Recent evidence points to the early elementary grades as a pivotal point for the development of science learning trajectories and achievement gaps. Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, this study estimates the degree to which time spent on science and the breadth of science topics/skills covered predict science achievement in…

Formative assessments serve to engage students in active sense-making, making them critical tools for both teachers and students. Though formative assessments may be an informal mode of assessing, they are one of the most important, especially when teaching science. As a subject, teaching science does not have the same kind of beginning-middle-end…

This study aims to develop a semiotic declarative knowledge model, which is a positive constructive behavior model that systematically facilitates understanding in order to ensure that learners think accurately and ask the right questions about a topic. The data used to develop the experimental model were obtained using four measurement tools…

This study was part of a multi-year project on the development of elementary students' modeling approaches to understanding the life sciences. Twenty-three first grade students conducted a series of coordinated observations and investigations on decomposition, a topic that is rarely addressed in the early grades. The instruction included…

Despite the abundance of research in Modeling-based Learning (MbL) in science education, to date there is only limited research on MbL practices among K-6 novice modelers. More specifically, there is no information on how young/novice modelers' modeling enactments look so that researchers and educators have an idea of what should be expected from…

Students can learn subjects more meaningfully through integrated education, as it helps them to link school education with their real lives. There is a strong need to develop an alternative integration method to promote effective implementation of integrated education at a classroom level. The purpose of this study was to develop a model for…

This study focused on accelerating development of science knowledge and understanding at the primary level (grades 1-2) as a means for enhancing reading comprehension (i.e. early literacy). An adaptation of a grade 3-5 cognitive-science-based, instructional model ("Science IDEAS") that integrated science with reading and writing, this…

Many times students are given the task of keeping a science notebook, but do not fully understand the process or purpose of this endeavour. Science notebooks contain not only data but also questions, predictions, observations, and reflections from their experiences in science. To maximize the effectiveness of the science notebook, teachers must…

This article describes a cooperative project between eighth graders and first graders called "Going Green in the Neighborhood." The project entailed the first grade students sketching home designs on paper to make a model community, and the eighth grade students taking those drawings and making them into 3D computer models and then…

Where the author teaches is far from the ocean, bordered on one side by forests of ponderosa and by the High Desert on the other. So when his first graders walked into class on the Monday morning after the 2011 earthquake and subsequent tsunami along the coast of Japan--and their usual light conversations about the weekend included some sobering…

Studies of children's knowledge of the Earth have led to very different conclusions: some appear to show that children construct their own, non-scientific "theories" (mental models) of the flat, hollow or dual Earth. Others indicate that many young children have some understanding of the spherical (scientific) Earth, and that their…

This research project aimed to identify and analyze Mexican primary school students' ideas about the components of the solar system. In particular, this study focused on conceptions of the solar system and representations of the dynamics of the solar system based on the functional and structural models that students make in school. Using a…

This paper describes students' developing meta-representational competence, drawn from the second phase of a longitudinal study, "Transforming Children's Mathematical and Scientific Development." A group of 21 highly able Grade 1 students was engaged in mathematics/science investigations as part of a data modelling program. A pedagogical…

English learners are faced with the dual challenge of acquiring English while learning academic content through the medium of the new language (Lee et al. in "J Res Sci Teach" 45(6):726-747, 2008; Stoddart et al. in "J Res Sci Teach" 39(8):664-687, 2002) and therefore need specific accommodations to achieve in both English and the content areas.…

This paper argues for a renewed focus on statistical reasoning in the beginning school years, with opportunities for children to engage in data modelling. Results are reported from the first year of a 3-year longitudinal study in which three classes of first-grade children (6-year-olds) and their teachers engaged in data modelling activities. The…