5

All Together Now: Supporting Communication and Collaboration

Ivy Quinn’s first-grade¹ class has just finished an investigation of a “mystery matter” (a melted crayon). Ms. Quinn initiates a discussion to begin moving students toward an explanation for the guiding question, How do you change a liquid into a solid?²

Ms. Quinn: Let’s talk about what we noticed.

Naomi: First it was a liquid and then it turned into a solid.

Ms. Quinn: So we were able to turn a liquid into a solid? Can someone add on to that?

Joon: First it was liquid, and then the way it turned into a solid is that you had to let it sit.

Ms. Quinn: You had to let it sit? If I take a liquid and I just let it sit, it will just turn into a solid? If I poured a liquid into a dish and let it sit, it would just turn into a solid?

Heba: No, because water needs to be cold to turn into ice.

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¹ If following the NGSS, the example is not aligned with the performance expectations for that grade level.

² Example from Bismack, A., & Haefner, L. A. (2020). Portrait of a first-grade teacher: Using science practices to leverage young children’s sensemaking in science. In E.A. Davis, C. Zembal-Saul, & S. M. Kademian (Eds.), Sensemaking in Elementary Science: Supporting Teacher Learning (pp. 34–35). Routledge. The teacher and student pseudonyms have been changed from the original article.

Ms. Quinn: Is that what happened today? Did the liquid we saw today turn cold? How do you know it turned colder?

Heba: Yes, because we could feel the heat on our hands and that meant the heat was leaving.

Ms. Quinn: So the heat was leaving the liquid? Can someone else add on to that?

Cameron: When the warmth was leaving and it made the liquid into a solid.

Maeve: The warmth . . . you could feel it coming out into the air and it just turned into a solid.

With skillful questioning from Ms. Quinn, these young children have begun a productive conversation that uses observations from their investigation to start them thinking about a disciplinary core idea of science. Compare that with a more traditional type of exchange in which a teacher asks questions to check whether the students, who are likely older than first grade when they study this topic, have learned the facts they were taught:

Teacher: What are the three states of matter?

Student 1: Solid, liquid, and gas.

Teacher: Good. So how does a liquid change into a solid?

Student 2: It loses heat.

Teacher: That’s right! And what is matter made up of?

Student 3: Molecules.

Teacher: What happens to the molecules when a liquid changes to a solid?

(Silence)

Teacher: Does anyone remember the picture in our book showing the molecules in three states of matter?

Student 4: I think the molecules were farther apart in the liquid.

Teacher: Correct. So what happens to the molecules when the liquid loses heat?

(Pause)

Student 4: Uh . . . they get closer together?

What differences do you notice when you read these two accounts of classroom conversation? Notice how Ms. Quinn asks many open-ended questions rather than the closed-ended questions seeking factual answers in the second example. Although the students in the second example are talking, it’s not clear how deeply they are thinking or how much they really understand. In the first example, by contrast, first graders are sharing their discoveries, similar to how professional scientists and engineers advance knowledge.

Children benefit from learning with and from each other. In three-dimensional learning, communication and collaboration are the gears that drive sensemaking. As children talk with you and their peers and as they work together on investigations and design tasks, they are jointly constructing new knowledge, explanations, and solutions.

You can use various strategies to shape the context, structure, and progress of these interactions while letting students take the lead. In this chapter you’ll find suggestions and examples to help you reach the following goals:

• Establish classroom expectations and routines that build a strong foundation for effective and efficient student communication and collaboration.
• Guide students’ communication (often referred to as discourse) through questions, prompts, and other tools.
• Group students and organize collaborative work to promote sensemaking.
• Embrace a variety of approaches to increase equity and engage all children in classroom discussions and collaborative work.

How can I create a positive environment for student interactions?

Talking in class and sharing ideas in groups seems risky for many children. They may fear that speaking out or asking questions will reveal what they don’t yet know, put them in the spotlight, or open them up to ridicule. Therefore, a first step in facilitating communication and collaboration is to establish and abide by expectations and routines at the beginning of the school year for how students will talk and work together in the classroom. Chapter 2 discussed how you can set expectations as part of your efforts to create a caring classroom community. Here, the focus is specifically on making the classroom a space where all children will feel safe to communicate their thinking and will know their ideas will be heard and valued while they respect others. These expectations also focus on laying the groundwork for children to collaborate effectively and efficiently, whether with a partner, in small groups, or as a whole class.

