Young Children's Explanations: Assessing Content and Genre Knowledge in Early Science Writing

Introduction

Anna’s first-grade science lesson explored how sound waves create sound at her elementary school (Alabama State Department of Education, K.1.1, 2023). The children in her classroom experimented with vibrations and read non-fiction texts as a class on the topic. Anna applied some of what she learned about vibration and sound waves and applied it to describe how an instrument makes music. See Figure 1 for her diagram and written composition created in response to the request that she explain how her ukulele makes music.

Figure 1.

Anna’s explanation of how her ukulele makes music

Anna’s explanation includes both macro- and micro-level features, specific vocabulary, and elements of cause, that distinguish her composition as fitting the explanation genre from other science genres such as procedures or information report. These distinguishing features can be assessed by teachers to determine what children are learning about the content and how they are learning to convey their knowledge in a genre appropriate to the purpose.

The way that language is used for a specific purpose within a specific context (Derewianka & Jones 2012) is what we call a genre. Explanation is an important genre in science (Smolkin et al., 2009) and even young children hear explanations when they ask questions about why things happen and how things work. Their early attempts to explain how and why reveal linguistic markers specific to the genre including macro- and micro-level features of the discipline and the purpose for the use of that language (Coleman et al., 2010; Donovan et al., 2022; Wolman-Bonilla, 2000). Given the importance of disciplinary literacy—the ways language is used in all of its forms within a specific discipline such as math or science (e.g., Fang, 2013; Fang & Coatoam, 2013; ILA, 2017), it is important that teachers have the knowledge they need to assess writing in science. Assessing writing in science not only helps assess writing constructs (e.g. genre knowledge, orthographic knowledge, grammar, etc.), it can also be used to provide insight into the scientific knowledge young authors synthesize and apply. A child’s scientific writing provides a window into both their cognitive understanding of a scientific principle but also a window into their compositional skills.

Children use language in many forms to communicate depending upon the context or setting. The ways children use language to notice, to inquire, to observe to ultimately ‘figure out’ how their world around them works is unique to the discipline of science (e.g., Wright & Gotwals, 2023). The expectation of ‘knowing’ in science education has shifted, children are encouraged to ‘figure out’ science instead of reciting rote facts about their world (Schwarz et al., 2017). Explaining how and why is important in the discipline of science. Mature explanations include macro-level features (e.g., a statement about the phenomenon, a sequenced explanation of how or why including conditions, causes and/or effects), and micro-level features (e.g., linguistic elements such as timeless present tense, time relationships, nominalization and general nouns) (Christie & Derewianka, 2010). These elements are important for teachers to understand in order to support children’s development of this important use of oral and written science discourse, yet they may need additional supports to provide complex opportunities in this area for young learners (e.g., Wright & Gotwals, 2017).

The purpose of this chapter, therefore, is to provide an overview of the language specific to the genre of science explanation and how teachers of young children can assess children’s written and oral compositions to gain insight into their knowledge of the explanation genre and the science content in order to scaffold further learning. This chapter will