In my fifth grade science class I put a lot of emphasis on experimentation. Students write scientific questions, design experiments, implement their experimental plans, and analyze and explain the evidence they collect. This process helps them make connections between scientific understanding and the science practices, which is emphasized in the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). However, students need scaffolding and support to go through this process. They need to learn what makes a good scientific question and how to turn that question into an experiment. They need to gain experience with this process before they can move through it more independently.
One of the ways that I support students through the early phases of this process is by having them give each other feedback on their experimental plans. Similar to the process professional scientists go through in applying for funding from NSF my students have to create an experiment proposal before starting work. Using the Google Docs interface they post these proposals and get feedback from their classmates. The process is a form of peer review. Each group of experimenters need to get feedback from three fifth grade scientists. Here is an example of student feedback.
In this example students generated an experimental idea for a motion experiment. The question, method and justification are listed at the top. Then in the boxes below students gave them feedback to help them improve their proposal. Some of the boxes are to help them see if it has all of the necessary components of a doable experiment. Other boxes allow for specific feedback. This proposal has already been revised using some of the feedback from other students.
As students give feedback on other students’ experiments they think more deeply about what makes for a good scientific question. They make connections between the method and the question. Ultimately I find that they apply these critique skills to their own work and are able to design more effective experiments to answer their questions. The approach also changes the dynamic of the classroom. The audience of the proposal is the fifth grade scientists instead of the teacher. I still make suggestions or give advice along the way. But students take greater ownership over the learning process.
After the students have collected the data I use the peer review process again for publishing the results. Students know that their reports will be evaluated by their peers and so they want to put forward their best work. As students read other groups reports and use a rubric to evaluate it they are able to reflect more on their own work.
