5 Science Skills Your Students Are Missing (and Easy Ways to Teach Them in Class))

Science skills for students go far beyond following directions in a lab. High school science students need opportunities to design experiments, analyze data, solve problems, and communicate evidence clearly. These science skills help students think like real scientists while building confidence across biology, chemistry, and physical science.

If your students can complete a lab but struggle to explain their thinking, interpret messy results, or design their own investigations, they may need more practice with core science skills. The good news is that you do not need to overhaul your curriculum to build these skills. A few targeted activities can make a big difference.

What science skills should students learn?

Science students need more than content knowledge. They need skills that help them think, analyze, and communicate like real scientists. The most important science skills include:

• Designing experiments
• Interpreting data and graphs
• Writing evidence-based explanations
• Solving quantitative problems
• Communicating scientific ideas

These science skills, often referred to as science process skills, are the difference between students who memorize content and students who truly understand how science works. 

What Are Science Skills?

Science skills are the thinking, reasoning, problem solving, and communication skills students use to investigate questions and make sense of evidence. These include skills such as designing experiments, interpreting graphs, writing evidence based explanations, solving quantitative problems, and communicating scientific ideas clearly.

These are the same kinds of skills students use when they create a hypothesis, identify variables, analyze a data table, explain a trend on a graph, or defend a conclusion with evidence. If you want a broader look at essential science process skills, you may also like my post on 17 essential science skills all students need.

Here are five important science skills for students that will help keep learners engaged, challenged, and growing all year long. These strategies are designed specifically for high school science students but can be adapted for middle school classrooms as well.

1. Designing Original Experiments

Many science students perform traditional labs perfectly but freeze when asked to create their own investigations. They have mastered following directions, but not designing experiments. Learning how to plan an investigation is one of the most important science skills students can develop.

How to challenge them:

• Let students redesign one of your favorite labs by changing one variable.
• Have them identify independent, dependent, and controlled variables.
• Ask students to write their own hypothesis, procedure, and data table.
• If time allows, add a peer review round before anyone begins the lab.

Students quickly discover that experimental design requires both creativity and critical thinking. If you want more ideas for teaching this skill, you might also like Teach the Skills, Please and applying scientific methods in class.

💡 Ready made help: Try my Scientific Method and Experimental Design Lab, a scaffolded activity that walks students through the process of planning their own experiment from scratch. It is editable, printable, and includes a full teacher guide and answer key.

2. Interpreting Complex Data and Graphs

Science students often learn how to make neat graphs, but many still struggle to interpret what the data actually means. They may miss trends, overlook anomalies, or have trouble explaining possible sources of error. Interpreting data is one of the most valuable scientific skills for students because real science is rarely neat and tidy.

How to challenge them:

• Present messy data sets from real world studies or classroom experiments.
• Ask students to identify trends, outliers, and possible sources of error.
• Have them explain what might happen if one variable changed.
• Encourage students to support their observations with evidence from the graph or table.

This strengthens scientific reasoning and helps students move beyond simply making graphs. For more practice with comparing and interpreting observations, you may also like science skills for comparing and classifying.

💡 Ready made help: My Graphing and Data Analysis Worksheets and Quiz make a great bridge between basic graphing and higher level interpretation. They are fully editable and perfect for differentiating within one class period.

3. Writing Evidence Based Explanations

Even strong students sometimes write weak conclusions. They summarize what happened in the lab, but skip the reasoning behind the results. Writing evidence based explanations helps students connect observations to scientific ideas, which is a skill they will use in every science course.

How to challenge them:

• Use the CER model, which stands for Claim, Evidence, and Reasoning, to structure student thinking.
• Show examples of both strong and weak lab conclusions for students to critique.
• Have students revise a weak paragraph using evidence drawn directly from their data.
• Ask students to explain not just what happened, but why it happened.

These practices strengthen communication and clarity while helping students think more deeply about the science. Strong scientific writing also supports success in other content areas and on assessments.

💡 Ready made help: My Scientific Writing and Analysis Worksheets help students craft well supported explanations and practice scientific writing step by step.

4. Quantitative Problem Solving

Quantitative problem solving is another key science skill for students. When students use numbers to explain real phenomena, science becomes more meaningful. Whether students are calculating moles, density, percent composition, or changes in mass during osmosis, math helps them see the evidence behind the concept.

How to challenge them:

• Embed calculations within engaging, real life examples.
• Ask students to explain in words what each number means.
• Use examples such as density, percent composition, mole conversions, or membrane transport data.
• End with a what if question that changes one part of the problem.

If your students need more support with the math side of science, you may also want to read Unlock Success in Science by Mastering Math Skills.

💡 Ready made help: Chemistry teachers can check out my Mole Chat Lab Station Activity. Biology teachers may prefer my Cellular Membrane Transport Lab.

