After reading Gunckel’s article on “Using Experiences, Patterns, and Explanations to make School Science more like Scientists’ Science,” school science seems to benefit students on a more educational level than scientists’ science. This article states that school science reduces scientists’ science because there are a lot of explanations occurring without developing “patterns and experiences that support explanations.” I think that traditional science is beneficial to students because visually representing scientific data and discussing the “facts, diagrams, definitions and isolated skills” will better stimulate an elementary student’s brain. However, students need to be able to explore and investigate what they are learning about, in order to be successful. All students learn differently. Some learn visually, mentally, some even learn better doing hands-on activities. I think the focus of traditional school science is beneficial to the traditional elementary student.

Class 1: Reading 1_Flanagan

After reading Gunckel’s article on “Using Experiences, Patterns, and Explanations to make School Science more like Scientists’ Science,” school science seems to benefit students on a more educational level than scientists’ science. This article states that school science reduces scientists’ science because there are a lot of explanations occurring without developing “patterns and experiences that support explanations.” I think that traditional science is beneficial to students because visually representing scientific data and discussing the “facts, diagrams, definitions and isolated skills” will better stimulate an elementary student’s brain. All students learn differently. Some learn visually, mentally, some even learn better doing hands-on activities. I think the focus of traditional school science is beneficial to the traditional elementary student.