Tips For Integrating Science Process Skills in Lessons

Integrating the science process skills as one of your teaching strategies requires no drastic changes in your teaching style. It merely involves making the processes of science more explicit in lessons, investigations, and activities you are already using in your science curriculum.

The science process skills are the methods used by students to conduct investigations and understand how we know what we know about the world in which they live. This often means going beyond the textbook and supplementing the core-content within textbooks with hands-on, minds-on activities. It also means using your course content as a means for exposing students to the real processes of science.

In the book, Nature of Science: Part, Present, and Future (2007), Lederman indicates these methods involve making explicit references to the science process skills and allowing students time to reflect on how they participated in the process.

Explicit Teaching Strategy

Shifting from an implicit strategy for developing increased student understanding to an explicit teaching strategy helps ensure students make the connection between science processes involved within an investigation and science content.

One example -

During a lab investigation involving the graphing of a large amount of data students collected - ask them to first draw conclusions on the meaning of their data before graphing it.

Then have them draw additional conclusions after graphing the data.

This process emphasizes the importance which visual representation brings to data analysis.

Using Real Data

Nothing can compare when students collect real data personally or use real data from remote networks such as satellites, buoys, or seismic sensors. Using real data in the classroom in any learning process supports student learning through support for:


inquiry and participation in the scientific method.
ability to design experiments.
effective evaluation of data uncertainties and applicability.
using quantitative and critical thinking skills.
measurement skills.

The Real Value of These Strategies

We know our students bring misconceptions to the science classroom and these misconceptions must be acknowledged before new, more accurate concepts can be learned. These strategies help students recognize their misconceptions and teachers help students overcome them.

Students need to appreciate and value science as a way of knowing. The process of science, such as debate, can cause the general public to mistrust what they hear from scientists. If we teach our students how science works, they are more likely to interpret a scientific debate with ability to separate right from wrong based on their personal experiences.

Additional Ways to Integrate Science Process Skills

Science and Math Education Website: Teaching Science and Math

David R. Wetzel, Ph.D. - Currently a FreeLance Writer, Retired Science Education University Professor and Public School Science Teacher. He is an avid technology user and researches technologies which impact everyday science education.

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Kid's Current Science Lessons

One of the greatest things about science, as a subject, is that the topics taken up can be seen or experienced on a daily basis everywhere. A study of photosynthesis, for example, can be easily shown because it happens in every plant in your garden. Having such easy and on hand examples makes kids current science lessons relatively easy to learn and understand. Examples can often be recreated or taught through experiments, which is another advantage of science!

Another great thing about studying science is that modern science is constantly making new discoveries. This means that science is always changing or evolving and new ideas can affect the old. For example, people already know that a simple machine could help them do any work for which it is intended for, but once they figure out that putting several machines together could make the work a lot faster and better, the idea of work is then revolutionized. Such is the effect of scientific progress! Once the basic concepts of science have been taught and learned, the next thing to look into is how to use these concepts to modernize or to revolutionize the way things are done.

Making sure your child fully understands their basic scientific concepts is the best way to prepare them for scientific innovations. These basic concepts are the building blocks of science, and in fact each concept can introduce a relevant scientific issue that you can discuss with your child. For example, the life cycle is a pretty basic concept and is learned in the second grade but it can evolve into the human life cycle or a study of genetics in the higher grades.

Children will be told that at the end of life, living things will decompose. You can show your child the process of decomposition by creating a compost pit in your backyard. Your child will visibly see and understand the process of decomposition. It also allows you to open up the topic of natural fertilizer and how they help plants grow. Should you choose to do so, discuss genetically modified organisms with your child, and get their views on the matter. You will be surprised at what ideas your child will come up with!

There are other relevant concepts you should discuss for kids science classes. For example, the problem of global warming and its effects on the world is something that is being dealt with by scientists all over the world today. Introducing this concept to your child along with his lessons on greenhouse gases and their effects can prepare your child for a life of environmental conservation and an understanding of how precious life on earth is.

Teaching kids science will not just help them understand their current science lessons better but it will also help them appreciate the importance of science in everyday life. Science can solve a lot of problems, and showing your child this at a young age can help keep them interested in it. They may even choose to become scientists! More importantly, the understanding of how science can change the world is a good thing to introduce at a young age because they will grow up with the proper knowledge of their world and how current day science can change the quality of their life in the future.

Help teach your kids their current science lessons by letting them make their own experiments. Find more ways and strategies to help teach your kids their current science lessons by clicking on the links here.

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