Provide consistent tools or scaffolds to support the development of students’ explanation skills (e.g., a graphic organizer or thinking guide that students can use to construct and evaluate claim, evidence, and reasoning statements across units). As students develop skills, these scaffolds should reduce over time.
- Some scaffolding examples:
- Here is my claim [... we believe that X is caused by ... or we believe that Y has a role in how Z happens ...]
- If this claim or explanation is true, then when I look at this data, I would expect to see [this particular result or this outcome]
- The reason I’d expect to see this is because I collected data from a situation that is really close to the real thing we are studying, and if we had these outcomes, it would mean that [state a brief causal chain of events—this chain has to be consistent with known science ideas/facts]
- We did see the data pattern we expected. We believe this supports our claim
- If our claim was not true, then I’d expect to see [a different set of patterns in the data or a particular outcome]. But we didn’t see that outcome, so this reasoning also supports our claim
- There may be other explanations for the data, such as ______ or ______, but this does not seem likely because __________
Resource Information
- MDP: Confidence
- Resource Type: NGSS Connection
- External Resources:
Confidence Principles
The strategy above is aligned to the principles in bold.
Provide clear expectations
- What students will be expected to learn or understand for an assignment or unit
- What students will be expected to do and produce for an assignment or activity
- How students will be assessed (on a task, project, unit, etc.)
- What is available for students to manage their work (e.g., materials, time, scaffolds) and how they might manage their work through to completion of the task
Provide challenging work
- Is calibrated to students’ skill level(s)
- Conveys teacher’s confidence in students by communicating, “I believe you can do this”
- Builds students’ confidence, helping students to see that “I can do this”
- Note: Challenge can be less intimidating when teachers make explicit connections between challenge and learning/growth
- Note: Too little challenge and overly scripted tasks damage students’ confidence by sending the message, “I don’t think you can handle anything more than this”
Guide and support students
- Providing examples of high quality work
- Providing examples of similar others (e.g., students from prior years, scientists) who have succeeded or who have overcome challenges. This is especially helpful for learners who struggle or have low confidence
- Being attuned to students (e.g., to their progress, struggles, emotions, actions, reactions, etc.) through observations and interactions
- Helping students identify supports they have available or pointing students to supports to use while they work
- Modeling successful strategies
- Helping students to identify prior knowledge and previously successful strategies that might help them successfully complete the current taskd
Give informational and encouraging feedback
- Indicates specific things the student has done well and how the student might continue to improve
- Contains information about the causes of success and failure so that students attribute outcomes to their efforts and strategies (rather than luck, ability, or external sources like task difficulty)
- Communicates confidence in students' ability to meet the teacher’s high expectations
- Avoids over-generalizing (e.g., “Good job!”)
