Patterns Are Everywhere: Exploring the schoolyard to facilitate thinking about science phenomena.

After realizing the difficulty educators face with integrating the crosscutting concepts (CCCs) from the Next Generation Science Standards into their lessons and noticing missed opportunities for caregivers to engage children in scientific thinking, we posited that if the CCCs are presented in a more accessible way then children will have more opportunities to engage in sensemaking in science. This lesson is the thinking and learning from our attempt to bring this wondering to life. We are a museum educator, a teacher educator, and a first-grade teacher. We developed and taught this lesson with the hope that it engages all students in rich thinking by using a small, manageable lesson as an entry point to begin this work regardless of students' levels of conceptual understanding. This lesson focuses on patterns in students' everyday lives, particularly on the schoolyard. It demonstrates expansive teaching practice and is accessible to all learners and educators by centering CCCs in a decontextualized manner and using elements of photovoice to highlight students' thinking. We describe the lesson we taught using the 5E learning cycle format and provide reflections and recommendations for educators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]