We are seeing something new with modern standards: a growing commitment to the idea that learning science requires the purposeful interplay between students’ background knowledge and experiences and the simultaneous use of the skills, practices, and habits of mind valued by the intentions of A Framework for K–12 Science Education and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) (National Research Council [NRC] 2012; NGSS Lead States 2013). The combination of students’ existing ideas and new learning related to these standards promotes sensemaking and honors the research on how people learn (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine 2018). Sensemaking requires a relationship between the degree to which a science concept has personal meaning (i.e., makes sense) and helps students explain how the world works (science) or how to design solutions for problems (engineering). From an instructional design perspective, teaching for sensemaking requires favoring depth over breadth while engaging all students in “doing” science by including critical attributes (see https://www.nsta.org/sensemaking):

• Draws on phenomena that are meaningful to students’ lives
• Uses students’ ideas as assets for learning
• Develops a conceptual understanding of science ideas using science practices and crosscutting concepts.

What are the planning considerations?

A valuable framework for promoting sensemaking includes the convergence of two independent ideas: (1) the focus of modern education on teaching for understanding and transfer and (2) a purposeful sequence of instruction with those ends in mind.

In essence, the sensemaking framework intends to help educators identify the big ideas students should understand at a deep level (e.g., construct evidence-based claims from firsthand experiences) to transfer their learning to new situations. This conception is perfectly aligned with the NGSS emphasis on teaching science through the conceptual lenses of core ideas (disciplinary core ideas [DCIs]), practices (science and engineering practices [SEPs]), and crosscutting concepts (CCs) rather than fixating on factual information only. In addition, this view aligns with NSTA’s four critical attributes of sensemaking, including phenomena, science and engineering practices, student ideas, and science ideas (see https://www.nsta.org/sensemaking). The explore-before-explain instruction sequence helps teachers prioritize students constructing evidence-based claims in the sensemaking framework.

The sensemaking framework offers planning considerations for the instructional design process based on the idea that teaching is a means to an end and curriculum planning precedes instruction. The most successful teaching begins with clarity about desired learning outcomes and the evidence that will show that the targeted learning has occurred. Daily lessons that describe the planned teaching and learning activities are then developed. A critical factor in a high-quality unit plan is alignment—all planning considerations are clearly aligned to standards and one another. What follows is a description of the four key planning considerations for sensemaking and how explore-before-explain teaching plays out in practice for teaching high school students about thermal energy transfer.

Consideration 1: Engaging prior ideas

In sensemaking lessons, a common phenomenon that is culturally relevant drives learning goals about content, practices, and logical thinking. Using culturally relevant phenomena (i.e., observable events in students’ lives) as the topic for evidence-based explorations increases equity, making learning assessable to all students—a key critical component of sensemaking and a significant advancement in contemporary cognitive science research (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine 2018). In addition, students’ lived experiences provide initial insights into students’ ideas about how the world works (an essential component of constructivist theory) and all learning builds on existing ideas (Bransford et al. 2000) and provide teachers valuable feedback.

Beginning a new unit is a chance to ask students questions like “What do you notice?” and “What do you wonder?” or you could use the Uncovering Student Ideas formative assessment probes by Page Keeley and colleagues (Keeley et al. 2007). Using “notice and wonder” questioning routines and the Uncovering Student Ideas probes provide a practical engagement activity for making science meaningful for all students. Both strategies for eliciting students’ ideas and experiences invite uninhibited participation (i.e., not tied to fears of assessing ideas) by stimulating students’ insights based on their experiences (see Krashen and Bland 2014; “Affective Filter” Hypothesis). In addition, neurologist and teacher Judy Willis contends that questions like “What do you wonder?” or having students create a rule for their thinking (a strategy Keeley and colleagues often advocate for specific probes) are two of the highest-yield instructional strategies since they focus the brain’s attention and set up a “need to know” (McTighe and Willis 2019). If students’ wonderment ideas and rules for their thinking are accurate, it validates prior knowledge and sound reasoning. Conversely, if their forecasting and predictions are incorrect, students want to discover why and seek an explanation.