Box 5-1 gives examples of expectations for student communication and collaboration, taken from seasoned practitioners and in some cases developed by students themselves.

You can influence students to accept and regularly adhere to classroom expectations by involving students in drafting them. For example, by inviting children to brainstorm about specific ways to ensure that all their peers are heard or that everyone will participate fully in group activities, you can create a sense of ownership and accountability among students. Students are also more likely to accept and follow expectations and routines if you revisit the expectations throughout the school year, asking students for feedback and reworking the expectations as needed.

In kindergarten teacher Virginia Stott’s³ classroom, the children are “very, very involved” in classroom discussion. She attributes this to “my classroom community and the way it’s established.” She elaborated:

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³ Interview, Feb. 4, 2022.

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⁴ The direct quotations in this list are from OpenSciEd. (2019, June). OpenSciEd Teacher Handbook Draft: Classroom Norms. https://www.openscied.org/teacher-handbook-draft/. Other sources include Ambitious Science Teaching. (2015). A discourse primer for science teachers. https://ambitiousscienceteaching.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Discourse-Primer.pdf; Exploratorium. (2015). Science talk: A tool for learning science and developing language. https://www.exploratorium.edu/education/ifi/inquiry-and-eld/educators-guide/science-talk

Teacher strategies to reinforce expectations

Once expectations have been set, you can reinforce them during discussion and class work through techniques like these:

• Display the list of expectations in the classroom
• Model in your own behavior what a particular expectation looks like (Ms. Quinn listened carefully to student responses and asked questions to help her understand.)
• Call attention when a child demonstrates a behavior on the list (Good add-on, Hosea. I can tell you were listening carefully to what Grace said.)
• Remind students when they act counter to expectations (Let’s allow Sky to finish, Noah, and then we want to hear your idea.)
• Give students phrases they can use to respectfully frame a comment on or question about another child’s idea (as in Figure 5-1); display these phrases in the classroom and refer to them
• Revisit the expectations periodically and invite students to reflect (“How did we do today in our discussion? What talk moves do we need to work on?”⁵ Is there anything we would want to add or change about our expectations?)

By setting and reinforcing expectations, you can help relieve children’s anxieties about expressing their ideas publicly. The students can see for themselves how communicating enriches everyone in the class.

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⁵ Quotation from Ambitious Science Teaching, 2015, p. 6.

What does discourse look like in preschool and elementary classrooms?

Nell Wallingdale, a teacher in a high-poverty school in the Southeastern U.S., incorporates various forms of discourse into her science and engineering instruction. To do this, she draws on her several years of teaching experience in grades preK–4 and her knowledge from professional development in engineering and science.

In the following case, Ms. Wallingdale’s class works on a lesson from a research-based STEM curriculum for preK–8.⁶ In this adapted unit, which extends across 30 class periods, children investigate the properties of Earth materials such as clay, soil, and sand and explore their uses in engineering. Later in the unit, students take on a design task—to build a wall from a combination of student-designed mortar and stones that will withstand a model wrecking ball (a ping pong ball on a string).

As you read the case, note the strategies used by Ms. Wallingdale to welcome and support children’s discourse. She nurtures and values the assets children bring to learning from their everyday experiences. She gives her students a voice and leeway to make sense of what they have observed and collectively build knowledge.

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⁶ Museum of Science, Boston, Engineering is Elementary. (n.d.). A sticky situation: Designing walls. https://eiestore.com/a-sticky-situation-designing-walls.html

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¹⁰ Mercier et al., p. 30.

The importance of planning

Structuring this kind of productive discourse requires planning. It pays to think up front about what you want to achieve with a discussion and what you want children to get out of it. This can be determined through a one-on-one or small group interview. You might be trying to gauge children’s initial understanding. Or, you might be trying to decide on questions worthy of investigating. It’s also helpful to plan icebreaker questions to start things moving and have a pocketful of questions at the ready to keep a discussion on track or steer it in a more fruitful direction. This might seem like a formidable job, but researchers and practitioners have identified strategies you can use, as described below. It also gets easier with experience.

What is discourse and how does it further learning?

Discourse is a process of exchanging ideas and building knowledge through talk, writing, drawing, signs and symbols, gestures, and other modes of communication. Discourse can take place in multiple languages and through different interactions—from one-on-one conversations to large group discussions, and between students and their peers or students and a teacher.

