Applying/Problem Solving

• Learning emerges from context and connectedness. Students should practice how to apply knowledge, collect, analyze, and interpret data, and develop values. It is important that students experience and interact with the natural world before they learn terms, symbols, and equations that scientists use to explain the natural world. Students should actively seek information by building connections, rather than just absorbing facts.
• Science activities should emphasize the use of knowledge by providing problems, case studies, projects, and current science-related issues that allow students to use critical thinking and decision-making techniques.
• In problem identification, children should develop the ability to explain a problem in their own words and identify a specific task and solution related to the problem.
• In technological design situations, students should develop their abilities by identifying a specified need, considering its various aspects, and talking to different potential users or beneficiaries.
• Students should evaluate their own results or solutions to problems, as well as those of other children, by considering how well a product or design met the challenge to solve a problem.
• Scientific tools such as microscopes, balances, and other instruments facilitate inquiry and problem-solving strategies.

Classifying

• This process involves imposing order on collections of objects or events. Examples include: in biology, classifying organisms as plants or animals; in chemistry, classifying certain substances as acids or bases; in physics, classifying subatomic particles by mass, electric charge, and half-life; in astronomy, classifying stars by magnitude and color.
• This process also involves using classification schemes to identify objects or events, to show similarities, differences, and interrelationships.
• Scientists use different kinds of investigations depending on the questions they are trying to answer. Types of investigations include describing objects, events, and organisms; classifying them; and doing a fair test (experimenting).
• Operationally defining
• This process involves defining terms in the context of experience. Useful definitions both limit the number of things to be considered while specifying the essential experimental evidence to be gathered. More than one definition may apply to a particular situation.
• Operational definitions are used to construct and test inferences and hypotheses. In the physical sciences, operational definitions describe what is done or what operation is performed and what is observed. In the biological sciences, operational definitions tend to focus on observations only.

Experimenting

• This process encompasses most of the other processes. It usually begins with observations that suggest questions to be answered. Experimenters may or may not formulate hypotheses from such questions. In either case, succeeding steps involve identifying variables to be controlled, making operational definitions, constructing tests, carrying out tests, collecting and interpreting data, and possibly modifying tested hypotheses.
• It is part of scientific inquiry to evaluate the results of scientific investigations, experiments, observations, theoretical models, and the explanations proposed by other scientists. Evaluation includes reviewing the experimental procedures, examining the evidence, identifying faulty reasoning, pointing out statements that go beyond the evidence, and suggesting alternative explanations for the same observations.

Communicating

• Some scientists work in teams, and some work alone, but all communicate extensively with others. This communication is essential to all human activity. Scientists communicate with oral and written words, diagrams, maps, graphs, mathematical equations, and many kinds of visual demonstrations.
• Students should begin developing the abilities to communicate, critique, and analyze their work and the work of other students.
• Student abilities should include oral, written, and pictorial communication. The communication might be show and tell, group discussions, short written reports, or pictures, depending on the students' abilities and the project.
• With practice, students should become competent at communicating experimental methods, following instructions, describing observations, summarizing the results of other groups, and telling other students about investigations and explanations.
• Students should learn to describe objects so that they can be identified by others, describe objects whose properties are changing, use diagrams to communicate change, use maps, and construct and interpret graphs of collected data.
• Interpreting data
• This process consists of three different areas: interpreting data to produce inferences, predictions, and hypotheses; developing skills in the use of statistical measures of central tendency (mean and median) and variation (range); and developing skills in the use of probability.
• It also involves the use of appropriate tools and techniques to gather, analyze, and interpret data, including mathematics, guided by the question asked and the investigations students design.

Modeling

• Some investigations involve observing and describing objects, organisms, or events; some involve collecting specimens; some involve experiments; some involve seeking more information; some involve discovery of new objects and phenomena; and some involve making models.
• Models are tentative schemes or structures that correspond to real objects, events, or classes of events, and that have explanatory power. Models help scientists and engineers understand how things work. Models take many forms, including physical objects, plans, mental constructs, mathematical equations, and computer simulations.
• Scientific explanations incorporate existing scientific knowledge and new evidence from observations, experiments, or models into internally consistent, logical statements. Different terms, such as "hypothesis," "model," "law," "principle," "theory," and "paradigm" are used to describe various types of scientific explanations.

Measuring

• This process involves: using measuring instruments properly and carrying out calculations with measurements; selecting the appropriate instrument to use for measurement; deciding when to use estimates or precise measures; using standard units of measurement; using mathematical operations to find indirect measurements; measuring derived quantities; and distinguishing between precision and accuracy.
• Beginning with simple instruments, students can use rulers to measure the length, height, and depth of objects and materials; thermometers to measure temperature; watches to measure time; beam balances and spring scales to measure weight and force; magnifiers to observe objects and organisms; and microscopes to observe the finer details of plants, animals, rocks, and other materials.

Inferring

• This process involves explaining observations. Inferences often come almost simultaneously with observations and need to be distinguished from such observations.
• Scientists cultivate the ability to make at least one, and frequently more than one, carefully thought out inference to explain an observation or set of observations. They then decide what new observations would help support the inferences. They make these new observations to see whether each of the inferences is an acceptable explanation of the new and the old observations.

Observing/recording

• This process involves using the five senses to obtain information about objects and events. Observation provides both a basis for new inferences and hypotheses and a tool for testing existing inferences and hypotheses.
• Scientists develop explanations using observations (evidence) and what they already know about the world (scientific knowledge).
• Objects have many observable properties, including size, weight, shape, color, temperature, and the ability to react with other substances.
• In the earliest years, investigations are largely based on systematic observations. Some investigations involve observing and describing objects, organisms, or events.

Predicting

• Predicting is using knowledge to identify and explain observations, or changes, in advance. The use of mathematics, especially probability, allows for greater or lesser certainty of predictions.
• Predicting also includes testing the reliability of predictions and predicting behavior based on collected data and graphs.
• Using mathematics/equations
• This process involves using numbers and mathematical relationships to find answers to scientific questions in real problem situations.
• Just as we use written and spoken language to communicate in science, mathematics is an important way of communicating scientific information.
• Mathematics is essential to asking and answering questions about the natural world. Mathematics can be used to ask questions; to gather, organize, and present data; and to structure convincing explanations.

Controlling variables

• This process involves understanding how variables influence each other. The most definitive results of an investigation are obtained when variables can be identified and carefully controlled.
• Best results can be obtained: a) by changing (manipulating) one variable in a systematic way and watching for and measuring corresponding changes in another variable; and b) by holding constant (keeping the same) all other variables while manipulating one variable and observing the response of another.

Hypothesizing

• This process involves looking for causes that explain observations and then generalizing these explanations. A hypothesis is a generalization that includes all objects or events of the same class. Hypotheses can be formulated based on inferences, as well as on observations.
• Scientific explanations incorporate existing scientific knowledge and new evidence from observations, experiments, or models into internally consistent, logical statements. Different terms, such as "hypothesis," "model," "law," "principle," "theory," and "paradigm" are used to describe various types of scientific explanations.
• Scientists devise tests of hypotheses by making more observations of the classes of objects or events covered by the hypotheses. If further observations do not support an hypothesis, it must either be modified or rejected.