Module 4: Planning and Carrying Out Investigations - Implementation

The Science and Engineering Practice of Planning and Carrying Out Investigations intentionally puts students at the center of making decisions in designing and conducting investigations to gather data. What the practice looks like at each grade band scales in complexity as students develop and refine their skills in this area.

• Review the appropriate grade-band for Planning and Carrying Out Investigations (pages 7-8) of Appendix F: Science & Engineering Practices.

What element are you trying to elicit student evidence for in this learning opportunity?

Is there a certain strategy that you are struggling to incorporate to support students in planning and carrying out investigations? You might take a look at common problems of practice around this SEP include listed below. Keep your learning intention in mind as you explore additional ideas in this module.

• • My students are not able to complete the investigation at home.

• • My students do not understand how to produce data to serve as evidence to support their questions and claims.

• • The investigations in my curriculum are more “cookbook” rather than helping students figure something out about the system under study.

• • The investigations in my curriculum are more like activities, without a clear link to knowledge building about big science ideas.

• • I am having difficulty utilizing this strategy in a face-to-face, hybrid, or remote learning setting.

Take a minute to jot down a current challenge you have in supporting students in planning and carrying out investigations. Which element of this SEP will you focus your reflection on?

K-12 strategies, Protocols, and Scaffolds

• Science Notebooks: Planning Investigations

• Framing with a Focus Question

• Carrying Out Investigations

• Collecting and Analyzing Data

• Sketching for Observation

Digital Tools and Supports

• Seesaw (Learning Journal)

  • Science Notebooks with Seesaw

  • Seesaw as a Science Lab Notebook

• Microsoft OneNote Class Notebook

  • MS One Note Class Notebook: A digital binder that will change the way you teach

• Notability

• Google Slides

• Arduino Science Journal

• Select one of the strategies from the topic you explored and think about how to incorporate it into an upcoming unit.

• Create a plan for how you will implement this strategy in the upcoming unit. Record those steps on your learning log.

• Determine what data you will collect to know whether this strategy was successful in your classroom. (Student use of scaffolds, engagement with graphic organizers, student perception data)

• Determine how the data will be collected. Consider if it will be collected by you, an instructional coach, student survey, etc.

• Determine how often implementation data will be collected. (Every class period, daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, etc.)

• How will the data be used to drive further instruction?