Discourse contributes to learning in many ways. When children communicate, it brings their thinking out into the open so others can understand and react. But discourse has other benefits beyond publicly sharing ideas.

Discourse changes children’s thinking. As children communicate, they flesh out their own ideas. As others listen, they consider, react, and learn from what the

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¹¹ Carlone et al., 2019, p. 179.

speaker is communicating. This exposure to new ideas challenges children to think differently and deeply and to expand on and revise their own ideas. This is the essence of sensemaking.

Discourse is a means for learning the disciplinary core ideas, crosscutting concepts, and practices of science and engineering. Engaging in this kind of intentional communication allows students to try out “science and engineering talk” through various forms of expression, such as asking questions about phenomena or problems, articulating hypotheses, and arguing from evidence. They may not use precise terms, but you can introduce science vocabulary in the context of these discussions, as explained later in this chapter.

Discourse is also how collaborative work gets done. Students discuss which questions to explore and how to organize investigations and collect data. They debate competing explanations, suggest design solutions, and negotiate a consensus, among other science practices.

Through science and engineering discourse, students also rehearse the social-emotional aspects of respectful and productive conversation. They get better at listening actively, asking relevant questions, critiquing, and summarizing.

Finally, discourse helps children to develop language and literacy skills in multiple languages, as explained more in Chapter 7. Some of these benefits are apparent in the previous case, as Ms. Wallingdale created and shaped opportunities for classroom discourse in science and engineering.

How can I support children’s discourse and guide discussion?

There are numerous strategies you can use to support students’ discourse and guide discussion.

Start with children’s questions, ideas, and experiences

A suitable phenomenon or effective design problem generates questions and connects with children’s everyday experiences and ideas about the world (see Chapter 3). Even if these ideas are incomplete, naïve, or technically incorrect, they serve as seeds for conversations that can eventually sprout into the discourse of sensemaking.

An initial strategy is to listen carefully and “hear the science” or engineering in children’s talk—whether accurate or not—so you can build on their experience. By paying close attention, you meet children where they are and show that you value their questions and ideas. This type of active listening is especially critical for children who have been historically marginalized.

Try out teacher talk moves

“Talk moves” are types of questions or statements you can rely on to achieve a particular purpose. Purposes can include eliciting and clarifying students’ ideas, directing students’ attention to important aspects of a phenomenon or problem, prompting students to explain their reasoning and support it with evidence, and challenging them to agree or disagree or compare different views. When you use talk moves, you’re also modeling ways for students to talk to each other. Table 5-1 provides some examples of tried-and-true talk moves.

TABLE 5-1

TEACHER TALK MOVES FOR WHOLE-GROUP OR SMALL-GROUP DISCUSSIONS

Sources: Michaels, S., Shouse, A., & Schweingruber, H. (2008). Ready, set, science! Putting research to work in K-8 science classrooms. The National Academies Press; Michaels, S., & O’Connor, C. (2012). Talk science primer. Talk Science Project at TERC; Zembal-Saul, C., McNeill, K., & Hershberger, K. (2013). What’s your evidence?: Engaging K-5 students in constructing explanations in science. Pearson Education. See Table 4.2: Using the CER Framework to Support Small Group Talk; West, J. M., Wright, T. S., & Gotwals, A. W. (2021). Supporting scientific discussions: Moving kindergartners’ conversations forward. Reading Teacher, 74(6), 703–712; and Ambitious Science Teaching. (2014). Teaching practice set: Eliciting students’ ideas and adapting instruction. http://ambitiousscienceteaching.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Primer-Eliciting-StudentsIdeas.pdf

Different talk moves are suitable for different situations. When you’re facilitating a whole-class discussion, for example, you’ll want to motivate children to contribute, listen, and respond to others’ ideas. You’ll make calculated decisions to shift the direction when needed. At times you may ask a child to participate who hasn’t spoken in a while (Tommy, we haven’t heard from you, do you want to build on that? What were you thinking just now?).

During a turn-and-talk or small group discussion, you may listen for children’s ideas and ask questions to help prepare them to contribute their ideas to later discussions (Can you say more about that?). You can also use talk moves to strengthen connections between students and help them build collective knowledge (Can someone build on what Abby just said?).

