Supporting Scientific Discovery at Home

With schools currently closed, parents face the daunting task of engaging their children in learning at home. To meet this challenge, our center’s Innovator Fellow, Peggy Harte, created the “Supporting Scientific Discovery at Home a Parent’s Guide” to assist parents in encouraging children to think deeply to explore and discover the world. 

Updated Version in Spanish: “Apoyando el descubrimiento científico en casa Guía Para el Cuidador”

This guide covers the scientific practices embedded in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), which are part of the California state standards, and gives tips for how to engage children in these practices at home. It can be used as a tool to support the scientific conversation between parents and children. 

Specifically, this guide provides sentence starters in these following learning processes: 

• Asking Question
• Develop a Model
• Plan to Investigate
• Analyze Data
• Explanation
• Argumentation
• Communicating 

Parents can start discussions using sentence starters as a way to engage in robust science conversation.

For example, Figure 1 presents some of the suggested sentence frames when asking children about an observation. These questions can encourage children to ask deeper and more complex questions about the phenomena they are observing. 

Check out the full guide here , and stay tuned with the newest updates on Twitter  @Outsidewonderlb or on Facebook @Outsidewonderlab