Student Progressions in Science and Language Development – Progress in Developing Science Practices and Thinking Skills
Partners in Innovation: Integrating ELD and Science
The Integrating ELD (English Language Development) and Science program, a partnership between the Exploratorium and Sonoma Valley Unified School District (SVUSD), offered elementary students wide-ranging opportunities to interact with and make meaning of natural phenomenon through science inquiry. In turn, students’ individual and collective investigations create rich and varied opportunities for using language. The kind of student-centered and student-generated learning produced by the Integrating ELD and Science program happens in deep and complex ways, but often “below the radar screen” of what can be detected through formal standardized student assessments.
As an alternate construct to achievement testing, the concept of student progressions provides a view of how children build their knowledge over time. The student progressions concept is presented here to show how SVUSD students both learned and used skills and practices focusing on higher forms of thinking rather than just rote learning. Called for by the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) these intellectual skills and practices are widely accepted as the raison d’être of high-quality education and exemplify the academic achievement of successful students. The data used to illuminate how students acquired and utilized these skills and practices and to inform this report is gathered from a range of sources: classroom observations; teachers’ survey responses; teacher reflections from interviews and written testimonies; as well as exemplars of student work, both oral and written.
Progress in Developing Science Practices and Thinking Skills (pdf, 12 pages)
Partners in Innovation: Integrating ELD and Science
Exploratorium and Sonoma Valley Unified School District
PROJECT PORTFOLIO:
Introduction and Overview – The Innovation and Its Contributions
Student Progressions in Science and Language Development:
What follows are five separate and brief reports focusing on various aspects of student progressions in learning science and language. We suggest that reader begin with the first, “Student Progressions in Science and Language Development: An Introduction and Rationale” that describes the idea of student progressions. The construct of student progressions serves as an alternative to standardized test scores as a way to assess and demonstrate student growth and development.
Progress in Developing Positive Attitudes and Confidence
Progress in Learning Science Content
Progress in Developing Science Practices and Thinking Skills