According to the Texas science standards in grades 5-8, students are expected to ask well-defined questions [and] formulate testable hypotheses when engaging in experimental investigations.
As most every science teacher knows, students struggle with forming hypotheses. So, for many years going back who knows how long, teachers have defined “hypothesis” as an “educated guess.” Honestly, I cringe when I hear that definition. Can you develop a hypothesis as to why I would cringe at that definition? If you perhaps mentioned something about the negative connotation that the word “guess” brings to the table, you’d be on the right track. “Guess” implies pulling something out of nowhere…like you actually have no idea. That is a horrible word to tie into scientific investigations. In most situations, a scientist isn’t guessing. They likely have quite a bit of data or observations to garner some well-constructed response to a particular question or problem. In order to fix this misleading definition, we have to start back at the beginning of scientific methodology.
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As many 5th grade science classrooms cover 5.8A where students are required to differentiate between weather and climate, some teachers may have students enact a mock weather report / forecast.
A great current events application to your students’ forecast project would be to look at the most recent forecast bust for New York just a few days ago:
Some great critical thinking questions for students to consider are:
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