These talk moves aren’t limited to large or small group discussions. Some of these questions and comments may be useful to interject as you circulate while students collaborate on investigations or do individual work. In the next example, notice how Miranda Menten, an instructional coach, uses different talk moves to help her students learn about batteries.

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¹² The example is taken from Colley, C., & Windschitl, M. (2016). Rigor in elementary science students’ discourse: The role of responsiveness and supportive conditions for talk. Science Education, 100(6), 1009–1038.

By combining the three talk moves in the example, Ms. Menten nudges her students to come up with explanations that require a deeper level of reasoning than simply naming parts of a circuit or labeling types of energy on a circuit diagram. She prompts students to say more about their thinking and to move from features they can observe to causes that are unobservable.

Assure children that it’s okay to be incorrect or uncertain

As you elicit children’s ideas, you can emphasize that even bumps in the road can contribute to learning. For example, in a lesson on batteries and light bulbs, you could signal the power of “mistakes” by emphasizing that students need to see and record which configurations do not light the bulb to help them figure out which configurations do light the bulb. Similarly, through your classroom talk, you can help children recognize that “wrong” predictions serve an important purpose by inserting into the discussion a range of ideas for students to test.

You can also highlight the value of saying “I don’t know,” “I’m not sure,” or “That doesn’t make sense to me” by showing excitement when uncertainty arises and modeling these kinds of phrases yourself. This sends a message that science and engineering questions start from uncertainty and that the desire to know more leads to powerful explanations.

Promote sensemaking through rigorous discourse

While having a toolkit of talk moves like those in Table 5-1 can bring out students’ ideas and generate good discussion, sensemaking is not likely to happen unless children do something with the ideas they’ve put forward. “Doing something” includes the rigorous intellectual work described in Chapter 4—collecting data, developing and refining models, constructing and revising explanations, and arguing with evidence—-

and in the process, building knowledge of disciplinary core ideas and crosscutting concepts.¹³

Research suggests that rigorous discourse is more likely to occur when teachers use certain strategies, including open-ended questions, follow-up prompts, references to activities or models, and invitations for students to comment on their peers’ ideas. These moves are especially effective when used in combination.¹⁴ Teachers can reinforce sensemaking by creating opportunities before and after discussion for students to represent and inspect their own and others’ ideas through writing, drawing, or modeling.

What other forms of communication can promote science learning?

Teachers who effectively organize classroom discourse set up opportunities for children to use various modes of communication, in addition to talking, to convey their thinking. This flexibility advances equity and opens up more means for you to connect with children and energize the whole class. Here are some additional ways in which children can communicate their ideas:

• Writing. Writing is an important part of science, not just language arts. In science and engineering, students write to make science notebook entries, record data, contribute to classroom charts, label models, develop explanations, and much

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¹³ Colley & Windschitl, 2016.

¹⁴ Ibid.

• more.¹⁵ Writing and science talk reinforce each other. In the writing children do for science and engineering purposes, you need not be a stickler about spelling and grammar—what matters most is how children are conveying their science ideas. In fact, “writing” may include single word labels or, in the case of very young learners, simply recording the first letter of a word.

Fourth-grade teacher Barbara Germain emphasizes the value of writing in science journals to improve both writing skills and science content:¹⁶

• Drawing. Drawing is a particularly suitable means of expression for all children, but especially for nonverbal and/or students (of any age) whose language skills are still developing. In a kindergarten class, for example, a student drew a picture of a watermelon getting bigger when it was watered (Figure 5-3), which revealed the child’s understanding that plants need water to grow.¹⁷
• Models and artifacts. Chapter 4 gives several examples of how children express their initial ideas and growing understanding through models that they create and refine and other forms of representation. You can also make available other kinds of physical objects to support investigation and design work, as Ms. Wallingdale did with photos of different kinds of walls and physical examples of materials.
• Gestures. In Ms. Menten’s class on electrical energy, a fourth grader named Rosie suggested that electrical energy changes into light in the filament of the flashlight

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¹⁵ Carlone et al., 2021.

¹⁶ Group interview, Jan. 12, 2022.

¹⁷ Charara, J., Miller, E. A., & Krajcik, J. (2021). Knowledge in use: Designing for play in kindergarten science contexts. Journal for Leadership, Equity, and Research, 7(1).

