| Term | Meaning |
| Observing | tasting, touching, using your 5 senses |
| Communicating | talking or listening, writing a letter |
| Estimating | Guessing how many M&Ms are in a jar |
| Measuring | Using a ruler, scale, to determine size |
| Collecting Data | Writing down your observations |
| Classifying | Separating marbles into groups of small and large |
| Inferring | Observing footprints and making a guess about what someone is doing |
| Predicting | Guessing about what is going to happen |
| Investigating | Using clues to help "Catch a Crook" |
| hypothesis | If...then...statement that you test during an experiment |
| Independent Variable (IV) | the one variable you change (or test) in an experiment |
| Dependent Variable (DV) | what you are looking for to happen in your experiment; what you measure |
| Variable | Anything that could affect the outcome of the experiment |
| Control Group | the one group where you don't apply the IV |
| Constant Conditions | all the variable you keep the same in the experiment |
