Diving Into Scientific Inquiry

This year, my Professional Learning Team (PLT) worked through a form of scientific inquiry by focusing on the paraphrasing standard for our 6th grade students. As a team, we knew paraphrasing was something students needed more support with, but we also had to figure out how to teach it in a way that actually worked. We talked through different teaching strategies and how much time we thought we should spend on the standard. After instruction, we used a team-developed assessment to see how students were doing. It was not a formal science experiment, of course, but it did follow that same basic process: identify a problem, try a method, collect evidence, and then look at what the evidence shows.

The post-assessment information became the most useful part of the process. After coming back together, we looked at our scores, and talked about what we noticed. Some things worked. Some things did not. Some things were honestly harder to measure than we expected. Since this was a new process for us this year, there were definitely pitfalls along the way. One of the biggest things that stood out to me was the difference between what was happening in the general education classes versus the special education classes. The same standard was being taught, but the needs of the students were not always the same. It highlighted how important it is to think carefully about pacing, scaffolding, and how much explicit instruction some students need before they can be expected to paraphrase independently.

This experience reinforced the way I think about how knowledge is acquired and validated in education. Teachers make decisions all day long, and a lot of those decisions are based on experience, instinct, and what we know about our students. That matters. But this process reminded me that we also need evidence. The assessment scores did not tell the whole story, but they gave us something concrete to discuss. They helped us ask better questions. Why did some students struggle more than others? Which strategies seemed to help? What supports were missing? Scientific inquiry does not only happen in a lab. It can happen in a PLT meeting, around student data, when teachers are willing to be honest about what worked, what did not, and what needs to change next time.