It is their right to express themselves using all of their language resources.”Īs students engage in “doing science and engineering,” they rely heavily on oral language in trying to make sense of phenomena. “Multilingual students’ learning and participation increase when they have access to a broader repertoire of ways to make sense of and talk about the natural phenomena they investigate and observe. ( 2020), articulated the following in their STEM Teaching Tool centered on science vocabulary and conceptual meaning: Choosing to initially allow and highlight everyday language is a conscious shift away from pre-teaching vocabulary and toward students driving their own need for more nuanced ways of describing these phenomenal animals. While most students begin by describing the external features as weird, the class quickly agrees that they need a better way to describe what they actually mean by weird. In this article we highlight the use of the word weird in describing this group of animals with an extreme diversity of physical features because of the entry point this gives to all learners. ![]() Throughout this unit, students use their initial observations about weird looking animals to help them start to think about structure and function-an important crosscutting concept-and to begin to discover animal diversity. By observing differences between the materials available to them, they discover why objects in the world around them are constructed in specific ways.Imagine peering into a first-grade classroom and hearing a bunch of six- and seven-year-olds saying things like, “WHOA that fish has slits across its eyes” and “it’s got spikes all over its body!” while others exclaim “Why does that animal have a huge nose but the other one doesn’t even look like it has a face?!” This is student engagement at its finest-and this is what happens when you use phenomena-based instruction to light up the world of science for young students. Here, students explore the properties of different materials and use their new knowledge to select materials for building their prototypes. During this activity, children also explore beaver dams and try their hand at constructing their own versions of these impressive structures. After learning about a few bioluminescent organisms, students are encouraged to further explore how this feature helps them survive.Īpplying their creative problem-solving skills, children conduct experiments to safely airdrop animals and help restore balance to natural habitats. Following their curiosity about bioluminescent plants and animals, children create their own glowing plants inspired by these organisms. In this unit, students discover that a variety of plants and animals are bioluminescent (able to produce and emit light). Read below for a few examples of how these units embrace phenomena science. Because of this, many of the units within our Invention Project ® K-6 curriculum include phenomena that spark students’ curiosity. ![]() Instead, they are simply ways of helping children explore science in ways that connect to their everyday world and lives, often providing an explanation for a particular lesson or activity.Īt the National Inventors Hall of Fame ® (NIHF), our education team has long believed in the ability of phenomena to serve as portals for investigating science. While the term phenomena sounds a lot like the word phenomenal, phenomena do not have to be over-the-top, flashy points of connection. ![]() Defined as “observable events that occur in the universe and that we can use our science knowledge to explain or predict,” phenomena are increasingly leveraged by educators to help children find relevant ways to explore, retain and understand the core concepts of Next Generation Science Standards. From rainbows that sometimes appear after rainstorms, to the nests that birds build high up in trees, natural phenomena are all around us.
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