Overview
Recent science education standards and reform documents call for students to construct explanations of phenomena where they justify their claims with appropriate evidence and reasoning. Furthermore, literacy research suggests the importance of incorporating other types of writing experiences beyond the personal narrative into today's schools including a specific focus on literacy in content areas, such as science. Supporting students in how to think as well as in how to write scientifically enables them to have greater success both inside and outside the science classroom.
This workshop and accompanying book are based on research we have conducted with grade 5-8 teachers since 2001, when we originally became interested in supporting students in this complex scientific inquiry practice (McNeill et al., 2006; McNeill & Krajcik, 2008; McNeill, 2009; McNeill & Krajcik, 2009). Our goal is to present and illustrate, through the use of samples of student writing and videoclips from Grades 5-8 science classrooms, the lessons we have learned in order to provide you with strategies to support your students in this important, yet difficult, task of supporting claims with evidence and reasoning.
This workshop and accompanying book are based on research we have conducted with grade 5-8 teachers since 2001, when we originally became interested in supporting students in this complex scientific inquiry practice (McNeill et al., 2006; McNeill & Krajcik, 2008; McNeill, 2009; McNeill & Krajcik, 2009). Our goal is to present and illustrate, through the use of samples of student writing and videoclips from Grades 5-8 science classrooms, the lessons we have learned in order to provide you with strategies to support your students in this important, yet difficult, task of supporting claims with evidence and reasoning.
Specific Goals
By the end of the three workshops, our goals are for participants to:
We also hope to receive feedback from participants to inform our revision of the book and the workshop so that we are able to improve the support we provide other science teachers in the future.
- Develop an understanding of the claim, evidence and reasoning (CER) framework
- Become familiar with and be able to identify common student difficulties in justifying claims
- Design CER learning tasks for their current science curriculum
- Develop an understanding of different instructional strategies that can be used to support students in CER
- Design CER assessment tasks for their current science curriculum
- Adapt rubrics for the assessment tasks and analyze student writing
We also hope to receive feedback from participants to inform our revision of the book and the workshop so that we are able to improve the support we provide other science teachers in the future.