Crosscutting Concepts in ADI Investigations

Are you looking to help your students gain a deeper understanding of the core elements of science? Introducing Argument-Driven Inquiry can be a great way to break down complex science topics and help make learning more meaningful. ADI’s inquiry-based instructional model is designed to help students develop inquiry skills and learn science content through engaging, authentic, meaningful learning experiences. ADI’s high-quality instructional materials include investigations that present students with real-world phenomena-based questions to investigate through the seven-stage instructional model.

This model helps students to make connections between scientific disciplines and develop a deeper understanding of complex scientific concepts as they plan and carry out their investigation, share and justify their findings, and create a final report. Through inquiry-based instruction, students become actively engaged in exploring, creating, and applying knowledge in the bigger picture of learning, and can make connections in patterns, cause and effect, and cycles.

Students work to make sense of the real-world phenomena in the investigation question and explore the crosscutting concepts such as “Cause and Effect” while collecting their data in the Do stage and analyzing the interactions they observe in the service of sense-making.

Through their data collection and interpretation, students will also observe and utilize patterns to help answer the investigation question. Weaving the “Patterns” crosscutting concept into instruction through student investigation is a more effective way of teaching the concept, as students are discovering and understanding the patterns through their own experiences.

When students are able to see how different concepts connect with one another, they can develop a fuller understanding of each scientific concept. The Argument-Driven Inquiry instructional model is designed to help teachers do just that - integrate crosscutting concepts into their instruction in order to help students understand the connections between different ideas.

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