Project 2061 Benchmarks
The American Association for the Advancement of Science

Science inquiry in grades K-2:

Students should be actively involved in exploring phenomena that interest them both in and out of class. These investigations should be fun and exciting, opening the door to even more things to explore. An important part of students' exploration is telling others what they see, what they think, and what it makes them wonder about. Children should have lots of time to talk about what they observe and to compare their observations with those of others. A premium should be placed on careful expression, a necessity in science, but students at this level should not be expected to come up with scientifically accurate explanations for their observations. Theory can wait. (emphasis added)


Science inquiry in grades K-2:

Children's strategies for finding out more and more about their surroundings improve as they gain experience in conducting simple investigations of their own and working in small groups. They should be encouraged to observe more and more carefully, measure things with increasing accuracy (where the nature of the investigations involves measurement), record data clearly in logs and journals, and communicate their results in charts and simple graphs as well as in prose. Class discussions of the procedures and findings can provide the beginnings of scientific argument and debate... Research studies suggest that there are some limits on what to expect at this level of student intellectual development. One limit is that the design of carefully controlled experiments is still beyond most students in the middle grades. (emphasis added)