Practices

The development of science and engineering practices begins very early, even as babies and young children inquire about and explore how the world works. Formal education should advance students’ development of the skills necessary to engage in scientific inquiry and engineering design. These are the skills that provide the foundation for the scientific and technical reasoning that is so critical to success in civic life, postsecondary education, and careers. Inclusion of science and engineering practices in standards only speaks to the types of performances students should be able to demonstrate at the end of instruction at a particular grade; the standards do not limit what educators and students should or can be engaged in through a well-rounded curriculum.

Pre-K through grade 2 standards integrate all eight science and engineering practices. Pre-K standards ask students to demonstrate an ability to ask questions, set up simple investigations, analyze evidence, observations, and data for patterns, and use evidence to explain or develop ideas about how phenomena work. Kindergarten standards call for students to show further development of investigation and communication skills, as well as application of science concepts to designing solutions to problems, and to now use information obtained from text and media sources. Grade 1 standards call for students to continue developing investigation skills, including their ability to pose scientific questions as well as their ability to analyze observations and data and to effectively use informational sources. Grade 1 standards also call for students to demonstrate their ability to craft scientific explanations using evidence from a variety of sources. Grade 2 standards call for students to use models in a scientific context and further their skills in a number of the practices, including investigations, data analysis, designing solutions, argumentation, and use of informational sources.

Some examples of specific skills students should develop in these grades:

1. Raise questions about how different types of environments provide homes for living things; ask and/or identify questions that can be answered by an investigation.
2. Use a model to compare how plants and animals depend on their surroundings; develop and/or use a model to represent amounts, relationships, and/or patterns in the natural world; distinguish between a model and the actual object and/or process the model represents.
3. Conduct an investigation of light and shadows; plan and conduct an investigation collaboratively to produce data to answer a question; make observations and/or relative measurements to collect data that can be used to make comparisons.
4. Analyze data to identify relationships among seasonal patterns of change; use observations to describe patterns and/or relationships in the natural world and to answer scientific questions.
5. Decide when to use qualitative vs. quantitative information; use counting and numbers to describe patterns in the natural world.
6. Use information from observations to construct an evidence-based account of nature. Construct an argument with evidence for how plants and animals can change the environment; distinguish between opinions and evidence in one’s own explanations; listen actively to others to indicate agreement or disagreement based on evidence.
7. Obtain information to compare ways that parents and their offspring behave to survive; obtain information using various texts, text features, or other media to answer a question.

While presented as distinct skill sets, the eight practices intentionally overlap and interconnect. Skills such as those outlined above should be reflected in curricula and instruction that engage students in an integrated use of the practices. See the Science and Engineering Practices Progression Matrix (Appendix I) for more information, including particular skills for students in grades pre-K–2.