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Describe how Melina encourages her students to think about evidence in relation to weather events like rain or snow. How does Melina’s approach tot itching science differ from traditional methods, and why is this important? What are some key strategies Melina uses to engage her students in three-dimensional learning?


What are the disciplinary core ideas and cross-cutting concepts emphasized in the three-dimensional science standards, and how do they assist students in understanding the unfamiliar phenomena? In what ways do the students demonstrate their understanding of cause and effect and patterns when discussing changes in the environment? How does this relate to their learning in Earth science?


The video starts off with them drawing a map, looking at images with drains and grass/dirt.
The focus for this whole video is on the unit in regards to understanding how water interacts with the land and then how the land in turn interacts with the water. This is a three week unit.

They start off with the basics of understanding and of making explanations with evidence. Then with models, they try to figure out if there is a way to show what they understand. With 3D science, it gets more sophisticated over time. With the grades she works with; second and third grade, she introduces them to the concepts. It starts off with what’s more like them discovering and thinking through things and then gradually starting to get more information that can be used to refine their model and thinking as well as to develop more complex language for the scientific language. In the end, the goal is for them to figure out a way to stop the water from changing the land, so for this unit they’re going to have an engineering solution where they’re presented with a problem like a puddle under the swing and have to use the knowledge that they gained to solve the problem. The end should be more like an assessment, in which you evaluate to see what the students actually learned in the unit.

The next part of the video has the children writing on long notecards different sentences with the concept of evidence behind it. So, for example, one student writes ‘wet footprints’, later on in the video, they all sit in a circle and talk about how they know it rained- in which wet footprints is applicable. The same could be said for the snow example that was used. They talk about what the students already know, such as.. If it rained, the evidence could be the mud. When or after it rained, when people stepped in the mud, it created a footprint. “We found a puddle! We found a puddle and it was over there and it was wet!” (3:05-3:10)

With NGSS, it highlights the kind of place based science as something that makes sense rather than forcing the students to learn from the textbook because it is more difficult to understand what it is they are learning because words go in one ear and out the other, but when they can interact with the environment, actually see things for themselves, they actually learn and comprehend a bit more on the subject than those who are subjected solely to the traditional methods of learning. (3:10-3:40)

She also had the kids go home and ask their parents where they found evidence of rain, and the whole point of it was to allow them to ask these questions in their home language but to start the conversation at home and to make that the idea that they had at home continues at school or in their daily life as well, making it important in the classroom.

As the lessons ended up progressing, so did their vocabulary, academic language, science and knowledge. They also built this knowledge and skill collaboratively. They engaged in using scientific practices of gathering and using evidence to write claims, arguing from evidence, conducting an investigation and modeling how rain changes some services and not the others. Those practices, one dimension of the 3D model, combined with the cross cutting concepts of patterns and cause and effect, core science ideas of erosion, interactions between water and land, and rapid and slow changes that result from the interactions which makes up another dimension- the cross-cutting concepts.

There is chalk on the pavement and one boy is holding a clear tupperware or box half filled with water. The teacher asks what happens if he dumps the water. It turns over. It would also wash away the chalk too, but that wasn’t said in the video.