Strand 3. Understand the nature and development of scientific knowledge

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Strands of Science Proficiency

• This was done through baby steps. We learned about the powerful ideas of light before we learned about the ray diagram. This helped us make meaningful connections between the information we were learning, thus making it easier to retain the knowledge.

• By having reading assignments that related to our course content, we saw the development of how scientific knowledge happens in elementary/middle school classes and could relate those to our own classroom.

• Our physics class structure is a perfect example of the pursuit of scientific knowledge:an observed and unexplained occurrence; presentations of assumptions; a series of models and explanations presented and reassessed; a final interpretation that can only be inferred by what is given, not proven.

• We approached the temperature and motion units in similar ways. We started by doing diagnostics of some sort to generate ideas about what was going to happen, we developed knowledge of the concepts by actively engaging in activities that utilize the probes, computer, and materials to measure and then applying those learned ideas to the real world.

• This proficiency was demonstrated in class activities and our notes.

• All of these examples have been demonstrated through articles written by teachers that have preformed these lessons in their own classrooms. We tend to take the students for granted in their own knowledge gained outside of the classroom. This was demonstrated with the teacher Jamie who had her class make predictions of which object will hit the ground first the piece of paper or the book. Students were able to use their own experiences to help answer those questions. Yet with to much discussion the students began to move backwards with their explanations to why this is happening. The teacher was still able to direct the students back to their original predictions by repeating statements made and using a new example of the two objects, like taking the paper and crumpling it into a ball and demonstrating which object will hit the ground first. Again students recognized that the change in shape made the two objects fall to the ground at the same time. These are all important for students to have a clear understanding of nature and how to develop scientific explanations from their experience.

• All of our experiments in class can easily be related to this third proficiency because for each experiment, we had to understand the background of scientific knowledge we were learning about.