• “because it’s curly-Q’ed so tightly that the energy rubs against each other which makes a spark and makes light.” Ms. Menten followed up by asking everyone in the class to rub their hands together and say what it feels like. Students shouted out, “Friction! Spark! Spark! Hot! Hot!” Haile deduced that “it’s heat energy.”¹⁸

Physical resources like a driving question board can also enhance discourse. In addition to publicly recognizing all children’s contributions, these kinds of resources can help everyone keep track of and add to the growing set of questions, comments, and proposed solutions that connect to their experience and understanding.

How can I support peer-to-peer conversation and interactions?

Children learn science and engineering not only through teacher-guided discussions but also by talking among themselves. With explicit support and modeling from the teacher and sufficient time to get acclimated, students can have meaningful peer conversations even when the teacher isn’t directly overseeing.

How can you prepare students to have constructive peer discussions? These strategies can be effective:¹⁹

• In your own discussions with students, model phrasing, questions, and strategies children can use. Call attention to and even name the talk move that you’re using and what purpose it serves.
• Display selected talk moves and remind students to use them. Some teachers post these around the room, and others make table tents for students to have at their desks during discussions.
• Review the expectations you’ve set for civil discussion. Remind them to be respectful, accept different ways of communicating, and include everyone in their group in the conversation.
• Help students feel comfortable with giving and accepting criticism. Emphasize that they are critiquing ideas, not the person.
• Have students reflect on how they did after a key conversation. Ask them what they plan to do differently the next time they’re conversing with peers in groups.

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¹⁸ Colley & Windschitl, 2016.

¹⁹ Schwarz et al., 2009; Ambitious Science Teaching (2015); Windschitl, M., Thompson, J., & Braaten, M. (2018). Ambitious science teaching. Harvard Education Press.

Getting students accustomed to these ways of talking to one another takes time. While talk moves can be a powerful support for children, as with the CER framework and KLEWS scaffold discussed in Chapter 4, the focus should be on children’s ideas and their expressions. It should not be on compliance with using specific talk moves. Give them time and latitude to improve, and they will engage with their peers in ways that they’ll enjoy and you’ll find rewarding.

How can I structure activities and group students to promote collaboration?

The decisions you make about how to structure activities and group students strongly influence how they work and talk together.

Benefits of different structures and groupings

Different structures and groupings serve different purposes. Table 5-2 shows examples of different structures for students, along with appropriate group sizes, teacher roles, and equity benefits for each structure.

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²⁰ Interview, May 16, 2022.

TABLE 5-2

STRUCTURES AND GROUPINGS FOR STUDENT INTERACTION

Although you may have more experience with some of the structures in Table 5-2 than others, you and your students will benefit if you vary the structure and size of group activities and the makeup of groups. Mixing it up will give them multiple ways to find their voice and show their strengths.

Some students may feel more comfortable sharing with just one or a few students than in larger groups. For example, asking children to turn and talk to a neighbor or partner is a low-stakes way of getting them accustomed to listening, talking, and jointly developing understanding. They can also rehearse their ideas with a partner before putting them out to a larger group.

Other structures are particularly conducive to building collaborative skills. In a “jigsaw” structure, for example, individuals or small teams take responsibility for becoming specialists in one aspect of a science or engineering investigation. Then several individuals or teams convene and teach each other what they have learned—assembling their separate pieces of knowledge to form a whole explanation of the “puzzle.” This structure supports cooperative learning while empowering individuals. In a gallery walk, individuals or groups of children situate their models, explanations, or solutions around the classroom. Then the children move about the room to look at, ask questions about, and learn from each other’s work. They get practice in analyzing and critiquing the ideas of others.

For hands-on investigations and design tasks, small groups are often an effective structure. Each student has a substantive role, as explained below. This presents more situations for discourse than a large group does, as children engage in sophisticated teamwork, contribute to the whole task, and demonstrate their competence. Small groups can also send a message that scientific knowledge is collectively generated (“our ideas”) rather than individually owned (“Frank’s idea”).

Strategies for organizing and supporting small group work

Experienced practitioners and researchers who have closely observed classrooms have come up with the following suggestions for how you can organize and support students when they collaborate in small groups on science investigations and engineering design tasks:²²

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²¹ Interview, Feb. 3, 2022.

