16 Full Option Science System
Science Notebooks in Middle School
Data Acquisition and Organization
Because observation is the starting point for answering the focus
question, data records should be- clearly related to the focus question;
- accurate and precise;
- organized for effi cient reference.
Data handling can have two subcomponents: data acquisition and
data display. Data acquisition is making and recording observations
(measurements). The data record can be composed of words, phrases,
numbers, and drawings. Data display reorganizes the data in a logical
way to facilitate thinking. The display can be a graph, chart, calendar, or
other graphic organizer.
Early in a student’s experience with notebooks, the record may be
disorganized and incomplete, and the display may need guidance.
The FOSS notebook masters are designed to help students with data
collection and organization. You may initially introduce conventional
data-display methods, such as those found in the FOSS notebook
masters, but soon students will need opportunities to independently
select appropriate data displays. As students become more familiar with
collecting and organizing data, you might have them create their own
records. With practice, students will become skilled at determining
what form of recording to use in various situations, and how best to
display the data for analysis.
Narratives. For most students, the most intuitive approach to
recording data is narrative—using words, sentence fragments, and
numbers in a more or less sequential manner. As students make a
new observation, they record it below the previous entry, followed
by the next observation, and so on. Some observations, such as a
record of weather changes in the Weather and Water Course or the
interactions of organisms in miniecosystems in the Populations and
Ecosystems Course, are appropriately recorded in narrative form.