CharacterizingTeachers’ Verbal Scaffolds to Guide Elementary Students’ Creation of Scientific Explanations Nancy Butler Songer The University of Michigan Ashima Mathur Shah Harvard University Sarah Fick The University of Michigan Scaffolding is a complicated construct that can take many forms, including both written and verbal forms. This research study focused on three elementary science classrooms where students were using a series of written scaffolds to guide explanation building. In each classroom, data were collected to document and study an additional type of scaffold, verbal scaffolds that the teachers provided to complement the written scaffolds. Findings suggested that some types of verbal scaffolds, such as navigational guidance, were universal and therefore cut across all three grade levels. On balance, other verbal scaffolds were more common with younger students in association with their first explanation- building science unit, such as a verbal scaffold that turned an open-ended question into a few multiple-choice options. Through the characterization of the types and range of verbal scaffolds that teachers say, both in general and in response to audience, we can gain insights to inform both curricular design and professional development toward supported explanation building across target audience, time, and topic. A Framework for K-12 Science Education (National Research Council [NRC], 2012), the important document serving as the foundation for the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), outlines a new emphasis in science education on a smaller set of core content ideas and science practices for all students, including students in grades K–6. The document states, “building progressively more sophisticated explanations of natural phenomena is central throughout K–5, as opposed to focusing only on descriptions in the early grades and leaving explanation to the later grades (NRC, 2012; p. 2–25). Research in science education consistently demonstrates that as early as the onset of formal elementary-age schooling, American stu- dents are capable of sophisticated scientific reasoning such as constructing explanations about focal science content (Metz, 2008; NRC, 2007). Several research groups have designed curricular units that focused on guiding students to construct scientific explanations as a means to promote deep conceptual understandings of focal science content. For example, Linn, Shear, Bell, and Slotta (1999) guided seventh and eighth grade students’ explanation building about the causes for the onset of deformities in frogs as a means to deepen conceptual understanding of selected concepts in genetics, biology, and chemistry. On balance, nearly all of the recent studies that focused on guiding explanation building selected a target audience of students in the secondary years of schooling (grades 7–12 in the United States). Therefore, while these studies have pro- vided a foundation for how curriculum developers and researchers might guide middle and high school students in explanation-building activities, (e.g., Chin & Osborne, 2010; McNeill & Krajcik, 2008), they do not provide specific guidance for how to support elementary students’ explanation building. This article addressed this gap in the research through a research study designed to examine the range and types of verbal supports teachers provide to guide elementary school students in explanation building around concepts in biodiversity and ecology. Conceptual Framework Extending Prior Work With Explanations Our work builds from several research studies that have explored different approaches to guiding students’ written development of evidence-based explanations. These studies draw on the work by Brown and Campione (1990) and others who argue that guiding students to write expla- nations leads to deeper conceptual understandings of science concepts because it challenges students to evalu- ate, integrate, and elaborate on their knowledge in impor- tant ways (e.g., McNeill, Lizotte, Krajcik, & Marx, 2006). Chin and Osborne (2010) provided empirical evidence for the use of question prompts, contrasting views, argument diagrams, and evidence statements in guiding secondary students toward more productive argumentation. The notion of scaffolding, with regard to teaching and learning, was first introduced in the context of tutoring. It described the “. . . process that enables a child or novice to solve a problem, carry out a task or achieve a goal which School Science and Mathematics 321