Sullivan
Middle School
Science and Technology Template
a Template for the Scientific
Process
Purpose | Learning Standards | Lab Report | John Collins Writing | CLASP| Vocabulary
Introduction
Lifelong learners are able to use the methods of inquiry to participate in scientific investigation and technological problem solving.
As stated in The Massachusetts Common Core of Learning, all students should investigate and demonstrate methods of scientific inquiry and experimentation.
Before there was science or technology, there was inquiry. Questions like "What causes the seasons?" and "How can we grow more food each year on this land?" were asked by human beings long before science or technology became disciplines. Human beings are curious. They want solutions to everyday problems. And so they become scientists and technologists -- sometimes without even knowing it.
In the same way, inquiry in the classroom builds on students' own curiosity and practical-mindedness. It leads them to a deeper understanding of the world than they would get by just reading about it, and it leads them to discover governing principles instead of just memorizing them. Inquiry helps students to learn not just "what we know" but "how we know."
- In the middle grades, students plan and carry out more sophisticated tests and design challenges, gradually learning to distinguish relevant from irrelevant information. They also become more proficient with data, manipulating and analyzing it with confidence if not always with accuracy, and they can now more readily justify their conclusions with evidence. In middle school, science and technology learning continues to take place in the context of extended investigations.
Grades 5-8 Learning Standards - Original - August 1996
- Note and describe relevant details, patterns, and relationships.
- Differentiate between questions that can be answered through direct investigation and those that cannot.
- Apply personal experience and knowledge to make predictions.
- Apply multiple lines of inquiry to address and analyze a question, e.g., experimentation, trial and error, survey, interview, and secondary sources.
- Design an investigation or problem specifying variables to be changed, controlled, and measured.
- Use more complex tools to make observations, and gather and represent quantitative data, e.g., microscopes, graduated cylinders, computer probes, stress and impact testers, wind tunnels and timers.
- Describe trends in data even when patterns are not exact.
- Reformulate ideas and technological solutions based on evidence.
- Analyze alternative explanations and procedures.
- Represent data and findings using tables, models, demonstrations and graphs.
- Communicate ideas and questions generated, and suggest improvements or alternatives to the experimental techniques used.
- Communicate the idea that usually there is more than one solution to a technological problem.
- Design a solution involving a technological problem and describe its advantages and disadvantages.
CLASP - Curriculum Library Alignment and Sharing Project - State Frameworks, Technology Lesson Plans and
Curriculum. Mass Frameworks Module (No password needed to download) Go to - Mass Frameworks Module for PC or Mass Frameworks Module for Mac [Frameworks Module Download Instructions]