The purpose of the asynchronous blog/online conversation is to provide one-on-one conversation between scientists and students. Through the conversation, students have opportunities to reflect on their evolving understanding, use you as a sounding board for their ideas and thinking, and enrich their knowledge of plants in their everyday lives and in life on Earth.

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You help students to:

• See the Fun and Interesting Side of Plant Science
  • Students are fascinated by “Did you know…?” such as historical tidbits or “science facts.”
  • Connect to the gizmos and travel of scientific endeavors.
  • Connect to current social issues of life problems.
• See Scientists as Someone Like Them
  • How you decided to become a scientist
  • Your life stories/experiences
  • How you face struggles in science
• Visualize Everyday Experiences with Plants
  • When you walk home from the school bus stop, what plants do you see? Do you have plants at home? (Help students situate their thinking in a familiar place)
  • What have you done with plants in school this year?
• Put Forward and “Unpack” their Ideas About Biology Content
  • How do you think [insert vocabulary word or idea student is using] means?
  • How do you think that works?
• Be More Reflective About their Ideas and Reasoning
  • I’m trying to understand what you mean by XXX. Tell me more.
  • How does XXX relate to YYY?
• Use Data as Evidence in Making their Emerging Models More Sophisticated
  • What did you see? What didn’t you see?
  • Does this make sense with how you think photosynthesis [or XXX] works? Why or why not?
  • In your mind, is this the only possible explanation? What are alternative explanations?
• Recognize Conflicts Between their Emerging Ideas, their Everyday Experiences, and Data
  • So if carbon dioxide is a gas, does it have mass? Does it take up space? What about when it is inside a plant?
  • Does that mean [contrast two claims]?
• Reason About Cause-and-Effect Relationships and Build Mental Models
  • Does that mean that if [claim/idea #1] is true, then XXX should [also be true/happen]?
  • If A and B are true, what does this say about what happens when [condition]?