Joseph Krajcik

An innovative, internationally developed system to help advance science learning and instruction for high school students This book tells the story of a $3.6 million research project funded by the National Science Foundation aimed at increasing scientific literacy and addressing global concerns of declining science engagement. Studying dozens of classrooms across the United States and Finland, this international team combines large-scale studies with intensive interviews from teachers and students to examine how to transform science education. Written for teachers, parents, policymakers, and researchers, this book offers solutions for matching science learning and instruction with newly recommended twenty-first-century standards. Included are science activities that engage and inspire students; sample lesson plans; and approaches for measuring science engagement and encouragement of three-dimensional learning.

New in 2016! Like all enthusiastic teachers, you want your students to see the connections between important science concepts so they can grasp how the world works now—and maybe even make it work better in the future. But how exactly do you help them learn and apply these core ideas? Just as its subtitle says, this important book aims to reshape your approach to teaching and your students’ way of learning. Building on the foundation provided by A Framework for K–12 Science Education, which informed the development of the Next Generation Science Standards, the book’s four sections cover these broad areas: 1. Physical science core ideas explain phenomena as diverse as why water freezes and how information can be sent around the world wirelessly. 2. Life science core ideas explore phenomena such as why children look similar but not identical to their parents and how human behavior affects global ecosystems. 3. Earth and space sciences core ideas focus on complex interactions in the Earth system and examine phenomena as varied as the big bang and global climate change. 4. Engineering, technology, and applications of science core ideas highlight engineering design and how it can contribute innovative solutions to society’s problems.Disciplinary Core Ideas can make your science lessons more coherent and memorable, regardless of what subject matter you cover and what grade you teach. Think of it as a conceptual tool kit you can use to help your students learn important and useful science now—and continue learning throughout their lives.

By providing a variety of strategies, scenarios, examples of student writing, classroom video clips from across all science content areas, rubrics, and guidelines for designing assessment items, Supporting Grade 5-8 Students in Constructing Explanations in Science: The Claim, Evidence, and Reasoning Framework for Talk and Writing provides teachers with the tools to successfully incorporate scientific explanation in their own classrooms. Grounded in NSF-funded research, this book/DVD supports middle grades science teachers with an instructional framework that breaks down the complex practice of scientific explanation into four components–claim, evidence, reasoning, and rebuttal–and providesconcrete examples of what this scientific inquiry practice looks like when it is successfully implemented in real classrooms. Over the last nine years that McNeill and Krajcik have developed, field tested, and refined this instructional model, they found that incorporating this framework for scientific explanation into curriculum materials, teacher instructional strategies, and assessments enhances students conceptual understanding and improves their ability to think and communicate more scientifically by carefully analyzing evidence and backing up their claims. Facilitator's Guide Package for Science Coaches and Staff Development Trainers Take the guess work out of leading professional development and book studies with the Facilitator's Guide and Book Package. To order, use Special ISBN: 9780132549400 and contact your sales representative at www.allynbaconmerrill.com/findmyrep. What Educators Are Saying I would encourage others to use it as a resource for a professional learning community or department discussion group and the like... absolutely I would recommend it – why? it is simply good for our students’ developing understanding of science...” - Pamela M. Pelletier, Senior Program Director, Science K-12, Boston Public Schools, Boston, Massachusetts "[This book] can easily be used to guide middle school teams to collaboratively work together to ask higher order thinking questions in any core content area. This type of questioning leads to great classroom discourse, therefore engaging students in using claims, evidence, and reasoning." - Kendra Walters Durham, Science Teacher, Wester Middle School, Frisco, Texas Take a Look Inside Integrates video clips from a range of grade levels and contexts (e.g., urban and suburban) throughout the text to demonstrate the use of the scientific explanation framework in actual classrooms (Chapters 2, 4 and 7)Provides examples of student work throughout the book to demonstrate student accomplishment and to illustrate the most common student difficulties and strategies for supporting those challenges. (Chapters 1, 2, 3, and 6)Incorporates learning strategies that can support all students, including English Language Learners and students with special needs, and helps teachers with ideas on how to modify instruction to best meet the needs of their students.Presents rubrics for evaluating students' written explanations and sample assessment tasks with model teacher critiques of student explanations based on developed rubric. Professional Learning Communities Save when you purchase 10 books or more! To order, use Special ISBN: 9780132752022 and contact your sales representative at www.allynbaconmerrill.com/findmyrep.