Learning Through Written Explanations

Fourth grades learn and explain in writing what they have learned about electricity by participating in a unit of inquiry based activities about circuits. The unit is described as well as ho... See More

Fourth grades learn and explain in writing what they have learned about electricity by participating in a unit of inquiry based activities about circuits. The unit is described as well as how students were taught to explain what they learned through writing. Each student’s explanation must include scientific concepts learned and use appropriate scientific terminology within the explanation. An explanation rubric is provided in the article. This is an interesting approach.

Focusing on Explaination

Although there are some good ideas for teaching a unit on electrical circuits in this article, the main focus is on teaching students to explain. This focus within a lesson ensures deep asse... See More

Although there are some good ideas for teaching a unit on electrical circuits in this article, the main focus is on teaching students to explain. This focus within a lesson ensures deep assessable learning, and the article includes not only a great recipe for teaching explanation, but some hand tools (rubric, examples) as well. The key point that cause my attention here is to ensure that students are not describing the procedure but rather explaining the phenomena behind the science. It takes a bit more work to develop this skil and level of understanding, but as the author shows (and as I've seen in my own classroom!) the results are well worth it.