Science
The Science domain tests inquiry and investigation design, core disciplinary ideas at an early-grade level, crosscutting concepts such as patterns and cause and effect, and how children's preconceptions shape what they learn. Items often describe a classroom investigation and ask what is flawed, what the data support, or what to do next.
Inquiry and fair tests
- The chain is: testable question, prediction, planned procedure, data, claim, evidence, reasoning.
- A fair test changes one variable and holds the rest constant.
- Distinguish observation (what you see, hear, measure) from inference (what you conclude) and prediction (what you expect).
- Repeat trials, record in tables, then represent in graphs; the graph choice follows the question.
Core ideas for early grades
- Organisms: needs, life cycles, structures and their functions, habitats.
- Earth and sky: weather, day and night, observable sun and moon patterns, seasons.
- Physical science: properties of materials, pushes and pulls, sound and light, states of matter.
- Earth materials, water, and conservation of resources.
Worked example
Students ask whether fertilizer makes plants grow taller. Pot A gets fertilizer and is watered daily; Pot B gets no fertilizer and is watered weekly. The fertilized plant grows taller. Reasoning: the test is confounded because two variables changed (fertilizer and water). To make the claim warranted, hold water, light, soil type, pot size, and plant type constant, change only the fertilizer, and use several plants per condition so one unusual plant does not drive the result. Measure height in centimeters at fixed intervals. Only then does "the fertilizer caused more growth" follow from the evidence.
Crosscutting concepts and misconceptions
- Patterns, cause and effect, scale and proportion, systems, energy and matter, structure and function, stability and change.
- Common preconceptions to elicit: heavier objects fall faster; plants get their food from soil; seasons are caused by distance from the sun; shadows are objects.
Traps that cost marks
- Treating a hypothesis as a guess rather than a testable prediction.
- Hands-on activity with no sense-making discussion afterward.
- Correcting a misconception by assertion instead of confronting it with evidence.
- Calling a teacher demonstration an inquiry.
- Recording data from a single trial and drawing a class conclusion.