Science Inquiry: Evaluate

“Reflection quite simply provides the bridge between experiencing and understanding or learning.” (Philip, 2015)

In this stage of science inquiry, students take time to reflect and evaluate. Students can self-assess the learning and skills they have gained. They can reflect on what worked well in the inquiry process and where there were barriers to overcome or that need to be scaffolded in the future.

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Coaching Tip

Tip: Provide time and space for reflection

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Tip: Value the progress, not just the end product

Tip: Use the science notebook to evaluate

Using SNUDLE: Evaluate Phase

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Video: Universal Design for Learning & Science Inquiry

Coaching Tip

Time constraints may make it tempting to skip the reflection stage- but this is important! Reflection helps students make sense of what was learned, why it was learned, and deepen their understanding of how the process worked (or did not work).

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Tip: Provide time and space for reflection

Fostering opportunities for individual and collective reflection supports meta-cognition about learning. It can highlight how progress was made towards a goal, and that can be motivating.

Support students to take the time to reflect on what worked and where there were barriers or parts of their learning/science inquiry that did not work as well as anticipated.

UDL Move:
Promote individual and collective reflection.

(UDL Consideration 9.3)

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Utilize targeted feedback to foster student motivation and persistence.
Offer questions for students to use for self- or peer-reflection.
Share a "T" chart to have students outline the pros (e.g. "I liked ..." "this supported my learning...") and cons of the learning (e.g. "next time, I'd like to try ...", "something I need to support my learning is ..."). More about T charts: A simple strategy to encourage student reflection and improvement

Tip: Value the progress, not just the end product

“Getting it right” is not the goal of science; the process and construction of knowledge is the goal. In fact, most hypotheses are disproven. Here are some open-ended questions you could ask to emphasize the inquiry process:

What are some ways you figured that out?
How is this strategy helping you?
What other tools would help you next time?

Tip: Use the science notebook to evaluate

A section of the science notebook can be dedicated to reflection on how the investigation went and what might be different for the next investigation. Questions might include:

Did I clearly present my findings and conclusions?
Did I learn new things about science through this process?
What is one thing I would do differently next time?

Using SNUDLE: Evaluate Phase

The Reflect section of SNUDLE offers some questions for students to evaluate their learning and think about what they could change for the next investigation.