Author: Mike FineOpening Remarks Learning in science begins in early childhood. This is a time when young minds are curious about science and ready to engage in the practices and language of science that form a foundation to be built upon and strengthened throughout a student’s K–12 education. If science is not taught in elementary school, this has a major impact on their learning as they progress from one grade level to the next. Elementary students should be encouraged to make observations, ask questions, and generally wonder about things they see and notice every day. Additionally, students should be working with multiple sources of information and building ideas through conversations and activities with classmates. Ignoring these ideas and delaying the development of science language and practices until students formally encounter science in middle school certainly violates what we know about systems: If one part is missing, it affects the other parts of the system. “Something may not work as well (or at all) if a part of it is missing, broken, worn out, mismatched, or misconnected.” —(AAAS 1994, p. 264). What does the research suggest? Starting in early childhood, children are capable of learning sophisticated science and engineering concepts and engage in disciplinary practices. They are deeply curious about the world around them and eager to investigate the many questions they have about their environment. Educators can develop learning environments that support the development and demonstration of proficiencies in science and engineering, including making connections across the contexts of learning, which can help children see their ideas, interests, and practices as meaningful not just for school, but also in their lives. Unfortunately, in many preschool and elementary schools science gets relatively little attention compared to English language arts and mathematics. In addition, many early childhood and elementary teachers do not have extensive grounding in science and engineering content. Source: National Academies of Science●Engineering●Medicine “Science and Engineering in Preschool Through Elementary Grades: The Brilliance of Children and the Strengths of Educators” 2021.
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Author: Colin CostelloWhy is talk important? Involving students actively in science via talk is critically important. It provides a window into students' thinking, helping us see what students do and do not understand. As students begin to talk about something, both students and teachers are able to realize if they do or do not understand everything about the topic. Ever have a student stop midway through an answer or retract their statement? Had a handful of students with competing ideas? A student provides their answer, but can’t justify it with evidence or reasoning? All of these are examples of how talk allows teachers to constantly assess our students in a formative manner. Not only that, but talk guides students into using the science practices, like constructing explanations and arguing from evidence, while encouraging them to use reasoning. This is why student discourse is such an important feature of Phenomenal Science lessons. But not all talk is equal. I-R-E (initiation, response, evaluation) is the dominant discourse pattern of classroom interactions. The student answers the teacher’s question, the teacher congratulates them on a correct response or tries another student to get the “right answer”, and the lesson moves on. In order to engage students in deep thinking with the science and engineering practices, they need access to and experience with discourse-rich sensemaking discussions. Breaking the I-R-E pattern and integrating productive talk may take time and effort to shift away from. To do this, we need to be intentional about how we set up the culture of talk in our classrooms, the tasks we engage students in, and the strategies we use to facilitate students toward more academically productive talk. Setting up a culture of talk If we want students to participate in discourse, then we need to set up an environment where they feel their ideas are valued. Are students sharing their ideas equitably? Are students asking questions of one another? Are they building on each others’ ideas? If these are the types of conversations we want happening in our classrooms, then it is imperative that we lay the groundwork for a culture of talk in our classrooms. Just like we set norms and expectations in our classrooms for behavior and routines, we need to be explicit about what we want from our students regarding discussions and talk with one another. What sort of norms or expectations would you have for your students to establish a culture of productive academic discourse? Here are some examples of norms and expectations from the Inquiry Project. Don’t forget to reinforce and revisit the expectations with your students in order to continue fostering a culture of talk throughout the year. How would you go about setting up a culture that holds students accountable for providing their thinking and building on one another’s ideas, but in a safe and equitable manner? Selecting or designing tasks worthy of student discourse Once students feel comfortable talking in your classroom, the next step is to be purposeful about what tasks are going to actually support student discourse. Just like not all student conversations are equally important, not all tasks are supportive of deep student discourse, and not all activities should necessarily require it either. Let’s use the comparisons of task A and task B from the book “5 Practices for Orchestrating Task-Based Discussion in the Science Classroom”. In the images below, notice how task A tells the student precisely what to do and how to do it. What do you think the result would be for each group of students in your class? All the same products with very little difference. Contrast task A with task B, where the task is much more open-ended, allowing students to have choice and voice, along with multiple possible ways to show their thinking. Which one would spark questions, noticings, and a deeper sense-making discussion on the topic? In order to encourage the type of discourse we want students to engage in, we need to select and design tasks that are complex with just enough ambiguity that students need to do some heavy lifting and make choices. Allow them to make sense of the situation and be the scientist trying to figure it out. Cartier, Jennifer L. (2013). 5 practices for orchestrating productive task-based discussions in science. Reston, VA :National Council of Teachers of Mathematics : NSTA Press Teacher strategies for promoting student discourse Lastly, how do we as facilitators of this discourse make sure students are actually talking productively and moving toward understanding? How do we make sure students are building on each other’s ideas or refuting them respectfully with evidence? How do we get the discussion to a class consensus? For that, we need to employ teacher talk moves and strategies. Check out some of the Inquiry Projects talk strategies (p.7-9) and talk moves (p.11) to get some ideas. The Inquiry Project provides many resources related to talking in science and gives a nice overview of various talk moves we can do to support deeper student thinking. This takes time and practice to implement well. Maybe print out a quick reference talk moves bookmark, like this one, or the picture below, to have handy during class discussions until it becomes more natural. Keeley, P. (2016). Formative Assessment Probes: Talk Moves. A Formative Assessment Strategy for Fostering Productive Probe Discussions. Science and Children, 53, 24-26. Want to know more about productive discourse in the classroom? Check out our other blog on this topic with additional resources.
