This website describes a set of discussion-leading strategies to help students as they learn Scientific Reasoning Practices for Modeling. In addition to general strategies for fostering student participation in whole-class discussions, this site presents many specific strategies to foster modeling practices and deeper conceptual understanding of content through discussions. Thus it is focused on promoting both process (thinking skill) goals and content goals at the same time.
This site aims to give teachers strategies for promoting successful discussions that use student thinking to build qualitative conceptual models in science. Strong qualitative models provide an essential foundation for understanding quantitative models later. A multitude of examples of teacher ‘moves’ (strategies) from actual classroom discussions led by experienced modeling teachers are included, organized by the type of objective and reasoning they foster. The pedagogical approach used in the examples is a type of guided inquiry, an approach that lies in between pure inquiry and pure lecture. The site is primarily oriented toward teacher educators for use as a resource for a graduate level education course. It should also be of interest to teachers, curriculum developers, educational researchers, and others interested in scientific modeling in the classroom.