5. Communicating Like a Scientist

Science is not just about getting correct results. Students also need to communicate their ideas clearly and accurately. When students can explain vocabulary, defend a conclusion, present data, and summarize a process for others, they are demonstrating real mastery.

How to challenge them:

• Have students present lab findings and conclusions to classmates.
• Use peer review checklists to give structured feedback on clarity and accuracy.
• Ask students to create an infographic, slide, or visual summary of an investigation.
• Encourage students to explain scientific vocabulary in language non experts can understand.

Communicating science effectively builds confidence and helps students transfer their learning to other classes and real life situations.

If you want students to strengthen communication while applying science concepts, this is another area where skill based instruction really pays off.

💡 Ready made help: My Evolution Lab, Making Coacervates includes a student designed experiment and opportunities for students to communicate findings in a written lab report or by sharing their experiment orally with classmates.

Final Thoughts

Challenging students in science does not mean assigning more work. It means giving them better opportunities to think, reason, solve problems, and communicate like scientists. Focusing on core science skills helps students succeed not only in science class, but across disciplines.

If you are looking for more ways to strengthen science skills in your classroom, you may also like these related posts:

• 17 Essential Science Skills All Students Need
• Teach the Skills, Please
• Science Skills: Comparing and Classifying
• Science Skills: Applying Scientific Methods
• Unlock Success in Science: Master Math Skills
• How to Teach Science Vocabulary Using Prefixes and Suffixes

💡 Ready made help: Explore my Science Skills Mega Bundle filled with labs, notes, quizzes, and digital activities to make skill building seamless and fun.

Science Process Skills Compare and Contrast Activity

Science Process Skills: Teaching Students to Compare and Contrast

Comparing and contrasting in science is an essential science process skill that helps students analyze observations and understand relationships between organisms, data, and structures. Scientists use compare and contrast skills to identify patterns, classify organisms, and draw meaningful conclusions.

In science, to compare means to identify similarities between two or more objects or organisms, while to contrast means to identify their differences. Learning how to compare and contrast in science helps students organize information, evaluate evidence, and think more critically about what they observe.

Students who develop strong compare and contrast skills become better scientific thinkers. They learn how to recognize patterns, ask deeper questions, and support their conclusions using evidence.

Teachers often use compare and contrast activities at the beginning of the school year when introducing science process skills and scientific thinking. If you are looking for a ready to use compare and contrast science activity for teaching science process skills, you can view my complete lesson here.

What Does It Mean to Compare and Contrast in Science?

When scientists compare two things, they look for the ways those things are similar. When they contrast two things, they look for the ways they are different.

Scientists use comparison in many situations, including:

• comparing two organisms to understand evolutionary relationships
• comparing the data from repeated experiments to check for consistency
• comparing experimental results to identify patterns or trends
• comparing structures in organisms to determine how they function
• comparing characteristics to classify organisms into groups

For example, when scientists compare a shark and a dolphin, they may initially notice that both animals have streamlined bodies and live in the ocean. However, careful comparison reveals important differences that help scientists classify these organisms correctly.

The shark is a fish that breathes through gills, while the dolphin is a mammal that breathes air through lungs. This important difference shows that these two organisms are only distantly related. Even though they are not closely related, both the shark and the dolphin have evolved streamlined bodies that allow them to move efficiently through water. Observing similarities and differences like these helps scientists understand how organisms are related and how they have adapted to their environments.

Teaching students to analyze similarities and differences helps them develop critical thinking and observation skills that are essential throughout biology and other science classes.

Teaching the Science Process Skill of Comparing and Contrasting

Many students struggle with comparing and contrasting because they focus only on obvious differences. Effective science instruction helps students develop the ability to observe carefully and identify meaningful similarities and differences.

One way to teach this skill is to present students with images or examples of organisms and ask them to analyze how the organisms are alike and how they are different.

Students can then use their observations to answer deeper questions such as:

• Why are these similarities important?
• Why do these differences exist?
• What conclusions can be drawn from these observations?

This type of activity helps students begin thinking like scientists.

Science Process Skills Activity: Compare and Contrast

To help students practice this important science skill, I created a lesson designed specifically to teach students how to compare and contrast scientific observations.

This activity includes an instructional presentation and student practice worksheets that guide students through the process of analyzing similarities and differences.

Instructional PowerPoint and Google Slides

The lesson begins with a short PowerPoint or Google Slides presentation that introduces the skill of comparing and contrasting.

During the presentation, students examine images of organisms and practice identifying their similarities and differences. These examples help students understand how scientists analyze observations and draw conclusions.

The slides guide students through questions that encourage deeper thinking about the importance of the similarities and differences they observe.

Printable and Editable Student Worksheets

After the instructional slides, students complete a five page worksheet that provides repeated practice with comparing and contrasting.

The worksheet includes a variety of question types that require students to:

• analyze similarities and differences
• examine biological structures
• evaluate observations
• draw conclusions based on evidence

These activities help students develop stronger observation and reasoning skills, which are essential components of scientific thinking.

