Kindergarten Instructional Guide

● Do you encourage peer collaboration or peer review when students are developing models? If so, how does this impact the learning experience? ● What challenges have you encountered when implementing the practice of designing and carrying out investigations, and how have you addressed them? ● What methods do you use to assess and provide feedback on the quality of student investigations? ● Can you describe a recent lesson where you incorporated the practice of design and carrying out investigations? How did you structure the investigation? ● How do you guide students in formulating testable research questions or hypotheses when they plan their investigations? ● How do you help facilitate students in collecting and analyzing data effectively and accurately? ● What strategies do you use to help students effectively organize and manipulate data for analysis? ● How do you guide students in identifying trends, patterns or relationships within the data they collect? ● How have you partnered with the math department to ensure common language use for math practices? ● How do you encourage students to critically evaluate the quality and reliability of data sources in investigations? ● What specifc mathematical concepts or computational skills do you emphasize in your science lessons? ● How do you help students see the connections between mathematics/computational thinking and scientifc phenomena problem solving? ● Can you share examples of how students have used mathematical and computational thinking to solve real-world problems in your classroom? ● What strategies do you use to make mathematics and computational thinking accessible for all students?

Teachers will provide students with hands-on opportunities to explore phenomena. This can be guided by the teacher or left open ended for students to test their own ideas.

Students should engage in investigations that range from those structured by the teacher to those that emerge from students’ own questions. Levels of exploration range from teacher-led structured inquiry to student-directed open inquiry. Students should organize and interpret raw data through tabulating, graphing, or statistical analysis. Such analysis can bring out the meaning of data - and their relevance - so that they may be used as evidence. Students use their data to calculate statistics and other numbers to expand on their recorded data. Students should also use computers and digital tools to enhance the power of mathematics by automating calculations, approximating solutions to problems that cannot be calculated precisely, and analyzing large data sets available to identify meaningful patterns. Students are expected to construct their own explanations, as well as apply

Plan and carry out investigations

Explain/ Elaborate

Teachers will explicitly teach students how to organize data in tables and graphs. Teachers should provide students multiple opportunities to analyze tables and graphs to justify conclusions. Teachers will teach students how to calculate statistics (mean, median, mode, frequency, etc.) for real datasets gathered through experimentation. Teachers will provide opportunities for students to use computers to analyze large data sets or simulate phenomena that are diffcult to directly measure.

Explain/ Elaborate

Analyze and interpret data

Use mathematics and computational thinking

Explain/ Elaborate

● What strategies do you use to guide students in formulating clear and evidence-based explanations or design solutions?

Explain/ Elaborate/ Evaluate

Construct explanations anddesign

Teachers will model how to develop conclusions and what evidence can be used to