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Kata = A practice routine
This website is a resource for teaching scientific thinking as a practical, everyday skill, and gives you free materials and instructions for adding a scientific practice pattern to nearly any classroom activity.
Kata in the Classroom (KiC) is a simple way to turn almost any activity or assignment also into practice of scientific thinking. It's done by adding (or overlaying) a four-step pattern and a few practice routines to various activities and assignments. Doing that helps students develop scientific thinking as an everyday skill and mindset.
There is consensus about the importance of having a challenge or goal, that we can never be certain about how we will reach a goal, and that experimenting is an effective way to work through uncertainty toward a goal. A missing piece is how do you teach the mindset and skills to navigate that? It takes a little practice!
The value of classroom activities depends on what thinking patterns students are practicing when they engage in them. When we try to teach *how science works*
we tend to present the scientific method as a prepackaged recipe, or explain scientific facts. Neither shows students how to incorporate scientific thinking in their daily lives.
We should be creating everyday scientific thinkers!
Here's a solution. Many activities & assignments can also become practice of scientific thinking, when you add the four-step Improvement Kata pattern to them. It's a practical scientific way of working that comes from research on adaptive organizations. Practicing it helps your students develop the following life skills:
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Scientific/Creative Thinking. Generate & refine solutions to obstacles through experimentation.
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Collaboration. Work in a team to accomplish a next goal on the way to a larger challenge.
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Communication. Organize thoughts, data and findings, and share them effectively.
You can read a KiC concept overview here.
NO NEW CONTENT IS NEEDED. After you run the puzzle exercise (KiC-1) to introduce
the Improvement Kata, you can start adding the 4-step pattern to assignments or
activities as a framework for working. Visit the "Examples" page to see how other educators have added the IK pattern to various activities.
Educators in all subjects and grades use the Improvement Kata to integrate deliberate practice of scientific-thinking skill in a variety of assignments & projects.
The puzzle used in the exercise
Kata in the Classroom
An Experimenting Round
Kata in the Classroom
Simple Tools for Experimenting
Kata in the Classroom
The puzzle used in the exercise
Kata in the Classroom
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Start by watching this 2-minute video:
Click through this short SlideShare:
Copyright Information
The concepts and materials on this website are intended to support persons who are interested in teaching/practicing scientific thinking. The materials are periodically updated and are copyrighted under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license. You are free to copy, use, remix, transform, build upon and redistribute them as long as you note the source as katatogrow.com.
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