How might a teacher go about planning a unit/lesson when give a topic to teach?

1. So you have to teach about genetic inheritance, balancing equations, force and motion, plate tectonics etc…….NOW WHAT DO YOU DO? How might a teacher go about planning a unit/lesson when give a topic to teach? What does a teacher need to consider? What kinds of things does a teacher need to do to plan a unit/lesson?

2. Puzzle Challenge! • “To begin with the end in mind means to start with a clear understanding of your destination. It means to know where you’re going so that you better understand where you are now so that the steps you take are always in the right direction” Stephen R. Covey The seven habits of highly effective people. How might this relate to planning effective units/lessons?

3. Unit/Lesson Planning – Design for understanding! • Know where you are going and how you will know you have arrived before you plan the route to get there. • Think about design purposefully with the learner/student understandings at the forefront to drive design approach. • Can think of it like first considering the outputs and then inputs of a unit/lesson. • Outputs= learning and evidence of learning • Inputs= what the teacher will do or provide -using textbooks, activities, etc.

4. Backwards Design (Wiggins and McTighe)

5. Take a few minutes to discuss with your partner some possible topic ideas for your micro-teaching lesson. Decide on 1 topic to explore for now. This does not have to be your final topic!

6. Identify desired results • Clarify the priorities, examine content standards, establish goals • We also need to consider the needs of the students, interests, and previous understandings. • Taking a closer look at the Standards • With your topic in mind look at the NYS standards and NSES. • Compare/contrast the two documents. • How does each document treat your topic? • Be prepared to discuss what you learn from this comparison. • http://www.p12.nysed.gov/ciai/mst/sci/ls.html • Examine the Atlas Scientific Literacy maps – • What new information do you gain about your topic? • How are these maps different than the standards documents? • http://strandmaps.nsdl.org/

7. Identify desired results • Big Ideas – framing a unit and establishing purpose/goals for learning • It is important to determine what it is about the topic that is important for students to understand. • Move away from treating a topic as a set of facts, definitions, diagrams, formulas etc…to presenting it in a way that helps students to identify most important points and make connections. • Remember start with the end in mind - Big ideas will be the key understandings you want students to be able to develop over the course of a unit.

8. Identify desired results • Content goals for each lesson can be drawn from big ideas. • This can fit into the purpose of the lesson. • Will help to frame objectives for learning as well. • Look at sample big ideas from Teaching Science for Motivation and Understanding • With your micro-teaching partner use the resources you have to write a draft of the big ideas for a unit on your topic. • ** KEY idea is that you have to construct the big ideas – will not find them in the curriculum materials, textbooks, or individual standards.**

10. Identify desired results • Moving from big ideas to objectives – defining what you want students to learn • “Your big ideas are the ways you want students to tell the story of their understanding” (A. Anderson) • “Your objectives are the [learning] practices (especially application and inquiry) that you want your students to engage in”.(A. Anderson) Read through the objectives that go with the big idea examples. What is your impression of these objectives based on your reading from Trowbridge?

11. Three domains of objectives: Cognitive, Affective, and Pyschomoter • We will focus on how to write cognitive objectives (not to say the others are not important) • Consider different levels of cognitive objectives- knowledge vs. Understanding

12. Knowledge: Comprehending facts • Student can parrot something the teacher said • Could name parts of a plant • Could solve fill-in-the-blank equations for Boyle’s Gas Law. • Knowledge, students only familiar with an idea-- enough to get them by in a cocktail party conversation. • Verbs in lesson objectives that indicate knowledge is required: know that, name, list, label, define, state, identify slides from http://tools4teachingscience.org/resources/

13. Some examples of objectives written at level of knowledge • Students will state that exothermic chemical reactions release energy. • Students will list the phases of the moon. • Students will state that mutation is one mechanism that allows natural selection to continue. • Students will state that scientific models are subject to change over time. • Students will label the parts of a plant cell. slides from http://tools4teachingscience.org/resources/

14. Understanding- is the ability to think and act flexibly with what one knows. It is a performance as opposed to rote recall or plugging in answers (Wiggins and McTighe, 1998). • One way to demonstrate understanding?: Explanation • sophisticated and justified accounts of events, actions, and ideas • Why is that so? • What explains such events? • How can we prove it? • To what is this connected? • How does this work? • What is implied? slides from http://tools4teachingscience.org/resources/

15. Examples of objectives written as explanation • A student can explain why ice, water and steam are all the same chemical substance. • A student explains how the phases of the moon occur. • A student supportshis theory of how pulleys work by constructing a set of them that will reduce his effort to lift 20 pounds by half. slides from http://tools4teachingscience.org/resources/

16. Understanding- is the ability to think and act flexibly with what one knows. It is a performance as opposed to rote recall or plugging in answers (Wiggins and McTighe, 1998). • Another way to demonstrate understanding?: Interpretation • Interpretations and translations that provide meaning. • What does it (a graph, a theory, a scientific argument) mean? • What does it illustrate or illuminate? • How does it relate to me? slides from http://tools4teachingscience.org/resources/

