the primary grades Modeling can involve active learning to help students start to understand new concepts. As young students begin to learn about states of matter, modeling through student dramatizations lets students experience changes in energy as matter changes from a solid to a liquid to a gas. Students can model a seed growing into a plant with stems, leaves, and flowers. These kinds of dramatic/conceptual models give students a kinesthetic sense of the concepts being studied. Commercially available physical models may be useful for learning about sense organs, parts of the earth and/or parts of plants. Students could also create their own models of these things using clay or other readily available materials.
In the third and fourth grades, students start to develop visual models of what they have learned. Modeling may involve a drawing, map, computer simulation, or physical model. Creating models may be an appropriate knowledge as a model, their knowledge of a concept is clearly demonstrated. Through research, students in the third grade will be able to create a model of a geological feature even though they may never have seen the feature in its natural state.
Modeling is very important when students study astronomy and concepts that have never been directly observed, but inferred through scientific and mathematical research. In sixth grade, students may model the phases of the moon, and the movement of Earth and the sun in relationship to each other. Modeling also plays an important role when students speculate about the structure and composition of the earth. Students will start to understand the importance modeling has for scientists as students put together mathematical and scientific data to create a model based upon inferences made from these data.
COMMUNICATING
Communication is an often overlooked part of science, but for science to grow and develop, observations and ideas must be shared. After students have learned and practiced the skills, habits and processes of science, they have accomplished nothing if they do not communicate to others the information they have gathered and created. The technological achievements that scientists have made would never have occurred without records that communicated the findings of other scientists. Science is often metaphorically described as a great edifice built brick by brick, one on top of another. Each scientist’s records represent a brick that is supported by those who preceded her/him, and in turn supports all those who follow. Without communication, this tremendous structure would not merely fall, it would cease to exist entirely.
Communication needs to begin in the primary grades. Young students will verbally share their observations with the teacher and their peers. Later, they will make graphs and charts to communicate what they see happening. As their skills develop, students will use pictures to make predictions and to record observations. It is important in the primary grades to introduce student journals. Scientists use journals to record their ideas and results. We want students to recognize the benefits that this practice has to offer, especially in the context of science. As a student draws pictures of what he/she observes, a natural practice of labeling the pictures will develop. By the end of the primary grades, the students should be able to write short paragraphs about the changes and interactions they have observed.
In the third and fourth grades, students will use science journals constantly as they look at how things react to different stimuli. They will make predictions about what they think will happen in a given situation, record their observations and analyze their reasoning. Journals will be an important tool for keeping measurements and observations as students study weather. Students in the fourth grade will record how they came up with classification schemes and compare these systems with others created by their group or class. Communication about science activities can be shared with parents as students write reports and prepare presentations about the concepts they are learning.
In the fifth and sixth grade, the students will rely on their communication skills to help them identify variables and design experiments. Instead of every student testing every variable, student teams will test different variables and share their findings with the class. This allows greater amounts of information to be gathered in a shorter period of time and encourages students to practice effective communication skills; it also models a key method that science is used in the modern world. Research on various science topics may also be shared between classes. Communication can and should be used as an integrating theme, cutting across the traditional disciplines taught in elementary school. The critical component of communication in each discipline should be stressed.