Science Help Guides

I try to limit the quantity of paperwork that I distribute to students at the beginning of the year. I like to keep things streamlined and simplified, distilling classroom guidelines and expectations down to the bare essentials. Additionally, I don't distribute this paperwork to students on the first (or even second, or third…) day of school—it's better to jump right in and get the science started, giving students and me a chance to collaborate and socialize.

Once we are ready to talk about the classroom nuts and bolts, one of the most important documents I distribute are my Science Help Guides. These guides are a collection of standards of excellence for various tasks that we utilize throughout the year. Thanks to continuous feedback from and observations of students, these help guides have evolved over the years to their latest and greatest iteration. I tell my students annually, "These are the best help guides ever because they reflect the collective wisdom of every group of students who have preceded you."

Image credit: Microsoft Clipart

This year's help guides include the following:

• How to Be Successful in Science Class
• Standards of Excellence for Science Writing
• Masterpiece Captions
• Connect the Dots
• Data Tables
• Graphs
• Show Me the Math!
• Bibliographies and Picture Credits

I am proud of these help guides. They give my students and me a common language to share, work from, and build upon. While the help guides provide structure and support, I strive to ensure that they don't completely stifle opportunities for individuality. They are meant to be guidelines, rather than rigid rules. Student creativity beyond these guidelines is welcomed and encouraged.

Students and teachers alike are free to download and use these help guides. They are published under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). I only ask that my copyright is honored and respected, and that I am given proper credit for the guides. Otherwise, I hope they are beneficial…

What Is Excellent?

While I recognize their utility and purpose, I've never been a big fan of rubrics. So time-consuming to create, and all those "less than proficient/unsatisfactory" categories that aren't even appropriate for students to consider. Back in 2009, I attended a presentation by Rick Wormeli—author of Fair Isn't Always Equal—in which he advocated the use of a much simplified, more holistic Standard of Excellence over the traditional, multi-column rubric. What a relief to discover a more flexible alternative to the perennially rigid rubric! In a Standard of Excellence guide, only the highest standards are defined and presented to students. Gone are all those mediocre and meaningless categories, such as "proficient," "adequate," "poor," etc. (To paraphrase Mr. Wormeli, "Do you really want your students to settle for being mediocre?")

Image credit: Discovery Clip Art Gallery

What does this look like in my science classroom? I have a collection of help guides that students use over and over throughout the year, and these guides define the standard of excellence: this is what an excellent graph looks like, this is what an excellent data table looks like, this is what an excellent masterpiece caption looks like. No confusion, no waffling. It's so much simpler to say to students, "Your work is not done until you have addressed every item in our Standard of Excellence." I find that students generally strive to achieve the defined level of excellence—they want to do well.

A key to successful application of this model is clearly defining what the standard of excellence looks like and regularly asking students if they have met that standard. I teach my students to self-assess their own learning against the standard before asking me to check their work. I can modify the standard for students with different needs by having them focus on particular items within the standard, rather than just watering down the whole standard.

While good rubrics have their rightful place in education, they are no panacea. We must be careful when applying rubrics to our students—no single rubric can quantify the learning styles of the children we teach. Over-reliance on rubrics can stifle the intrinsic creativity and thirst for discovery our students possess.

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Excellent Sample Guides

• Experiment Planning Guide Standard of Excellence
• Graphing Help Guide
• Data Table Help Guide

Additional Reading

• The Trouble with Rubrics by Alfie Kohn

Science Help Guides

I've created a number of Science Help Guides for students to assist in establishing common language and expectations around data tables, graphing, writing captions, experimental design, and math calculations. In addition to reinforcing common language, these help guides promote the independent use of resources in my students. And rather than using rubrics for these basic science tasks, my help guides set the standard of excellence (more on this in a future post) for each process: "This is what an excellent graph looks like," "This is what an excellent data table looks like," etc.

For example, here is a basic outline of my Data Table Help Guide:

General rules for excellent data tables:

• One data table equals one graph
• Data tables have a descriptive title (who/what/when/where)
• Data tables have a heading row, and each heading has a descriptive label with appropriate scientific units
• Data in the table are written as numbers only (scientific units are placed in the headings)
• The first column in the table is X-axis data, remaining columns are Y-axis data (Y1, Y2, Y3, etc.)

At the beginning of the school year, each student gets a set of these help guides to place in the front of their science binders. I also publish them on my classroom website for easy access.

Many students have commented how useful and helpful these guides are, and quite a few save their copy to take with them to high school (a high honor indeed!).