Science and Technology/Engineering
14 Grades PreK – 2nd
Grades Pre-K–2: Overview of Science and Engineering[1]
Practices
The development of science and engineering practices begins very early, even as babies and young children inquire about and explore how the world works. Formal education should advance students’ development of the skills necessary to engage in scientific inquiry and engineering design. These are the skills that provide the foundation for the scientific and technical reasoning that is so critical to success in civic life, postsecondary education, and careers. Inclusion of science and engineering practices in standards only speaks to the types of performances students should be able to demonstrate at the end of instruction at a particular grade; the standards do not limit what educators and students should or can be engaged in through a well-rounded curriculum.
Pre-K through grade 2 standards integrate all eight science and engineering practices. Pre-K standards ask students to demonstrate an ability to ask questions, set up simple investigations, analyze evidence, observations, and data for patterns, and use evidence to explain or develop ideas about how phenomena work. Kindergarten standards call for students to show further development of investigation and communication skills, as well as application of science concepts to designing solutions to problems, and to now use information obtained from text and media sources. Grade 1 standards call for students to continue developing investigation skills, including their ability to pose scientific questions as well as their ability to analyze observations and data and to effectively use informational sources. Grade 1 standards also call for students to demonstrate their ability to craft scientific explanations using evidence from a variety of sources. Grade 2 standards call for students to use models in a scientific context and further their skills in a number of the practices, including investigations, data analysis, designing solutions, argumentation, and use of informational sources.
Some examples of specific skills students should develop in these grades:
- Raise questions about how different types of environments provide homes for living things; ask and/or identify questions that can be answered by an investigation.
- Use a model to compare how plants and animals depend on their surroundings; develop and/or use a model to represent amounts, relationships, and/or patterns in the natural world; distinguish between a model and the actual object and/or process the model represents.
- Conduct an investigation of light and shadows; plan and conduct an investigation collaboratively to produce data to answer a question; make observations and/or relative measurements to collect data that can be used to make comparisons.
- Analyze data to identify relationships among seasonal patterns of change; use observations to describe patterns and/or relationships in the natural world and to answer