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MPRES Toolkit for Teachers Conceptual Change

A professional development resource to train teachers in the Framework for K-12 Science Education and the Next Generation Science Standards

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Toolkit Scientific & Engineering Practices Constructing Explanations & Designing Solutions Student Work in the Practice

Student Work in the Practice

: A fifth grader redesigns her solar cooker after her s’more doesn’t melt in the original design.

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Constructing Explanations & Designing Solutions Activities
Scientific & Engineering Practices

Learning Progression for Constructing Explanations

Elementary: Students should be engaged in activities that foster constructing and critiquing explanations. This should be done through developing explanations based on observations of their own investigations. An understanding of variables is developed in upper elementary.

Middle School: Students continue to construct explanations and evaluate their own and others’ explanations for consistency with evidence. Students need to be able to identify variables and the effect variables have on observable outcomes. The recognition that explanations in science rely on models that are too small or too large is developed.

High School: Students should be proficient at constructing explanations and should use mathematics and simulations to create explanations for a phenomenon.

See p. 11 Appendix F Science and Engineering Practices in the NGSS for a more thorough grade band progression.
Learning Progression for Designing Solutions

Elementary: Students should be encouraged to pursue their natural engineering interests through building things and beginning to use tools to create. Expand engineering projects to be more than simply structures, but include other areas of engineering such as insect enclosures, playground equipment, and more.

Middle School: Students should take what they are learning in science and apply engineering design solutions to the content. For example, take the principles of ecology and design solutions to storm water drainage. At this level, students should be planning and carrying out engineering design projects that require them to define problems, identify variables and constraints of design, research the problem to gain a deeper understanding, create and test possible solutions and refine solutions by redesigning.

High School: Students need to be involved in deeper, more robust engineering design problems. These can be related to local, national or global issues. Place emphasis on the complete engineering design process of asking questions, imagining solutions, planning, creating and improving.

See p. 11 Appendix F Science and Engineering Practices in the NGSS for a more thorough grade band progression.
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