Study Guide
Overview and Test Objectives
Field 137: Science (5–9)
Test Overview
| Format | Computer-based test (CBT) |
|---|---|
| Number of Questions | 100 multiple-choice questions |
| Time | 2 hours and 30 minutes* |
*Does not include 15-minute CBT tutorial
Test Objectives
| Subarea | Range of Objectives | Approximate Percentage of Questions on Test | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Teaching and Learning of Science | 001–003 | 40 percent |
| 2 | Professional Knowledge and Skills for Science Teachers | 004–006 | 30 percent |
| 3 | Life Science Content Knowledge | 007 | 10 percent |
| 4 | Physical Science Content Knowledge | 008 | 10 percent |
| 5 | Earth and Space Science Content Knowledge | 009 | 10 percent |
Hover over each subarea for details of subtest content or see table above.
Sub area 1 40%, Sub area 2 30%, Sub area 3 10%, Sub area 4 10%, and Sub area 5 10%.
Subarea 1—Teaching and Learning of Science
Objective 001—Learners and Learning Environments
Includes:
- Learn about, consider, and incorporate students' backgrounds to plan and adapt instruction that leverages the iterative nature of sense-making and promotes positive student identities.
- Apply strategies for monitoring and maintaining relationships with students while engaging them in productive struggle and discourse to challenge science ideas and construct science meaning together, keeping in mind the importance of supporting each student’s development through scaffolded sense-making.
- Encourage students to share their thinking about phenomena or problems with intentional use of talk moves strategies in science to foster an inclusive, equitable, and antibias environment that respects students' cultures.
- Analyze group tasks and structures to ensure that all students can build understanding, identities, and perceptions as science learners in a variety of environments (e.g., laboratory, field, community) while respecting culturally different ways of knowing and reinforcing their rightful presence in science.
- Engage students in learning activities using science and engineering practices and crosscutting concepts to socially construct explanations of a phenomenon or solutions to a problem.
Objective 002—Content Pedagogy
Includes:
- Elicit and interpret student ideas about anchoring scientific phenomena and problems in three-dimensional teaching and learning situations to make instructional decisions that engage students in collaborative, evidence-based sense-making, while valuing all students' ways of knowing and doing science.
- Design three-dimensional learning experiences to connect to and build upon the lives of learners by leveraging learners' prior experiences and knowledge, using varying research-based pedagogies such as talk and group work in ways that are culturally sustaining and enhance scientific ways of thinking.
- Elicit and consider students' verbal and visible thinking to plan and implement appropriate differentiation and research-based pedagogical strategies to support and prioritize student needs, perspectives, questions, and problems so that all students develop conceptual scientific knowledge.
- Support students in constructing arguments to develop and defend explanations of scientific phenomena or solutions to engineering problems through the application of appropriate scientific practices and crosscutting concepts to empower students to contribute to scientific problem-solving in their communities and the world.
- Create opportunities for students to value diverse ways of thinking that build on their histories and experiences while mobilizing social capital to engage all students in solving problems and using engineering practices.
- Apply strategies for building mutual trust with students through caring support and alignment of instruction and assessment strategies that address students' prior knowledge and partial understandings while navigating tensions between alternative and widely accepted scientific ideas or ways of knowing.
- Select and integrate science-specific technological tools that engage learners in three-dimensional learning to explore, describe, and explain phenomena and support students' conceptual understanding.
- Uncover and consider students' thinking to select appropriate instructional strategies that illustrate the interdisciplinary nature of science and engineering and that allow students to demonstrate sense-making and understanding in different, valid, and informative ways.
- Create opportunities for students to persevere and support them in making sense of new observations, information, or data and to develop arguments supported by credible evidence and valid reasoning using connections to other core disciplines (i.e., mathematics, social studies, and English language arts).
Objective 003—Impact on Learning
Includes:
- Give specific and timely verbal feedback that supports student sense-making via formative assessment to recognize and assess learners' ideas, life experiences, and understanding while engaging students in high-level challenges that build toward citizenship, stewardship, and lifelong community engagement.
- Prepare constructive written feedback for students from assessments that are designed to show learning and application of three-dimensional understanding to move students toward productive sense-making situated within their lived experiences, building on existing ideas, assets, resources, and ways of knowing.
- Reflect on, interpret, and purposefully disaggregate summative assessment data to inform future planning and teaching, with particular attention to student demographics and learning progress, being thoughtful about how assessment information is used and the potential impact on students' identities as scientists.
Subarea 2—Professional Knowledge and Skills for Science Teachers
Objective 004—Safety
Includes:
- Select and modify instructional materials and activities to apprentice students and build their agency in safety techniques for the purpose of exploring phenomena or solving problems using knowledge about procurement, preparation, use, storage, dispensing, supervision, and disposal of chemicals, materials, and equipment.
- Apply knowledge and strategies for establishing shared ownership within the entire classroom community of roles, routines, and safety protocols to minimize hazardous situations, implement emergency procedures, maintain safety equipment, and follow policies and procedures that comply with established state and national guidelines and standards and best professional practices.
- Monitor, coach, and provide feedback to students to collaboratively create a physically safe environment.
- Plan for and engage in discourse centered around ethical and legal decision-making that adheres strictly to science safety protocols with respect to the safe and humane treatment of all living organisms, including their collection, care, and use in and out of the classroom, and creating an environment that is safe for students who have varying perspectives on the treatment of living organisms.
