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I hold firmly that a major task of science teaching is cultivating the innate skills child scientists bring to school.

Young kids are natural scientists. For instance, they are puzzled when rainbows appear in the sky, when the leaves change colors, and when the moon goes through different phases. Their observations can lead to questions about how the world works. Ever curious about their world, children instinctively try to answer their scientifically oriented questions by looking for patterns and causal relationships. In this way, they propel themselves to understanding from what they can investigate firsthand. Young children enter school as scientists and use firsthand explorations to explain the natural world.

Bringing an explore-before-explain mind-set to science teaching is a way to developing the budding scientists in each of your students. I create science experiences for students’ that builds their conceptual foundation and introduces new ideas at a potent time in the learning process to help them generate fundamental insights into how our world works.   

Evidence of my approach has appeared in practitioner journals such as Science and Children, Science Scope, The Science Teacher, and Science Activities.