²² Many of these suggestions come from Davis, E. A., & Palincsar, A. S. (2023). Engagement in high-leverage science teaching practices among novice elementary teachers. Science Education, 107, 291–332; and Felazzo, L. (2021). What are the best strategies for small-group instruction? Education Week. https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/opinion-what-are-the-best-strategies-for-small-group-instruction/2021/11

• Be deliberate in assigning group members. Based on your own experience with assigning students to groups, you know how to group students with different abilities, particular strengths, home languages and English language proficiency, and other characteristics. Assigning students strategically can disrupt existing hierarchies (Declan is the smartest engineer) and reveal previously unknown competencies (Fiona, that’s a great idea for our windmill blades!). Rearranging group membership for different tasks can expose children to new ideas from more students and give them additional opportunities to build collaborative skills.
• Ensure that everyone in a group has a meaningful responsibility. For each task, you’ll have to decide whether to allow children in the group to negotiate the roles, with your guidance, or to assign roles yourself. In either case, you’ll want to make sure that everyone has an active “thinking” role and in some way is a knowledge generator. It’s also important to rotate responsibilities periodically. In assigning roles for a lesson on heat energy, one teacher remarked that “we were really working on being accurate but also making sure that each person had a role within the experiment, because I have kids that will just do the whole thing and the other kids will just sit back. So, I really wanted to provide a way for each kid to be invested.”²³
• Give clear directions up front to enable groups to work independently. This could include explaining the goals and basic procedure for an investigation or design task, the time frame, the products students need to complete (such as data collection sheets or notebook pages), and other information needed to make the task productive. At the same time, you don’t want to constrain children’s initiative and learning opportunities by being too prescriptive. When you introduce a task, it may also be a good time to review class expectations for respectful and inclusive interactions.
• Circulate and monitor student work. As students go about their investigation or task, you’ll want to ask questions and make comments to determine what they’re doing (Let me see what you’ve made) and how much they understand (Why do you think your bean sprout is twisted?). You’ll also want to see where they are heading (What’s your next step?) and guide them in productive directions (How will you make your car turn?).
• Set up ways for small groups to show their work and get feedback. Groups could share the results of their investigations or design tasks with the larger class

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²³ Davis & Palincsar, 2023, p. 316.

• by displaying models or giving presentations, with opportunities for comments, questions, and feedback from peers and the teacher.

How can I ensure that communication and collaborative work are inclusive and equitable?

In classrooms centered on investigation and design, most of the learning happens through children communicating and working together. In the process, children express their ideas in different ways and draw on different cultural and linguistic resources. Using deliberate strategies that value these differences advances access and equity for children who have been historically marginalized based on their language, race and ethnicity, disabilities, gender, prior knowledge or experiences, or other dimensions of identity. These strategies, which are described below, also enrich learning for all children by bringing out a broader range of ideas, assets, and ways to connect with science and engineering.

Welcome multiple forms of expression

As noted earlier in this chapter, embracing both verbal and non-verbal forms of expression increases opportunities for all children to communicate their thinking. Children who are hesitant to speak out for any number of reasons can often do better if they write, draw, gesture, or model ideas. For children with disabilities, this kind of flexibility is critical to accommodate their learning needs, as the following example makes clear.

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²⁴ Based on interview with Tess Edinger.

Special educators are always looking for multiple means of engagement, expression and representation. The focus on asking questions, investigating, modeling, and collecting data “has been really powerful for our students, and given everybody equal access to things,” Ms. Edinger explains. “Every student can ask a question—they may ask it using the device, they may ask it at a much more basic level—but every student can engage in that practice of asking questions.” Similarly, the emphasis on making models “aligns perfectly” with the communication needs of her students “because we can use visual models, we can use tangible models, we can use computer-based models.”

This flexibility extends to how students make observations and record data, notes Ms. Edinger:

My student who has a physical impairment might be recording data on their tablet, their assistive technology, where they’re using their visual picture system to make observations of what it looks like. Whereas my student who has dyslexia might not be writing, but they might be recording into their computer all of their observations verbally while they’re engaging in that experiment. And then I might have a third student who’s writing, so that’s multiple means of expression.

For example, in one fifth-grade science unit, students make terrariums that represent all four elements of the earth’s systems (geosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere). Then they observe their terrariums over time to see how the systems interact. When a teacher asked

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²⁵ Interview, Jan. 31, 2022.

