Reply to comment

Deb, in reply to your revised question, I think that we can evaluate a "new story" by asking the students to defend their stories and to explain how their stories account for the data.  I do this with my kindergartners a lot.  They are still developing their own stories and I hesistate to tell them that they are wrong.  Instead I ask "What do you mean?" "Can you tell me more?"  "How does that match what we saw?"  etc.  Through this process I can sometimes have a better sense of who is really thinking about the world in a new way and who simply misunderstanding a phenomenon or is even guessing.  It's not fool proof though, as some students react to those questions the same way as if I had told them they were wrong.  Further more their understanding may still be "immature" but then I have good feedback on other types of experiences they need to encounter to develop more sophisticated stories.