Facilitator's Guide for What's Your Evidence?: Engaging K-5 Children in Constructing Explanations in Science

The Book Study Facilitator’s Guide to accompany What’s Your Evidence? Engaging K-5 Students in Constructing Explanations in Science by Carla Zembal-Saul, Katherine L. McNeill and Kimber Hershberger, provides professional development and teacher leaders tips and ideas for using this book when conducting a Book Study group or professional development series.

Generating scientific evidence, explaining natural phenomena, and participating in science talk and science writing are key skills identified in current science reform documents and standards. Critical as they are, these are challenging scientific practices for students to engage in and for teachers to plan for and implement in class. Engaging in Book Study can help teachers better support their students in these key aspects of science learning. This guide provides resources to help professional development and teacher leaders encourage and support teachers as they discuss the ideas in the book, try the scientific explanation framework (i.e., claim, evidence, reasoning, and rebuttal) with their students, and use their own student work and video to spur discussion and reflection to inform practice.

Why science coaches and trainers will love the Book Study Facilitator’s Guide:

• The facilitator’s guide consists of nine sessions supporting each chapter of the book. Due to the importance of the scientific explanation framework and assessment two sessions were devoted to each of these chapters.
• Each session is intended to create a constructivist-oriented learning experience.
• The sessions are structured to build participants understandings of the key ideas through conducting investigations, analyzing video, examining student work, designing learning tasks, and designing assessment tasks with their colleagues.
• Participants are then encouraged to read the suggested book chapter following the session to develop a more in-depth understanding of how to apply the ideas to their own classroom.
• Each session clearly outlines for facilitators the Learning Objectives, Materials, a complete Session Plan, and Homework.

Carla Zembal-Saul is a Professor of science education in the College of Education at Penn State where she holds the Kahn Professorship in STEM Education and currently serves as head of the Department of Curriculum and Instruction. A former middle school science teacher, she has been involved in school-university partnership work for more than fifteen years, and most of her teaching, scholarship, and service take place in that context. Her research focuses on K-6 teacher learning as they engage in professional development aimed at supporting students in talking and writing evidence-based arguments in science. Examining classroom discourse is a fundamental aspect of Professor Zembal-Saul’s work and she employs video analysis as both a research tool and a pedagogical approach for working with teachers. She has published her research findings in numerous book chapters and articles in peer-reviewed journals, and she is active in professional organizations, including the National Association for Research in Science Teaching and the National Science Teachers Association. Carla Zembal-Saul earned her doctorate at the University of Michigan.

Katherine L. McNeill is an Assistant Professor of science education at Boston College. A former middle school science teacher, she received her doctorate in science education from the University of Michigan. Her research focuses on how to support students with diverse backgrounds in engaging in scientific explanation and argumentation in both talk and writing. Her research has been generously funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and from this work, she has published a book on supporting middle school students, numerous book chapters, and articles in a variety of journals including the Journal of Research in Science Teaching, Science Education, The Journal of the Learning Sciences, and the International Journal of Science Education. In 2011, Professor McNeill received the Early Career Research Award from NARST. She has also conducted numerous workshops at the annual meeting of the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) and for school districts including the Detroit Public Schools and the Boston Public Schools.

Kimber Hershberger is currently a third grade teacher in the State College Area School District (SCASD) in Pennsylvania. She also serves as co-instructor for the science methods course and a mentor teacher for the Penn State – SCASD Professional Development School Partnership. Her involvement in a local professional learning community that focuses on incorporating content storyline and the CER framework in science teaching has been a highlight of her work. She holds degrees from Juniata College (B.S., elementary education) and Penn State University (M.Ed., science education). Kimber Hershberger has co-authored several articles for NSTA journals, including Science and Children and Science Scope. In addition, she has presented numerous times at the annual conference of the National Science Teachers Association, including sessions at the Research Dissemination Conference, about her work on how to scaffold students’ use of claims and evidence through science talks and journals. She loves visiting interesting places like the Galapagos Islands, India, Italy, and Japan and sharing her travel adventures with her students.