Science is more than special terminology and techniques; it is also about wonder, questioning, and discovering patterns in the natural world. In this chapter, we describe the ways that two K-1 teachers, Ms. Rosenthal and Ms. Rivera, designed their science instruction to inspire their students to feel the sense of wonder and curiosity that drives scientists, with the hope that this would help them understand the discipline and practices of science. They did this by creating a constructivist-oriented learning environment that encouraged students to explore objects, situations, and concepts deeply, for extended periods of time, and from multiple perspectives. Children made personal observations of these experiences through writing in journals, drawing pictures to compare what they thought might happen in a science experiment (i.e., their hypotheses) with what actually happened, and through talk that their teachers carefully documented and often displayed on the walls of the classroom.

In constructivist classrooms, the goal is to help students develop their own understanding so that they can use and apply knowledge in diverse contexts and draw connections among multiple representations of a given concept. True constructivist teaching always faces the teaching paradox because it is not “discovery learning,” an unstructured, learner-centered environment where students are left to themselves; it requires that teachers develop a structured environment — the term educators often use is scaffold — within which students are guided as they construct their own knowledge (Mayer, 2004).