School Administrative District #4

Unity of purpose

CORE CURRICULUM: SCOPE AND SEQUENCE

Department: Science

CONTENT STANDARD: SCIENTIFIC REASONING

Scientific reasoning involves framing and supporting arguments, recognizing patterns and relationships, identifying bias and stereotypes, brainstorming alternative explanations and solutions, judging accuracy, analyzing situations, and revising studies to improve their validity. All students will learn to formulate and justify ideas and to make informed decisions.

 

Performance Indicators: The learner will·

Kindergarten-Grade 4

1.        Review and extend prior learning

2.        Participate in brainstorming activities

3.        Discover relationships and patterns

4.        Make observations and draw conclusions about those observations

5.        Explore alternative explanations for observed phenomena

6.        Examine strengths and weaknesses of simple arguments

7.        Distinguish between "important" and "unimportant" information in simple arguments

8.        Know that feelings can distort reasoning

9.        Provide support for a claim, using various types of evidence (e.g., logical, quantitative)

10.    Demonstrate an understanding that ideas are more believable when supported by good reasons

11.    Practice and apply simple logic and intuitive thinking

Grades 5-8

1.        Review and extend prior learning

2.        Examine the ways people form generalizations

3.        Identify exceptions to proposed generalizations

4.        Identify basic informal fallacies in arguments

5.        Analyze means of slanting information

6.        Identify stereotypes

7.        Support reasoning using a variety of evidence

8.        Show that proving data support a hypothesis is more difficult than proving data do not support a hypothesis

9.        Construct logical arguments

10.    Explain why agreement among people does not make an argument valid

11.    Apply analogous reasoning

Grades 9-12

1.      Review and extend prior learning

2.      Judge the accuracy of alternative explanations by identifying the evidence necessary to support them

3.      Develop generalizations based on observations

4.      Determine when there is a need to revise studies in order to improve their validity through better sampling, controls, or data-analysis techniques

5.      Produce inductive and deductive arguments to support conjecture

6.      Analyze situations where more than one logical conclusion can be drawn