2012 California Science Education Conference

This presentation will introduce a research-based approach (developed, in part, with NSF funding) in which teachers use scaffolding and modeling to help elementary students learn how to think, speak, and write as scientists do. The focus of instruction in this approach is not literacy but science, which determines the forms of communication that students learn. Through student notebook entries and a video of a classroom in which a teacher is implementing the approach, the session will present strategies that conference participants can use immediately in their own classrooms.