Looking closely
Kindergarten science was noticing. Grade 1 adds two things: measuring what you notice, and saying what you expect to happen before you find out. That second one is the beginning of every experiment a person will ever do.
What Alberta asks for by the end of Grade 1
The subject: Science
- Look at measurable properties of objects, and at physical changes.
- Investigate what makes things move.
- Look at seasonal changes and what they do to plants and animals.
- Investigate plants and animals and how they are connected.
- Put instructions in order and follow them.
- Describe the steps of an investigation, and make predictions, observations and conclusions.
The last outcome is the new one. A Kindergarten child explores; a Grade 1 child is asked to predict, observe and conclude — in that order, and out loud.
The words, first
These are the terms a teacher will use at a parent interview, defined before anything below uses them.
| Word | What it means |
|---|---|
| Property | Something you can observe about an object: rough, cold, heavy, red. |
| Measurable property | A property you can put a number on: length, mass, how much it holds, how warm it is. |
| Physical change | A change that does not make a new substance: ice melting, paper tearing, water boiling. The stuff is still the same stuff. |
| Force | A push or a pull. Every movement starts with one. |
| Prediction | What you think will happen, said before you look. A prediction made afterwards is not a prediction. |
| Observation | What you actually saw. Only what you saw — “the ice got smaller”, not “the ice melted because of the sun”. |
| Conclusion | What the observations tell you. This is where the explaining is allowed. |
| Season | One part of the yearly cycle. Alberta's outcome is about what each one does to living things, not about naming them. |
Predict
What do you think will happen?
Observe
What actually happened? Say only what you saw.
Conclude
So what does that tell us?
What to do at home
- Ask before, not after — “Which do you think will sink?” Then test it. Being wrong out loud and then finding out is the entire method, in a sink.
- Separate saw from thought — “What did you see?” then “why do you think that happened?” Keeping those two questions apart is most of what a scientist does.
- Push it or pull it — Opening a door, dragging a toy, kicking a ball. Naming which force is doing the work takes two seconds and is an outcome.
- Watch one tree all year — Photograph the same tree each month. The seasonal change outcome is hard to see in a week and obvious across a year.
- Follow a recipe exactly — Let them read the steps in order and do them. Then try one out of order and see what happens.
- Measure with anything — How many hand spans is the table? Non-standard units come before rulers, and they make the point of a standard unit obvious later.
Sheets you can print for this
- Push or pull? — what makes it move
- One tree, four seasons — draw what changes
The expectations above are paraphrased from Alberta Education's New K–6 curriculum fact sheets, which publish a snapshot of each grade rather than the complete program of studies. Alberta's full programs are at alberta.ca/curriculum.