Science Inquiry: Elaborate

Tip: Make connections to what matters

Encourage students to make connections to life from their investigations. For example, they can return to their question and relate it to their life, school, or community. They can identify new problems or questions to investigate based on what they learned. Students could:

• Consider a specific audience to share why their findings might matter to them.

• Use an image or picture to show where or how the data connects to the community.

• Use a case example or story from their own experience to connect to their findings.

Tip: Express in different ways

Encourage students to use engaging ways to organize and share their data and findings. Provide clear criteria of what findings should be shared (i.e., try a single-point rubric) and then provide options for how students can communicate their findings. They can describe how they had to reconcile their earlier ways of thinking with what their data showed.

For example, they could share findings through: 

• Podcast (i.e., try InNotebook to use AI to generate a podcast from your findings)

• Video

• Blog

• Newspaper article (i.e., Science Tuesdays from the NY Times)

• Journal

• Social media

Tip: Share findings with each other

Support students to share feedback with each other. They can use a common rubric to provide targeted, helpful feedback to each other. They can also note where their findings align or differ, which is an opportunity to dig deeper into possible reasons why.

• Provide sentence starters

• Model effective feedback strategies

• Use tools like rubrics and feedback cards