Arguing From Evidence in Middle School Science: 24 Activities for Productive Talk and Deeper Learning

Teaching your students to think like scientists starts here!

If you’ve ever struggled to help students make scientific arguments from evidence, this practical, easy-to-use activity book is for you! Give your students the critical scientific practice today′s science standards require. You’ll discover strategies and activities to effectively engage students in arguments about competing data sets, opposing scientific ideas, applying evidence to support specific claims, and more.

24 ready-to-implement activities drawn from the physical sciences, life sciences, and earth and space sciences help teachers to:

• Align lessons to the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) 
• Engage students in the 8 NGSS science and engineering practices
• Establish rich, productive classroom discourse 
• Facilitate reading and writing strategies that align to the Common Core State Standards
• Extend and employ argumentation and modeling strategies 
• Clarify the difference between argumentation and explanation

Includes assessment guidance and extension activities. Learn to teach the rational side of science the fun way with this simple and straightforward guide!

Jonathan Osborne holds the The Kamalachari Professor of Science Education endowed chair in the Graduate School of Education, Stanford University. 

Brian Donovan is the John Evans Gessford Stanford Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellow in K-12 Education. Prior to his time at Stanford he worked as a middle school science teacher for seven years and has worked as a science teacher educator for the last six years.  

Dr Anna MacPherson is currently the Manager of Educational Research and Evaluation at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. She received her Ph.D. from Stanford University in science education. 

Dr J. Bryan Henderson is an Assistant Professor at Arizona State University. His classroom-based research on peer learning intersects with multiple years of experience studying science argumentation with Dr Osborne.  

Andrew Wild is a PhD Candidate in Science Education. Prior to graduate school, he taught high school chemistry and conceptual physics in the San Francisco Bay Area.