Digital Versions for Google Slides and Google Forms

Both printable and digital versions of this activity are included.

Teachers can choose to use the worksheets in traditional printed format or assign the digital versions through platforms such as:

• Google Classroom
• Google Slides
• Google Forms
• Microsoft OneDrive

This flexibility makes the activity easy to use in traditional classrooms, 1:1 classrooms, or distance learning environments.

When Can This Lesson Be Used?

This lesson works well at several different points during the school year.

Many teachers use this activity at the beginning of the year to help students begin thinking like scientists and developing important science skills.

The activity also works well when teaching units on:

• classification and taxonomy
• evolution
• scientific observation
• science process skills

Because the activity focuses on observation and reasoning, it can be used in many different science contexts.

Science Process Skills Resource

If you are interested in using this activity with your students, you can view the complete resource here:

Science Process Skills: Compare and Contrast Activity

This resource includes:

• PowerPoint and Google Slides presentation
• five page printable student worksheet
• digital Google Slides student worksheet
• editable Google Forms version
• teacher guide and answer key

More Science Skills Activities

If you are looking for additional activities to help students develop important science skills, you may also be interested in these related resources.

• Student Designed Experiment post
• Scientific Method post
• Graphing Practice post
• Essential Science Skills post
• Five Essential Science Skills post

👉 “If you want a full overview of teaching science skills, read this post on essential science skills.

Graphing Skills Are Life Skills!

Graphing: Make this a part of as many lessons as possible!

The lessons learned in a science class go much further than just learning the parts of the cell, or the parts of an atom, or the names of the invertebrate phyla, or the trends seen on the periodic table.  We teach important skills that our students will carry with them for the rest of their lives.  Skills such as graphing, metric measurement, cause and effect, percentages, scientific method, logical problem solving, and critical thinking are required for LIFE!

For this blog post, I would like to focus on graphing skills.  I fear that the use of graphing calculators and laboratory probe systems is doing too much work for our students.  I do love using technology in my classroom and lab, but I think that too much of it is actually hurting our students.  Many students are reaching my high school science classes without a clear understanding of how to construct a graph. We need a healthy balance between allowing technology to do the work for us, and doing the work for ourselves. 

There are so many benefits of giving the student a pencil, a ruler, and a piece of graph paper.  

• Graphing the "old-fashioned" way improves fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination.
• Graph construction forces the student to think about the independent and dependent variables and to consider which axis to place them on to show a logical correlation between the two.
• It provides an excellent opportunity to teach our students to "think ahead of the problem" to consider if an outcome or conclusion is logical. 
• Every standardized test our students take will require them to analyze graphs and tables.  Data analysis is a hard concept for many students, but requiring them to construct their own graphs and tables encourages deeper thinking of the data shown on the graph.
• There is no better way to teach "cause and effect" than by graphing data.
• Graphing provides a pictorial representation of data which helps students learn to draw accurate conclusions.

Obviously, we want students to become masters of problem solving and critical thinking, and teaching graphing skills all year long is one way to assure that our students are good thinkers.  Make your labs and classroom activities "quantitative" in nature whenever possible.  Especially in biology, many activities are "qualitative" and involve drawing and describing, but we need to constantly look for opportunities to use labs and other lessons that are math-based and involve the collection of numerical data. 

• Look at the labs you are currently using with your students. Is it possible to have students graph the data they collect?  If so, then always require it!
• It is really important that students construct graphs that have more than one line of data on the same graph.  By placing several lines of data on the same graph, students can quickly see the correlation between the independent and dependent variables.  It provides excellent practice in how to analyze data to reach a proper conclusion.
• You can provide additional problem solving questions to accompany the graphing activity, such as "What do you suppose would happen if this were changed....", or "What would be the outcome if...."
• Include interpolation and extrapolation questions whenever possible. Students need to be able to predict new outcomes based on the data shown on a graph.

I hope these reasons will convince you to include more tabling, graphing and analyzing of information.  But, please!!!  No graphing calculators until your students are proficient at graphing and data analysis skills!!!  I firmly believe the calculator is crippling our students.  The calculator is a wonderful tool.....but AFTER the student can do the skill without the calculator.

If you need help with incorporating more graphing and data analysis into your classes, these resources will help:

Tabling, Graphing and Analyzing Data - PowerPoint with Notes for Teacher and Student

Graphing Practice Problems - Great graphing practice with critical thinking questions.

Graphing and Data Analysis - This is a free download that provides good review and reinforcement in graphing and data analysis.

Graphing, Scientific Method, and Scientific Writing - More great science skills practice!


The following lab activities require graphing as a means of data analysis:

Using a Graph to Find Area - This is another free download and a good graph is the only way to solve the problem.

Lab:  Acids, Bases and Cells   Requires extensive graphing of results.

Modeling Population Growth

The Effect of Concentration on the Rate of Diffusion - Another free download!