Let children use their own words

In oral communication, children express ideas using their own words, including everyday language, coined words, or words in a language other than English. By listening for the intent behind these words, you can guide them toward understanding a science or engineering disciplinary core idea. Consider these examples:

• Onomatopoeic words. In a third-grade lesson, a group of multilingual learners plucked a stringed instrument to investigate the relationship between properties like the length of a string and the sound it makes. The children described the higher-pitched sound made by the shortest string as “ting ting” and the lower-pitched sound as “tong tong.” John Dahl, the teacher, realized that these sound associations could help students make a connection between the length of the string and its pitch. A child named Mei proposed that the sound difference occurred “because of the size. Because when you put the ruler longer, it make, like, ‘toooooong’ . . . And when you put the ruler shorter, it makes ‘tiiiiiing.’”²⁶
• Everyday words. During a cold New England winter, a fourth-grade teacher picked up on a student’s comment that “sweaters are hot” to teach her class about sources of heat. Many students seemed to believe that the clothing itself generated heat. “If you put a thermometer inside a hat, would it ever get hot!” said one student. The children tested this idea multiple times and were baffled when thermometers placed inside sweaters, hats, and sleeping bags on a table did not show a temperature rise. The difference between emitting heat and holding heat seemed to be eluding them. Rather than directly teaching her student about thermal insulation, she asked them if they could think of anything that “trapped” heat, that kept things warm without heating them. While some students clung to their theory that the heat was coming from the sweater, several began to understand that the heat that seems to come from “warm” clothes actually emanates from their warm bodies and is trapped inside the clothes.²⁷

Be attentive to the communication needs of multilingual learners.

Allowing and even encouraging multilingual learners to use words in their first language can help them learn science and engineering content more effectively. When children use their first language, they can focus on the science. For example, in a fifth-grade science class with many emergent multilingual learners and a bilingual teacher, children move flexibly between Spanish and English in speaking, writing, and creating digital images. This flexibility helps them learn technical vocabulary, use visual supports to extract information from texts, and categorize objects by similar characteristics.²⁸

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²⁶ Suárez, E., & Otero, V. (2023). Ting, tang, tong: Emergent bilingual students investigating and constructing evidence-based explanations about sound production. Journal of Research in Science Teaching. https://doi.org/10.1002/tea.21868

²⁷ Watson, B., & Konicek, R. (1990). Teaching for conceptual change: Confronting children’s experience. Phi Delta Kappan (May), 680–685.

²⁸ Poza, L. E. (2016). The language of ciencia: Translanguaging and learning in a bilingual science classroom. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 21(1), 1–19.

If you don’t know the language being spoken by a child or many children, it’s still okay to let them speak in their first language. Even though you may not always know what they’re saying, other students who speak that language can converse with them about science ideas, and some may be able to translate. If you are able to learn a few key words in a language spoken by children in your class, this will forge a connection.²⁹

Productively introduce scientific vocabulary in context

To participate fully in scientific and engineering discourse, students at some point will need to learn key vocabulary of these disciplines. However, the traditional approach of first teaching children the science or engineering terms for the underlying concepts you want them to learn is ineffective for developing either their language skills or their understanding of key concepts.

Imagine a teacher who introduces the day’s learning goals by writing on the board, We will understand and explain thermal equilibrium. The teacher asks the children to repeat the term “thermal equilibrium” in unison and then gives them a definition before launching into an investigation to demonstrate the concept. Contrast this with a teacher who tells the class that today “we will investigate what happens when we put a container of hot water into a container of cold water.” Only after the children have conducted this investigation does the class jointly construct language to describe the phenomenon they observed.

The second teacher is using the research-validated approach of letting children discover concepts first and then introducing important science or engineering vocabulary in context—summed up by the phrase “activities before concepts, concepts before vocabulary.” This approach emphasizes what children understand rather than whether they are using appropriate vocabulary. The vocabulary will come.

You can listen for key moments during children’s conversations and use them as a bridge to introduce a scientific term. Here’s an example:

Ms. Quinn,³⁰ the first-grade teacher introduced at the beginning of this chapter, values “kid talk” but also wants the children to learn scientific terminology once they have some conceptual grounding. In an initial lesson on magnets, she notices that the students use the term “stick” to describe what happens when a magnet gets close to certain objects. Toward the end of that lesson, Ms. Quinn announces, “I am going to teach you the science word for stick. When they go together, we call that attract.” From

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²⁹ Science 20/20. (n.d.). A case of setting science talk norms. https://www.science2020k-5.com/_files/ugd/cb74d3_f2eec51bcc9e4a0bbc7e2c49bde83b56.pdf

³⁰ Bismack & Haefner, 2020.

this point, Ms. Quinn generally uses the scientific term with the children. She gently reintroduces the term “attract,” while making clear that she understands what children mean when they say “stick.” Her primary focus is on what children understand rather than on whether they use the correct vocabulary.

