Katherine McNeill - Böcker

By providing a variety of strategies, scenarios, student samples, classroom video clips from across all science content areas, rubrics, and guidelines this book provides teachers with the tools to successfully support young scientists to use evidence to construct scientific explanations.

With the view that children are capable young scientists, authors encourage science teaching in ways that nurture students’ curiosity about how the natural world works including research-based approaches to support all K-5 children constructing scientific explanations via talk and writing. Grounded in NSF-funded research, this book/DVD provides K-5 teachers with a framework for explanation (Claim, Evidence, Reasoning) that they can use to organize everything from planning to instructional strategies and from scaffolds to assessment. Because the framework addresses not only having students learn scientific explanations but also construct them from evidence and evaluate them, it is considered to build upon the new NRC framework for K-12 science education, the national standards, and reform documents in science education, as well as national standards in literacy around argumentation and persuasion, including the Common Core Standards for English Language Arts (Common Core State Standards Initiative, 2010).The chapters guide teachers step by step through presenting the framework for students, identifying opportunities to incorporate scientific explanation into lessons, providing curricular scaffolds (that fade over time) to support all students including ELLs and students with special needs, developing scientific explanation assessment tasks, and using the information from assessment tasks to inform instruction.

ABOUT THE VIDEO

All of the video clips associated with this text were filmed in elementary grade classrooms in central, rural Pennsylvania. None of the lessons were staged or scripted. The video was not professionally recorded or produced given that our aim was to be as non-intrusive as possible in the classrooms in which we were guests. Permissions were secured for all students and teachers appearing in the video clips. We hope those that view the videos are as grateful as we are that these teachers were willing to share their attempts to integrate scientific explanation into their science teaching practices, providing us with insights that would not be possible without these images. They are the true heroes of this work. - Carla L. Zembal-Saul, Katherine McNeill, and Kimber Hershberger

By providing a variety of strategies, scenarios, examples of student writing, classroom video clips from across all science content areas, rubrics, and guidelines for designing assessment items, Supporting Grade 5-8 Students in Constructing Explanations in Science: The Claim, Evidence, and Reasoning Framework for Talk and Writing provides teachers with the tools to successfully incorporate scientific explanation in their own classrooms.

Grounded in NSF-funded research, this book/DVD supports middle grades science teachers with an instructional framework that breaks down the complex practice of scientific explanation into four components–claim, evidence, reasoning, and rebuttal–and providesconcrete examples of what this scientific inquiry practice looks like when it is successfully implemented in real classrooms. Over the last nine years that McNeill and Krajcik have developed, field tested, and refined this instructional model, they found that incorporating this framework for scientific explanation into curriculum materials, teacher instructional strategies, and assessments enhances students conceptual understanding and improves their ability to think and communicate more scientifically by carefully analyzing evidence and backing up their claims.

Facilitator's Guide Package for Science Coaches and Staff Development Trainers

Take the guess work out of leading professional development and book studies with the Facilitator's Guide and Book Package. To order, use Special ISBN: 9780132549400 and contact your sales representative at www.allynbaconmerrill.com/findmyrep.

What Educators Are Saying

I would encourage others to use it as a resource for a professional learning community or department discussion group and the like... absolutely I would recommend it – why? it is simply good for our students’ developing understanding of science...”

- Pamela M. Pelletier, Senior Program Director, Science K-12, Boston Public Schools, Boston, Massachusetts

"[This book] can easily be used to guide middle school teams to collaboratively work together to ask higher order thinking questions in any core content area. This type of questioning leads to great classroom discourse, therefore engaging students in using claims, evidence, and reasoning."

- Kendra Walters Durham, Science Teacher, Wester Middle School, Frisco, Texas

Take a Look Inside

Integrates video clips from a range of grade levels and contexts (e.g., urban and suburban) throughout the text to demonstrate the use of the scientific explanation framework in actual classrooms (Chapters 2, 4 and 7) Provides examples of student work throughout the book to demonstrate student accomplishment and to illustrate the most common student difficulties and strategies for supporting those challenges. (Chapters 1, 2, 3, and 6) Incorporates learning strategies that can support all students, including English Language Learners and students with special needs, and helps teachers with ideas on how to modify instruction to best meet the needs of their students. Presents rubrics for evaluating students' written explanations and sample assessment tasks with model teacher critiques of student explanations based on developed rubric.

Professional Learning Communities

Save when you purchase 10 books or more! To order, use Special ISBN: 9780132752022 and contact your sales representative at www.allynbaconmerrill.com/findmyrep.