Even Young Children Can Be Scientists

All students can ask questions about the world around them and design an investigation and make observations. What they need more instruction on is how to make sense of those observations o... See More

All students can ask questions about the world around them and design an investigation and make observations. What they need more instruction on is how to make sense of those observations or as scientists say analyze the data to come to a valid conclusion. This can be done by helping young children to create tables, graphs, diagrams, or other visualizations. Children can transform data into different forms that helps them see patterns and trends. This article provides a good example of how this can be done. It is worth reading this article which can help any teacher help any student to use data as scientists do.

Reflection

"Knowing how to read, interpret, and see trends in graphs is a critical 21st-century capability; it is a skill that all learners use throughout their lives because it helps judge whether a c... See More

"Knowing how to read, interpret, and see trends in graphs is a critical 21st-century capability; it is a skill that all learners use throughout their lives because it helps judge whether a claim is supported by evidence" (Joseph, 2011). Science is asking questions and design methods to observe. Then collect the data that will provide solutions to those questions and analyze the data. Therefore, interpreting the data is on of the important aspect of science and it's also indispensable to nurse the awareness of interpreting for students (Joseph, 2011). Young students are capable of asking questions, designing and carrying out investigations, and then analyzing data to use as evidence to support claims that respond to their questions. "The ability to analyze data is an essential aspect of scientific literacy and will be critical for young children as they grow in a world that is filled with information" (Joseph, 2011). Children can transform data into different forms that will allow them to see patterns and trends through producing tables, graphs, diagrams, or other visual representations. By cultivating the value in creating these different representations will it build stepping stones for students' cientific development and developing tools that will use through their whole life (Joseph, 2011). Young children often collect tallies or counts of data to answer questions. Children can create a table to more easily see the pattern. Students could also construct tables for qualitative data that provide descriptive rather than numeric (quantitative) accounts. Children could even create graphs, pie charts, bar graphs, histograms, and line graphs of data to make a visual representation. Making and interpreting tables and graphs are cognitively challenging tasks for children. However, teachers can support their students by modeling, giving feedback, and allow them to critique each others' graphs and interpretations. One effective way to help students interpret the data is scaffolding, which provides prompts to start students learning how to interpret charts and graphs. But the teacher are suggested not use scaffolding too often because students will think science is just filling the blanks (Joseph, 2011)

Intrepreting Data with Young Students

Young students need a lot of support in learning how to make sense of the data they are collecting. This article gives ideas on how to easily do this with students and also some instruction... See More

Young students need a lot of support in learning how to make sense of the data they are collecting. This article gives ideas on how to easily do this with students and also some instructional tips on how to improve student understanding.