Why Are ADI Student Handouts Now Organized by Stage?

A fifth-grade teacher who has used ADI for several years sent me this question:

“The older books had one lab handout for the whole investigation. Now there’s a separate handout for each stage. Why the change? Isn’t it more to copy and keep track of?”

It is a little more to keep track of, and I want to acknowledge that up front. But the change was not about packaging. It was about protecting the parts of an investigation that matter most and are easiest to lose.

In the earlier books, students received a single Lab Handout at the start. It included an introduction to the phenomenon and the core idea, the task and guiding question, the materials, tips for getting started, space for an investigation proposal and an initial argument, and guidance for the report. Everything students would need was in their hands on day one.

The newer materials break that into a separate handout for each of the seven stages: Task, Ideas, Plan, Do, Share, Reflect, and Report. Each one is labeled with the stage and does one job.

Here are six reasons that matters.

Six Reasons for Stage-by-Stage Handouts

1. Each stage has a different job, so each handout should too.

What students and teachers need to accomplish during the Task stage is very different from what they need to accomplish during Share or Reflect. A handout built for one stage can focus students’ attention on the one thing that matters right now, with the space and prompts that stage calls for, instead of asking them to find their place in a long packet.

2. The order protects the sensemaking.

This is the most important reason. When the whole investigation is in students’ hands at once, many of them read ahead. If the Ideas-stage readings are sitting two pages away, students will look at them before they draw an initial model, and the need to know the model was supposed to create disappears. Handing out one stage at a time makes sure students’ own ideas, and their questions, come before the ideas of the scientific community.

3. It protects the stages most likely to get cut.

When time runs short, the Reflect stage is usually the first thing to go, followed closely by revision. A stage that has its own handout, its own prompts, and its own minutes is much harder to skip. The handout is a small signal to everyone in the room that the discussion at the close of an investigation is not a formality. It is where much of the learning happens.

4. It makes an investigation easy to break across days.

Few teachers can run an entire investigation in one sitting. Because each stage has its own handout, and each activity has a recommended time, it is simple to end a class at a natural stopping point and pick up the next day without anyone losing their place.

5. Consistency builds routines.

Every ADI investigation and STEM design challenge uses the same seven stages, and the handouts for each stage follow the same basic structure. The Task handout for Lost Keys, a third-grade design challenge, asks students to record what they notice, sort design constraints and criteria, draw an initial model, and list things their group is unsure about. The Task handout for Heat Packs for Cold Snaps, a middle school challenge, asks for the same kinds of thinking about a much more demanding problem. Once students know what each stage asks of them, they can put their attention on the science rather than on figuring out what the handout wants.

6. It makes student thinking easier to see.

A stage-by-stage handout is also a stage-by-stage record. If you want to know how students were thinking at the start of an investigation, you can collect the Task handouts and read the initial models in a few minutes. If you want to see how their plans changed, you can compare the Plan and Do handouts. The same logic shows up in our Phenomenon-Driven Tasks, where students complete one part at a time and the final reflection part is kept separate until feedback is ready.

A Few Things to Keep in Mind

Hand out one stage at a time, even when it is tempting to copy everything at once. The sequence is part of the design.

At the same time, do not take the earlier handouts away. Students should keep every stage in a folder or notebook, because they will need to return to them. Before drafting an argument in the Share stage, for example, students should revisit their notes from the Ideas stage and reread the relevant texts. Sequential handouts should give students cumulative access, not a one-way trip.

If you use the ADI Learning Hub, the stages are already organized this way, and Presentation mode lets you project each stage as the class reaches it.

Putting It All Together

The shift from one lab handout to stage-by-stage handouts can look like a formatting choice. It is really a set of design decisions about sequence, focus, and time, all aimed at making sure students do the thinking each stage is built for, in the order that makes that thinking possible.

What I have come to believe is that the structure of the materials teaches students something about what matters, whether we intend it to or not. Handouts organized by stage teach students that every part of the investigation counts.

How ADI Makes This Easier

Deciding what belongs on each page, what students should see and when, and how to make every stage feel familiar across dozens of investigations is a lot of design work. The newer ADI books and the ADI Learning Hub do that work for you, with handouts for every stage, recommended times for every activity, and teacher notes that explain the purpose of each one.

Want to see the new handouts?

Browse sample investigations and learn more about ADI books and the ADI Learning Hub at argumentdriveninquiry.com.