Consideration 2: Constructing claims

Students need the opportunity to collect data, analyze it, and determine how to make sense of what the data may mean. Only when students analyze data and interpret what the analysis means about the science they are exploring do they have evidence. Having students generate knowledge transforms their experience from a passive to an active meaning-making experience. Combining content with instruction that facilities students’ construction of knowledge through an active process is the fundamental idea behind A Framework for K–12 Science Education and a vital aspect of the learner-centered classroom, calling upon students’ current intellectual abilities (e.g., pattern recognition and causal relationships) (Gopnik et al. 1999). Decades of studies support these assertions and have shown that students develop a deeper understanding and retain it longer when they actively construct explanations (McNeill and Krajcik 2012).

Consideration 3: Connecting claims to scientific principles

Introducing essential scientific vocabulary and terms for concepts and processes related to students’ firsthand experiences is necessary to fill gaps from the explorations and for successful science understanding. Here, teachers enhance student knowledge by helping them understand the underlying scientific principles that may be inaccessible from hands-on experiences alone. This is where readings, discussions, and lectures become potent learning experiences because they create connections between ideas and students’ frameworks for understanding. The disciplinary core ideas, crosscutting concepts, and science and engineering practices from the NGSS are good places to start when identifying essential academic vocabulary and a way to make sure students’ sensemaking aligns with modern standards (NGSS Lead States 2013).

Consideration 4: Reflecting on developing an understanding

The final consideration is an opportunity for students to reflect on their new conceptions of science. Students should think about what they have learned and how far they have come intellectually—that is, engage in metacognition, which significantly affects learning (see Bransford et al. 2000; Hattie 2009). Evaluation from a learner’s perspective is a chance to assess how ideas have developed and strategies that lead to more reliable, valid evidence-based claims. Students with strong metacognitive skills are positioned to learn more and perform better than peers who are still developing their metacognition (Wang et al. 1990).

Putting it all together: An example

In today’s task, Why do they salt the roads during a snowstorm? ninth-grade physical science students engage in science and engineering practices to begin to make sense of scientific ideas related to thermal energy transfer. For example, students and teachers can create a dialogue about energy transfer grounded in evidence that “two components of different temperatures are combined within a closed system results in a more uniform energy distribution among the components in the system (second law of thermodynamics)” (NRC 2012). In addition, students’ explorations with data about bulk scale properties (see HS-PS1-3; NGSS Lead States 2013) like freezing and boiling point serve as evidence for their science sensemaking (NRC 2012) and help develop explanations about the colligative properties of materials and that freezing point can be lowered by introducing solute particles to a solvent.

Exploring “Why do they salt the roads?”

Step 1: Eliciting understandings

The first explorations work toward the following: (1) situating learning around an investigable phenomenon, (2) identifying students’ incoming ideas, and (3) establishing the learning goals for the lesson. The phenomenon anchoring the investigation was embedded in the preassessment probe of students’ prior knowledge and experiences about why trucks spread salt on the roads before a winter snowstorm. (Teachers should show a picture of salty roads in the winter to provide visual support for the formative assessment probe.) Have students discuss their predictions and provide a reason to support their thinking.

Step 2: Exploration of ice water and salty water

The assessment probe easily lends itself to testable situations and produces the data that will serve as evidence for sensemaking about why roads are salted during winter storms. Students conducted two explorations using the investigative materials (see Table 1).

Coffee creamer in a container of ice water: The procedure was modeled and carried out step-by-step with students. Each student had the materials to do the investigation. In addition, each student wore safety goggles and was told not to open and drink the creamer (see Table 2).

Students opened a coffee creamer and observed that the coffee creamer was a liquid. The starting icewater temperature was 1.3°C (34.34°F). With students’ ideas recorded on sticky notes, it was time to begin. To the students’ surprise, the icewater temperature remained relatively constant at 1°C (33.8°F). Many students mentioned that the temperature did not continually decrease as they thought. As a class, students observed a temperature change over time. Even though the temperature changed, the decrease was not enough to change the coffee creamer from a liquid to a solid. While the results may have been unexciting, they were developing an understanding of essential concepts about temperature, thermal energy transfer, and changes of state that would be enhanced by their experiences during the next exploration.

