Young Children's Explanations

Abstract

The purpose of this chapter is to provide information teachers need to assess young children's science compositions for explanation genre features and content knowledge. The authors begin with an overview of the language specific to the genres of science in general and to explanation specifically. They provide an overview of reasoning and genre features used in explanation and describe how trade books on science topics written for children can be used to scaffold children's explanatory science thinking and writing. Examples of children's texts are then considered for how assessment of each provides insight into the disciplinary thinking of the authors, how the composition includes linguistic features of the explanation genre, and how teachers might scaffold the children's emerging explanation compositions of scientific phenomena while supporting disciplinary thinking and knowledge building.