As children begin to communicate using more science and engineering vocabulary, often children may productively mix or use close approximations. In Mr. Dahl’s classroom, where students used onomatopoeic sounds to describe pitch, the children occasionally tried to use scientific language, as in this example:³¹

Ollie: [The shortest string] goes ting ting because it hibernates faster.

Mei: Hibernates?

Ollie: Vibernates! . . . because the smaller ruler made a high pitch noise.

Eventually, the students realize that the child means “vibrate,” a word that has come up in a previous discussion. The teacher allows this exchange to play out to give students a chance to make the link between their first-hand experience and scientific language.

You can also guide the class in co-constructing definitions of key terms. This may require some up-front planning to identify a child-friendly version of the definition you eventually want them to grasp. As students come to understand more, you can work with them to collectively refine the initial definition. To do this, it is important to trust your students and be patient as they construct their understanding.

Give students time to think before responding

Extending the time you give students to process and think before answering a question is a simple but effective way to encourage equitable participation and elicit better responses in classroom discussion. Many children may need time to organize their ideas or find the words. Emergent multilingual learners may need time to translate a question in their minds.

Think-pair-share is a specific approach that gives all children time to think before they join in a whole-class conversation. The teacher poses a question and asks students to silently think about their answer for about 30 seconds, and then briefly talk to a peer to compare their responses. Then the students return to the whole-class conversation to share their ideas.

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³¹ Suarez & Otero, 2023.

Connect to children’s real-life experiences

Drawing on children’s experiences in discussions and investigations can encourage participation by all children, particularly those who might typically hang back or be left out. You can connect children’s home, family, and cultural experiences with science and engineering disciplinary core ideas to broaden everyone’s views of “what counts” as science and inspire them to think in new ways. Laura Harmon, a second-grade teacher whose class includes many emergent multilingual learners, uses various techniques to connect classroom discussion and investigations with her students’ real lives:³²

During a science unit on soil, Ms. Harmon connects her students with their local environment by having them dig soil samples and collect data from three diverse habitats within walking distance of their school. After the children do additional research on soil, Ms. Harmon asks them to take home what they have learned and interview their parents. Following these interviews, Kebba reports that in his native Gambia, “the soil is red and dusty, some places have good soft clay and are good for farming.” Ying’s grandmother, who is Hmong, visits the class and speaks through an interpreter. She compares the rich soil of rainy Laos with the loose, sandy soil of the U.S. Midwest and tells the children that she was “so surprised to see corn growing in rows in the sandy soil.” Enriched by these experiences, the children undertake another investigation in which they try to identify unlabeled samples of soil taken from their outdoor digs. Kebba, who has become intrigued with different colors and textures of soils, quickly identifies the wet, dark black soil sample as coming from the marsh environment.

Consider how your own ways of communicating may affect students

How you talk to and work with students affects how they participate and interact in the classroom. For example, if a teacher inadvertently directs different kinds of questions to children from historically marginalized groups, this can negatively affect their desire to participate and self-identity as a doer of science and engineering. By contrast, teacher talk that is equitable and doesn’t make presumptions about students can serve as a model for the children in the class.

It’s a matter of practice

You may be awed by colleagues who appear to orchestrate discussions and collabora-

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³² Example from National Science Teaching Association. (2013). NGSS case study 4: English Language Learners and the Next Generation Science Standards. https://ngss.nsta.org/case-study-4.aspx

tive work like maestros. With an open mind, reflection, and practice, you can become effective in structuring student interactions that lead to learning. Jeanane Charara, a professional development provider and instructional coach for grades K–2, points out that when she first starts coaching teachers on an integrated science and literacy curriculum that emphasizes investigations, discussions, and group work, many of the teachers are “not very confident.” But then,

The results of seeing all your students contribute and learn is well worth the effort. You will get to see how students gain a greater sense of agency through collaborative communication, which not only has the potential to increase their investment in learning, but their pride.

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³³ Interview, Dec. 7, 2021.