The start of the school year or semester offers an opportunity to engage students in activities that help to make the nature and process of science explicit. This is also a good time to consider the general approaches and practices you will use to reinforce these key concepts throughout the year. You will also want to review common student misconceptions about the nature and process of science, as well as common miconceptions about teaching these topics. Get started by reviewing the tips below and continue to the next pages to access sample starting activities.

• Familiarize yourself with the Science Flowchart. Remember that not all science lessons that you teach need to include all of the components of science depicted in the flowchart, but where there is a good fit, it is important to point them out and be explicit.

• Consider having students keep a journal with personal reflections about their work. During laboratory investigations the journals can be used to help students keep track of their ideas and the evidence supporting and contradicting different ideas, but they can also be used in conjunction with other learning activities. Introduce the journals at the start of the school year. Over the course of the year, you may offer students increasingly challenging prompts to encourage more sophisticated understandings.

• Identify student perceptions. You might be surprised by the misconceptions that your students have about science. The Science Knowledge Survey, from the Evolution and the Nature of Science Institutes, should take less than 10 minutes, can be implemented in Scantron, and will help you gain an understanding of how your students perceive and relate to science. Being aware of inaccurate preconceptions will help you develop instructional materials and strategies that help students build more accurate views of science in target areas.

• Consider varying the format of labs and lab reports. Not all scientific investigations begin with a hypothesis and neither should all student labs. Some labs may be appropriately designed as more exploratory studies, perhaps resulting in hypotheses for further investigation. Also, remember to contrast the process that students use in their investigations with the way in which lab reports are typically written up. Using the standard format for lab reports without helping students understand the difference between the process of science and how findings are formally presented can encourage student misconceptions.

• Throughout the year, re-emphasize the same ideas in multiple contexts so that students can see the general applicability of these ideas to all of science.

• Consider creating bulletin boards that stress major concepts regarding how science works. For instance, a board entitled "Boy, were we wrong about …" could focus on the ideas that science is ongoing and that scientific ideas are inherently tentative. Students could post news clippings and articles regarding new scientific findings that modify, call into question, or overturn previously accepted ideas.

• At all grade levels, the collaborative nature of science should be strongly reinforced by including frequent group activity in the classroom. Have students present their evidence and interpretation to each other and discuss their ideas. Encourage debate and be willing to accept a temporary stalemate pending more evidence, as scientists often do.

• Review and use the Additional tips and strategies as you plan your lessons for the school year.

• Review this article from Science Scope and use word lists to combat misconceptions about science that stem from vocabulary mix-ups.

• Set the tone at the start of the year that science is creative, dynamic, and fun!

• Talk to other science teachers in your department, school, or district. How do they approach teaching about the nature and process of science? Try to coordinate efforts so that students receive a consistent and reinforced message.

Implications for student learning about the nature and process of science

Sample starting activities

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