Research School Network: Enhancing Understanding: EEF Recommendations for Promoting Student Explanation The EEF Primary Science report, with six recommendations for improving science teaching, is discussed by Emily Johnston.

Finally, it’s here: the EEF science recommendations for primary. Pulling together the best practice and research, we now have our best bets for getting it right, so that children can flourish within the realms of scientific knowledge and skills.

So what could this look like in science, in relation to explaining their thinking? This short blog, will focus on section 2a of recommendation 2, setting out what setting up the right environment could look like and provide some examples of tasks we use at St. Matthew’s to promote children explaining their reasoning and understanding of scientific knowledge and skills, both collaboratively and independently too.

Collaborative learning opportunities have been evidenced to have a great impact on a child’s learning, and that is particularly the case for science. [1]
We know that children working together in groups to explain their thinking can only have a positive impact on the ability of all learners.

Before partaking in collaborative learning, as suggested in the guidance, it’s important to set up expectations for a collaborative learning environment. You can plan a perfect task, but without the correct learning behaviours in place for collaborative talk, the learning outcome may not be as desired. The guidance sets out three areas to ensure that this is possible: talk behaviours, expectation setting and task design. Here, we set our expectations high within each lesson; science is no exception. We use the same oracy toolkits across the curriculum as exemplified below.

Talk Behaviours
We expect children to be actively listening at all times. Children co-construct this as a toolkit and all learners have a role within the conversation, this is deepened with our think, pair share toolkits. This is an example from what it looks like in Year 1 and Year 6.

Expectation Setting

At the start of every academic year, we create shared discussion guidelines using traffic light pebbles [2]. We encourage all students to use sentence stems when participating in discussions. 

Sentence stems allow children to construct their reasoning thoughtfully, and to edit and revise their explanations for better clarity.
We expect all children to use sentence stems for discussion, which allows children to carefully construct their reasoning, as well as edit and revise their explanations.

These toolkits are generic and are applied within science, task design then creates opportunity for children to explain their reasoning and understanding within science.

Task Design
Mixed ability pairing and giving children talk roles, with sentence stems or vocabulary banks, enables children of all abilities to take part in discussions. Carefully selected tasks, give the children an opportunity to show their understanding of key knowledge, use key vocabulary in context and provide opportunities for teachers to assess their knowledge and understanding. Below are just some examples, which could be used within science teaching.

Collaborative Retrieval Task

In the example, Year 3 children were asked to explain to process of fossilisation. Cloze procedure sentence stems accompanied some children for extra support where needed.

Tell the Story

This particular ​‘tell the story’ activity was used during the topic Evolution, where children had been considering Darwin’s Theory of Evolution and adaptions seen of animals on the Galapagos Islands. Children were competing against each other to best tell the story of the adaptions seen on the islands.

Example or Non-example

Children were given examples and non-examples of fair tests. Discussion was had around the examples, encouraging children to explain their reasoning using scientific vocabulary. Children are able to build-upon their reasoning and revise this in response to the reasoning of their peers.

Concept Cartoons

The examples of concept cartoons (Year 1 and Year 6 – Animals, including Humans and Year 5 – Space), allow for children to have discussions with their peers and the teacher about the upcoming topic. From these the teacher can grasp an understanding of their prior knowledge and ability to explain their thinking, as well as exemplify misconceptions the children may have. These can be collaborative discussions or independent tasks.

What’s the difference?

In an example taken from Year 5’s Space unit, sentence stems are provided for children to encourage them to explain their thinking, using key vocabulary within the topic.

Hopefully, the examples given above are supportive in providing some ideas of how recommendation 2 from the guidance could look in the classroom, providing opportunities for children to explain their thinking using their knowledge and understanding.

Some final thoughts to consider when implementing this recommendation could be:


What do the expectations for collaborative learning look like in your classroom?

Is there a variety of tasks, which promote and encourage children to explain their thinking, within your planning?