The National Science Teacher Association (NSTA) publishes a peer-reviewed journal for elementary school teachers that appears six times per year. In that journal, Science and Children, Deborah C. Smith and colleagues present their results from a series of lessons that taught kindergarten students how to discuss questions respectfully with each other like scientists do.
Presented with a collection of similar objects, only some of which were seeds, the students were challenged to figure out which ones were the seeds, in class discussions that were explicitly modeled after how scientists confer.
The authors conclude that after these lessons “students confidently claimed that they were real scientists because they asked questions and had scientists’ conferences; tested ideas; measured, wrote, and drew in their notebooks; and figured out together how seeds grew.” This of course has implications for teaching science at many levels.
Click here to access their brief article, entitled “Growing Seeds and Scientists.”