Coffee creamer in container of cold salt water: (Teacher Notes: In this exploration, the coffee creamer will change state from a liquid to a solid, thus making ice cream. This is why coffee creamer versus a different liquid was used.) The second exploration followed nearly the same procedure (see Table 2), and every student performed the investigation. The only difference was that students added approximately 57 grams (2 ounces) of salt to each water/ice mixture at Step 3. The excitement in the class rose to a new level when students learned the temperature of the salt water increased to 13.3°C (8.1°F).

Students brought their coffee creamers out into the hallway. On the count of three, students were allowed to open their containers. The hall was filled with “oohs and ahhs” and grew into a resounding cheer when students were offered a spoon and told they could eat their ice cream. Thus, students observed a phase change from liquid to solid directly related to a thermal energy transfer and a temperature change. (Note: Students should not eat in the laboratory; find an alternative place that is safe for them to eat the ice cream. Also, students with lactose or peanut allergies should not eat the ice cream.)

Step 3: Developing evidence-based claims

The purpose of the explain phase was for students to construct an evidence-based claim from their explorations and introduce new ideas in light of their experiences to deepen their conceptual understanding. The goal was for students to understand the temperature dependency of the states of matter versus simply memorizing these ideas (reciting solids, liquids, and gases). Students made scientific claims based on the patterns in the data. They thought about the following questions to help them construct evidence-based claims:

• How does the temperature change in each exploration?
• Did the liquid coffee creamer change its state in each exploration (change from a liquid to a solid)?

Students’ evidence-based claims were written artifacts of their understanding and connect to contemporary technical writing standards in English language arts (NGAC and CCSSO 2010).

Step 4: Enhancing students’ understanding

Building on students’ six to eight experiences, students discuss the transfer of thermal energy on both a macro- and microscopic level. Students had prior evidence-based experiences that thermal energy transfer only goes in one direction: from “hot to cold” (e.g., “Energy is spontaneously transferred from hotter regions or objects to colder ones” (NRC 2012). Students used these ideas to model how thermal energy transferred from “hot” to “cold” in the ice water and saltwater explorations using coffee creamers. Students could show that the warmer coffee creamer transferred thermal energy to colder sources (ice or salt water). The decrease in thermal energy resulted in a lower temperature of the coffee creamer. In addition, students could explain that the feezing point can be changed by adding different materials to the solution (in this case adding salt to water). The term colligative properties was introduced so students could use scientific vocabulary to describe freezing point depression and boiling point elevation due to adding particles to a solvent (Note: This lesson builds toward experiences students would have in chemistry where they learn electrical forces within and between atoms determine the structure and interactions of materials at a bulk scale [HS-PS1-3; NGSS Lead States 2013].)

Step 5: Reflecting on developing understanding

Now that students have exploratory experiences with data they can use for sensemaking, they revisit students’ initial ideas about why roads are salted in the winter and revise their incoming ideas to provide a scientific explanation. Students explain that the temperature of ice water does not continually decrease and instead hovers around a temperature near but not below the freezing point. In addition, students used data as evidence to explain that adding salt to the roads lowers the freezing point of water instead of making the ground warmer. Encourage students to think about how temperature and phases of matter (liquid to solid) are related in their explanations. For example, students use crosscutting concepts of patterns and cause and effect to explain whether a liquid turns into a solid because of the temperature.

Possible further elaborations

Consider using a teacher-led demonstration to test how boiling water changes the temperature of the water. Using a hot plate, 500 ml beaker of distilled water, and thermometer, teachers can demonstrate how boiling water reaches 100°C, but the temperature does not continually increase past that point. Instead, students will notice a phase change from liquid to water vapor. Similarly, consider performing the teacher-led demonstration with salt water (illustrates boiling point elevation).

Supporting educators for change

Teachers who emphasize sensemaking in their instructional design find the context that explorations provide engages students in science and cultivates their beliefs that they are essential agents in creating classroom knowledge (also supported by research; see National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine 2018). Context affects learning and motivation. Situating all learning in students’ explorations and the resulting evidence-based claims gives meaning and purpose to all activities, including discussions, lectures, and textbook readings. The result is that students gain higher levels of sensemaking because understanding from both explorations and explanations combine to create meaningful learning experiences.

Patrick L. Brown (plbtfc@gmail.com) is Executive Director of STEAM with the Fort Zumwalt School District, O’Fallon, MO. Rodger W. Bybee is an Educational Consultant in Golden, CO.