Activities To Teach Scientific Process Skills

ACTIVITIES TO TEACH SCIENTIFIC PROCESS SKILLS
1) Observations & Inference – I like to group these two skills because they are often used
together. Observation refers to both describing, such as using the five senses (qualitative) and
measuring (quantitative). Inference is the logical conclusion drawn about an object or event
based on an observation.
One activity I like to do the brown bag activity. I first provide each group of students with a
variety of objects, such as marbles, erasers, rubber bands, pompoms, jelly beans, wooden
blocks, paper clips, etc. and have them observe them. Then I have students take their objects
and place them in a small lunch bag. Then each student has to place their hand in the bag, feel
an object, and infer which it is based on their observations.
When teaching the scientific method, it's important that you also teach the scientific process
skills. Check out these science activities to help you get started and grab a freebie!2) Prediction
– Prediction is the forecasting of future events based on past observations or available data.
When a student has more experience in science, he or she will also have more accurate
scientific predictions.
For prediction, I love to complete the Drops of Water activity. In this activity, I have students
partner up and provide each partnership with a quarter, dime, nickel, and penny. Then I
provide them with a medicine dropper and a cup of water. They start off by predicting which
coin will hold the most drops and how many drops each coin will hold. They have to tell their
partner why they predict that too. Then they begin. Drop, drop, drop. They record their
information in a chart and find out if their predictions were accurate or not.
skills. Check out these science activities to help you get started and grab a freebie!When
teaching the scientific method, it's important that you also teach the scientific process skills.
Check out these science activities to help you get started and grab a freebie!3) Classifying –
Classifying is typically pretty easy to kiddos. They know it’s just placing objects or events into
groups based on common characteristics. They’ve been doing that since they were knee-high.
When I’m teaching this scientific process skill, I just pour out a large pile of buttons on a table
and let them work in teams to sort them by any characteristic they can come up with. Then
once they have them sorted, I say “That’s wonderful! Now come up with a different one!” I try
to do that a few times until they have exhausted all the possibilities. I want students to really
think outside the box and not just go with the color.
skills. Check out these science activities to help you get started and grab a freebie!4) Measuring
& Estimating – These scientific process skills involves length, volume, area, mass, and
temperature to describe objects. We typically cover all of those over the entire year, so for the
beginning of the year, I just start with length.
I have students partner up and measure body parts. Students will first estimate how long each
part is and then measure each other’s hand, arm length, leg length, and so on.
skills. Check out these science activities to help you get started and grab a freebie!5)
Communicating – This skill is used often if you teach students to create lab reports. This skill
describes an event or object to another person – so they can repeat it.
I’m old school so I have my students pair up and sit back-to-back. I provide each student with
one piece of paper and have them fold it in half hamburger style. Then I have them both draw a
simple picture for 1 minute. After a minute is up, I have one partner describe (communicate) to
the other partner how to draw it – without fully giving it away or peeking! For instance, if
partner A drew an ice cream cone, she can’t say “draw an ice cream cone.” She would have to
say something like, in the middle of your page, draw a triangle with the main point down…”
Once both students have communicated (I give about 5 minutes) and drawn, I have them show
each other their images to see how much they compare. It’s usually off by a lot!
6) Collecting, Representing, & Interpreting Data – This process skill is about helping students
organize all of their measurements so that they can make their information easier to use and
interpret.
To keep it simple, I generally provide each group with a weather report (found online or in your
local paper) with the hour by hour summary. Then I have students organize it into a chart,
create a graph, and answer questions related to it, such as what’s the highest temperature, the
lowest temperature, and so on.
7) Controlling Variables – I recently talked about this in my post, Teaching About Variables in
Science. It includes a freebie and a great science experiment, testing paper towel absorbency,
that help your students really understand controlling variables.
Are you teaching the scientific method? If so, it's so important that you are also teaching about
variables! There are three types, the independent, dependent, and controlled variable. Learn
more in this post and grab a freebie to help you get started!8) Experimenting – This is really
putting all the process skills together in one activity. And there are a lot of different activities
you can do to complete this one!
Any of these activities can be done individually or you can complete them all together in ONE
day by setting up tables with a process skill at each one. Then you could just have students
rotate through each one.
https://theowlteacher.com/scientific-process-skills-activities/

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