Objective 005—Professional Knowledge and Skills
Includes:
- Reflect on assessment evidence of the three-dimensional aspects of student science understanding while respecting students' multiple ways of knowing, doing, and communicating their thinking to continually improve instructional effectiveness.
- Reflect on assessment evidence of the three-dimensional aspects of student science understanding while respecting students' multiple ways of knowing, doing, and communicating their thinking to continually improve their own professional growth that ensures a rightful presence in science for all students.
- Examine and manage professional growth while engaging in professional learning to remain current and open to learning from students and colleagues and to deepen and grow in teaching knowledge, skills, and dispositions, including the ability to employ science-specific technology and be culturally responsive.
Objective 006—Specialized Content Knowledge for All Science Teachers
Includes:
- Use tools and strategies to ensure all students have equitable opportunities to understand the nature of science and how cultural norms and values influenced the current and historical development of scientific knowledge, empowering students toward action that contributes to scientific problem-solving in their community and the world.
- Unpack, as part of planning, big ideas within a learning sequence to identify crosscutting concepts, disciplinary core ideas, and science and engineering practices, and ensure the incorporation of science-specific technologies and contributions of diverse populations to science.
- Interpret and reflect student thinking and understanding while considering science standards, learning progressions, and sequencing of science content to scaffold and support student sense-making.
- Select and modify instructional materials that engage students in using grade-appropriate elements of the disciplinary core ideas, science and engineering practices, and crosscutting concepts to explore, describe, and explain phenomena or design solutions within a classroom environment where all students participate in the co-construction of knowledge.
Subarea 3—Life Science Content Knowledge
Objective 007—Life Science for Middle Grades
Includes:
- Engage in cycles of sense-making using science and engineering practices and crosscutting science concepts to explain phenomena and solve problems together as a classroom community of learners within "From Molecules to Organisms: Structures and Processes" topics, including structure and function, growth and development of organisms, organization for matter and energy flow in organisms, and information processing.
- Engage in cycles of sense-making using science and engineering practices and crosscutting science concepts to explain phenomena and solve problems together as a classroom community of learners within "Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy, and Dynamics" topics, including interdependent relationships in ecosystems; cycles of matter and energy transfer in ecosystems; ecosystem dynamic, functioning, and resilience; and social interactions and group behavior.
- Engage in cycles of sense-making using science and engineering practices and crosscutting science concepts to explain phenomena and solve problems together as a classroom community of learners within "Heredity: Inheritance and Variation of Traits" topics, including inheritance of traits and variation of traits.
- Engage in cycles of sense-making using science and engineering practices and crosscutting science concepts to explain phenomena and solve problems together as a classroom community of learners within "Biological Evolution: Unity and Diversity" topics, including evidence of common ancestry and diversity, natural selection, adaptation, and biodiversity and humans.
- Define and delineate engineering problems; develop possible solutions; optimize design solutions; understand the interdependence of engineering, technology, and life science; and understand the influence of engineering, technology, and life science on society and the natural world.
Subarea 4—Physical Science Content Knowledge
Objective 008—Chemistry and Physics for Middle Grades
Includes:
- Engage in cycles of sense-making using science and engineering practices and crosscutting science concepts to explain phenomena and solve problems together as a classroom community of learners within "Matter and Its Interactions" topics, including structure and properties of matter, chemical reactions, and nuclear processes.
- Engage in cycles of sense-making using science and engineering practices and crosscutting science concepts to explain phenomena and solve problems together as a classroom community of learners within "Energy" topics, including definitions of energy, conservation of energy and energy transfer, relationship between energy and forces, and energy in chemical processes and everyday life.
- Engage in cycles of sense-making using science and engineering practices and crosscutting science concepts to explain phenomena and solve problems together as a classroom community of learners within "Forces and Interactions" topics, including forces and motion, types of interactions, and stability and instability in physical systems.
- Engage in cycles of sense-making using science and engineering practices and crosscutting science concepts to explain phenomena and solve problems together as a classroom community of learners within "Waves and Their Applications in Technologies for Information Transfer" topics, including wave properties, electromagnetic radiation, and information technologies and instrumentation.
- Define and delineate engineering problems; develop possible solutions; optimize design solutions; understand the interdependence of engineering, technology, chemistry, and physics; and understand the influence of engineering, technology, chemistry, and physics on society and the natural world.
Subarea 5—Earth and Space Science Content Knowledge
Objective 009—Earth and Space Science for Middle Grades
Includes:
- Engage in cycles of sense-making using science and engineering practices and crosscutting science concepts to explain phenomena and solve problems together as a classroom community of learners within "Earth's Place in the Universe" topics, including the universe and its stars, Earth and the solar system, and the history of planet Earth.
- Engage in cycles of sense-making using science and engineering practices and crosscutting science concepts to explain phenomena and solve problems together as a classroom community of learners within "Earth's Systems" topics, including Earth materials and systems, plate tectonics and large-scale system interactions, the roles of water in Earth's surface processes, weather and climate, and biogeology.
- Engage in cycles of sense-making using science and engineering practices and crosscutting science concepts to explain phenomena and solve problems together as a classroom community of learners within "Earth and Human Activity" topics, including natural resources, natural hazards, human impacts on Earth systems, and global climate change.
- Define and delineate engineering problems; develop possible solutions; optimize design solutions; understand the interdependence of engineering, technology, and Earth and space science; and understand the influence of engineering, technology, and Earth and space science on society and the natural world.
The Standards for the Preparation of Middle Grades (5–9) Science Teachers define the boundaries of the framework presented, with the Michigan K–12 Science Standards referenced for the appropriate grade band in relevant sections.