Science Methods

Students Ideas in Science

This reflective handout is intended to help you reflect on your take-aways about students’
science ideas from class, chapter 2 of Reading 1a, and my slideshow presentation.
How do students’ science ideas develop?

1. What are some of their characteristics (e.g., persistent, fleeting, guesses, accurate,
wrong, etc.)?
a. Some of their characteristics of developing student ideas are personal, diverse,
sometimes contradictory, resistant to change, constructed from their own
experiences, and are most commonly efforts to make sense and explain the
world around them.

2. What strategies can you use to learn about them?

a. Some of the strategies that we can use to learn about students’ ideas from the
beginning, and as they change over time, are predict-observe-explain charts,
KWL (what you already know, want to know, and learned) charts, conceptual
change strategies, and having open discussions before the start of a lesson.

3. Why do we need to know about them and how can we use them?
a. We need to know about these student ideas because is their initial understanding
is seeded in a misconception and we fail to engage them with our content, they
may struggle to grasp the new and correctly taught concepts. We can use this
misconceptions to guide our planning on science instruction, and scaffold it to
what we already know. Additionally, we can create meaningful science
experiences based off of these misconceptions so that students truly grasp the
concept and how it impacts the world around them rather than just learning for
a test and then reverting to preconceptions they had before entering the
classroom.

4. Different examples of students’ ideas were apparent in class materials. What

misconceptions did you note?
a. Two misconceptions I noted were from the snowman handout within the slide
presentation. Students A,B, and C are discussing whether or not putting a coat on
a snowman helps it from melting. Student B notes that it will definitely stop it
from melting and this may stem from the idea that we are taught coats protect
us from the different weather elements outside. While this could be true for
humans, the student is missing the science concept of what happens to solid
water when it is heated up, and how putting on layers impacts that heat. Student
C believes that the coat does not make a difference, and this misconception may
stem from just the missing science knowledge of how layers create/hold heat,
and how it impacts solid water.
5. Can you think of 1-2 misconceptions you’ve encountered in your everyday interactions
with friends, family, or students?
a. One misconception I have encountered with family that is relevant to our world
today, deals with the wearing of masks during COVID mask restrictions. I had
several family members who had the misconception that mask wearing was
solely an individual responsibility that did not impact the transmission of the
virus because the purpose of the mask was to solely block oncoming air flow
from another person. This is a misconception because while the mask is able to
protect from the breath and airflow of others, its other main purpose is to reduce
individual spread of the molecules or “germs” that come from talking, coughing,
singing, etc from our own mouths, not just others.
b. Another misconception that I have encountered during the midst of the
pandemic is the rate of transfer and spread of the virus. Many people believed
that the instant you came in contact with someone with COVID, you instantly had
it and could instantly start spreading it to others. This is a misconception because
viruses have to have an incubation period to develop in your body before it is
able to be spread.

6. Identify 1-2 misconceptions that students in your classroom may have about a science
topic in your grade?
a. One misconception that I have encountered with students in my classroom in
how we notice light energy. I had a student ask if we had lights in our eyes and
that is how we see light energy. This misconception stems from the lack of
knowledge of human anatomy of the eyeball, and how light energy works. We
then discussed how we have light receptors in our eyes that let us know when we
see lights and makes the light easy for us to see.
b. Another misconception I have seen in the classroom about science is when
completing a gravity race. Because of the lack of foundation of mass and gravity,
some students believed that lighter objects would hit the ground first because
they are smaller so they must drop quicker. We then talked about gravity and
how gravity makes heavier objects with more mass drop first.