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This article portrays how citizen science (CS) projects can be integrated into elementary classrooms to enhance students’ sensemaking skills and connect to real-world science problems. For the last several years, we have been involved in a study, Teacher Learning for Effective School-Based Citizen Science (TL4CS), that developed materials for elementary school teachers to engage their students in data collection, analysis, and interpretation for two existing CS projects: Community Collaborative Rain, Hail, and Snow Network (CoCoRaHS) and the Lost Ladybug Project (LLP). After piloting the TL4CS materials for two years, two teachers, Penny and Amy, share the ways they used the materials to create rich sensemaking experiences for their students. Penny used our TL4CS CoCoRaHS materials to make connections between their daily precipitation data and local weather phenomena, patterns in ecosystems, and student-created graphs. Amy used our TL4CS LLP materials to explore students’ questions about human impact on animals’ habitats and discover the importance of biodiversity in ecosystems. As demonstrated by Penny’s and Amy’s stories, the TL4CS materials can transform mere data collection for CS projects into opportunities for real-world connections and sensemaking in science classrooms.
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This content will become publicly available on March 4, 2026
Building Insights Through Observation: Integrating Art and Science to Support Sensemaking
Data are invaluable for making sense of the world, but critical thinking and observation skills are necessary to support sensemaking and improve data literacy. To develop these skills and build student capacity to connect data to content knowledge and interpret multiple meanings, a new education model was created for middle school science classrooms in partnership with teachers from across the U.S. The Building Insights through Observation (BIO) model uses hands-on, arts-based instructional approaches with science content (specifically geospatial data visualizations) to lead students in sensemaking about global phenomena. BIO builds on techniques established in the visual arts, focusing on how learners engage with, make meaning from, and think critically about visual information. In BIO, sensemaking is supported through students collectively exploring phenomena through a combination of art and datasets, reimagining data visualization themselves, and identifying wonderings that drive future questions. The BIO goals, approach, and key features of the model are described along with its application to plate tectonics as an example. The framework is highly adaptable for most environmental and Earth science topics and supports differentiation for all learners, allowing for slowing down and discussion of ideas and interpretations, which support student-driven sensemaking of data and Earth science content.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2101310
- PAR ID:
- 10587865
- Publisher / Repository:
- Science Scope
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Science Scope
- Volume:
- 48
- Issue:
- 2
- ISSN:
- 0887-2376
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 30 to 38
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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