Your first grade students can think, act, and write like scientists!  This Sound/Writing Unit bundles Next Generation Science Standards and Common Core State Writing Standards into fourteen investigations.

This MAISA unit is a hybrid unit, combining both science and writing standards.  Experience how students can learn to “Think and Act Like Scientists” through studying and applying a framework for scientific investigation and discourse.  The basis of this unit is Standard 1. Waves: Sound 1-PS4-1. 1-PS4-4. These lessons use the Van Andel Education Institute’s steps for engaging students in scientific inquiry while conducting investigations and participating in discourse.  Student understanding of sound and vibration, as well as using sound to communicate is scaffold throughout the unit.

The writing focus will be writing to record, question, access prior knowledge, predict, observe, explain data and finally to share with others.  Students will be scaffolded through discussing and writing about scientific inquiry as they navigate through scientific investigations.   Students will be writing about each step of the process in Science Investigation Notebooks.  Initially this will be done as a whole class, moving to small group work and finally to partnership work for those students ready for more independent application.  At the conclusion of the study of sound students, write text that teaches others what they learned about sound, as well as thinking, acting, and writing like scientists.