17. Examples of objectives written as interpretation • A student can interpret the meaning behind a graph of predator and prey relationships. • A student can summarize the argumentsof and offer rebuttals to a classmate who believes that light can go around corners. slides from http://tools4teachingscience.org/resources/

18. Understanding- is the ability to think and act flexibly with what one knows. It is a performance as opposed to rote recall or plugging in answers (Wiggins and McTighe, 1998). • Another way to demonstrate understanding?: Application • The ability to use knowledge effectively in new situations and diverse contexts. • How and where can we use this knowledge, skill, or process? • How should my thinking and action be modified to meet the demands of this particular situation? slides from http://tools4teachingscience.org/resources/

19. Examples of objectives written as application • A student can diagnose what is wrong with his classmate’s plant growth experiment and offer suggestions for improvement. • A student can use their knowledge of plate tectonics on earth and predict what might be happening in the interior of other planets. • A student identifieswhen a science problem about gears requires the use of proportional reasoning that they learned about in math class. slides from http://tools4teachingscience.org/resources/

20. Cognitive Domain – Bloom’s Taxonomy Pg. 94 Table 6-2

21. Ways to think about targeting understanding…. • Explain how or why… • Justify statements with evidence… • Make a prediction based on data or a model…. • Support an idea or claim… • Infer based on data… • Illustrate how… • Modify a model or idea… • Synthesize concepts to make summary statement… • Interpret… • Apply an idea or principle… • Analyze outcomes… • Critique an assumption… • Identify assumptions… • Diagnose how something works… • Provide evidence that… • Reorganize… • Create a design for… slides from http://tools4teachingscience.org/resources/

22. What to think about in writing objectives for lesson plans: • Focus primarily on intellectual activity that targets understanding – some objectives must necessarily target knowledge (students will know that …) and basic skills, but the most important ones target understanding. • Should be written in terms of student learning results not teacher or instructional results. Learning objectives are things the students will do, not what the teacher will do. • Should be behavioral – what students will be able to do or how they will behave as a result of the instruction - SWBAT…. • Use action verbs to write these (something you can observe) • All objectives should be assessable by some means – (measurable). Slide modified from http://tools4teachingscience.org/resources/

23. Remember!!! • Objectives, not activity-mania, should drive how you assess and how you teach. Objectives Assessment Learning Activities Slides modified from http://tools4teachingscience.org/resources/

24. 1. Explain the steps in the process of photosynthesis. • 2. Explain how plants get their food. • 3. Predict the effects of different environmental conditions on plant growth and survival. • 4. Design experiments to investigate the effects of different environmental conditions on plant growth and survival. • 5. Critique arguments made by politicians and economists about the effects of global warming on plant growth.

25. 1. Compare and contrast heat transfer by conduction, convection, and radiation. • 2. Classify examples of heat transfer according to the kind of heat transfer that is taking place. • 3. Explain examples of heat transfer in terms of energy and molecular motion. • 4. Design systems that use thermal conductors or insulators to control rates of heat transfer • 5. Design experiments to compare substances with respect to their properties as thermal conductors or insulators.

26. Practice writing learning objectives for your content goals • Write three objectives from your big ideas

27. How will you know if students achieved desired results? How will you know if the end goal has been achieved? • Think about a unit or lesson in terms of the collected assessment evidence needed to document and validate the desired learning. • “Think first like an assessor” Operationalize goals or standards in terms of assessment evidence as you being to plan a unit or course • Determine acceptable evidence • Evaluate Brian’s lesson plans “thinking like an assessor”. • How does Brian plan for assessment? • What are examples of some of his assessments? What evidence do these assessments provide?

28. Determine acceptable evidence

29. What Counts as Evidence? • Types of assessments to gather evidence • Formal and informal • Diagnostic Formative Summative • Determine acceptable evidence Pre-assessment Embedded in lesson- provides feedback to teacher and students about learning Documents learning often for reporting – typically at the end

30. Examples of assessment strategies (not an exhaustive list): • Determine acceptable evidence

31. What experiences will you provide as the teacher to achieve desired learning? • Consider the instructional sequence for planning (learning cycle, 5E’s) • Be descriptive in your planning- what will teachers and students be doing/thinking during the different phases of the lesson? • What instructional approaches/strategies will you use? • Discussion, laboratory work, cooperative learning, inquiry, lecture, games, speakers, field work, ….. • Where does the assessment fit in during the lesson? • Questions - Plan ahead important questions to check for understanding or provoke student thinking. “Hip pocket questions” WRITE these down in your plan!! • How are all learners supported in your plan? • Detail your instructional plan as if someone else (a substitute) would have to implement your plan as you intended. • Consider procedural details like transitions and materials management. • Plan learning experiences and instruction

32. Lesson Plan Analysis • In your group analyze the lesson plan samples • Critiques – • What is good about plan? • What could be improved on in the plan? • Things that stood out to you that you had not considered?

33. Lesson Plan Collection • Look at flow chart

34. Identify desired results • Other ways to approach creating big ideas • http://tools4teachingscience.org/tools/big_idea.html • ** KEY idea is that you have to construct the big ideas – will not find them in the curriculum materials, textbooks, or individual standards. • Read the big idea sheet and read Trowbridge Chapter 6 - The Objectives of Science Teaching