Workshop Description

In collaboration with Pam Pelletier and the Boston Public Schools Science Department, this three-day workshop funded in part by the National Science Foundation (NSF) focuses on supporting students in science thinking and writing. As part of the workshop, participants will read and provide feedback on an NSF sponsored book, Supporting Grade 5-8 Students in Constructing Explanations in Science: The Claim, Evidence and Reasoning Framework for Talk and Writing. We will discuss the claim, evidence and reasoning (CER) framework, instructional strategies for supporting students in thinking and writing, and rubrics for assessing student performance. We will illustrate these strategies using video clips and samples of student writing from grade 5-8 classrooms.  Furthermore, participants will design both learning and assessment tasks for their current BPS science curriculum, which will support students in producing stronger writing for the Common Writing Assignment (CWA).

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Acknowledgements

This project is part of the Supporting Students in Scientific Argumentation project, supported in part by the National Science Foundation grant DRL-0836099.  Any opinions expressed in this work are those of the author and do not necessarily represent either those of the funding agency or Boston College.

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