Florida SC.8.N.1.6
The Standard
Understand that scientific investigations involve the collection of relevant empirical evidence, the use of logical reasoning, and the application of imagination in devising hypotheses, predictions, explanations and models to make sense of the collected evidence.
Florida Next Generation Sunshine State Standards for Science
Teacher's field guide
What This Standard Means
What Students Need to Do
- Students collect observations and measurements that address a question. They use those results to build hypotheses, predictions, explanations, or models, then explain how the evidence supports their ideas.
What Mastery Looks Like
- Students can separate relevant evidence from unrelated details in an investigation. They can make a testable prediction, support an explanation with data, and revise a model when new results appear.
Common Misconceptions
- Students may think imagination means making up results or ignoring evidence. They may treat a hypothesis as proven after one trial or confuse a prediction with an explanation. They may also think models must look exactly like what they represent.
How to Assess It
- Give students this result: three bean plants under a lamp averaged 14 cm, while three in a dark cabinet averaged 5 cm. Ask which numbers are evidence, what claim they support, and what testable prediction should come next.
Lesson moves
Ways to Teach It
Students test three paper helicopter designs, record fall times, then use the results to explain which design falls slowest.
Show a sealed mystery box and ask, “What evidence supports your model of what is inside, and what remains an inference?”
Teams sort scenario cards into evidence, reasoning, hypothesis, prediction, explanation, and model, then defend two disputed placements.
Compare a local weather forecast with radar and temperature data, then explain how meteorologists built and revised the prediction.
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Printable SC.8.N.1.6 Worksheet
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Related Standards
- SC.5.N.2.1
Recognize and explain that science is grounded in empirical observations that are testable; explanation must always be linked with evidence.
- SC.5.N.1.1
Define a problem, use appropriate reference materials to support scientific understanding, plan and carry out scientific investigations of various types such as...
- SC.6.N.1.5
Recognize that science involves creativity, not just in designing experiments, but also in creating explanations that fit evidence.
- SC.4.N.1.3
Explain that science does not always follow a rigidly defined method ("the scientific method") but that science does involve the use of observations and empiric...
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