Phenomenal Science are phenomena-based elementary science units, that integrate engineering, math, and language arts. Of course, phenomena-based means there is a critical emphasis on students making sense of phenomena, which requires them to engage in hands-on investigation, discourse, modeling, argumentation, and explanation. The phenomena-based instructional model can be hard to engage students in within the current constraints and challenges of teaching science today in our often remote-learning world. Remote or hybrid learning appears to be quite at odds with phenomena-based instruction. Since we are committed to enabling all elementary students the opportunity to engage in sense-making around real scientific phenomena, we are pleased to be working collaboratively with the Center for Digital Curricula, College of Engineering, University of Michigan. Together, we are thrilled to announce that that six PS units, cast as visual, interactive Roadmaps and hosted on the Center’s Collabrify Roadmap Platform, are now available for download and classroom use. As a digital version of the PS Units, the Roadmaps bring the units alive in the digital world and, allow for a variety of teaching styles and customizations to better meet the needs of your students. The Collabrify Roadmap Platform is browser-based (e.g., Chrome, Safari). Thus, the Platform runs on Chromebooks, Windows or Mac laptops, desktops or tablets The Roadmaps are a digital option for the PS units that enable students to engage in real sense-making through the use of science and engineering practices. The PS unit Roadmaps support face-to-face classrooms, at home learning, or a hybrid model. Collabrify offers teachers the option to have students work individually or in collaborative groups. Using audio, video and animations, students can create artifacts of their learning, such as dynamic models characterizing the observed science phenomena. Students can even hold discussions with peers who are co-located or not, by talking through the computer using Collabrify’s Voice-over IP channels. Still further, student assessments are also presented in this digital format, offering a safer and paperless option. The first unit of each grade, K through 5, are presently available; new units will be added as funding might allow. Teacher set-up and administration is easy, and help and training is available. The six Roadmap PS units can be accessed on the unit page of the PS website for the units with Roadmaps. More information is available at the Collabrify Phenomenal Science landing page. Watch this how-to video from Collabrify to learn more. Please send an email to [email protected] indicating your interest in using the digital, Roadmap versions of the PS curricula. The Collabrify team will get back to you and arrange for a webinar that will explain how to use the Roadmap versions of the PS curriculum. In order to ensure that elementary science is on the minds of district improvement teams, it is very tempting to add goals and strategies for Phenomenal Science as a whole. This is especially problematic for Michigan schools, as it requires districts to enter Phenomenal Science as a district “strategy” in the MiStrategy Bank.
Phenomenal Science is many things, but it is not a school improvement “strategy” when taken as a whole. That would be like saying you are going to get better at basketball by playing better basketball. It is true but unhelpful. Phenomenal Science does contain many principles and strategies that would be appropriate to add. The good news is that there is already a list of Phenomenal Science Principles and Strategies you can look at as a guide: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1cIBSQT3BMoXEo-ZbST3Y7FsTBmhQ7CfPLvyg7xH9FRA/edit The second and third pages are full of instructional strategies you could consider adding as a Strategy in MICIP. Focusing improvement on these strategies is like saying you are going to get better at basketball by doing drills for dribbling, practicing free throws, and playing 1 on 1 with a coach. Curriculum shifts are important, but not the top priority. If you want to see improvement in student achievement in all subjects (and science in particular), you need to keep the focus on shifting instructional strategies. This is true no matter how long you have been using Phenomenal Science. Wise words to support our need as teachers to be lifelong learners. This has never been so important when we navigate new learning environments, teaching in a pandemic, or embarking on a new curricular resource. Phenomenal Science may be an Open Education Resource, free to any teacher looking for a high quality science curriculum, but we want to ensure you that there are supports for you who have been teaching PS for years, beginning to teach a unit, plan to implement, piloting or reviewing, or are just thinking about it. Learning is a continuous process, and we as teachers should be the first to lead by doing. We’d like to offer 6 ways for you to gain professional learning from this community of educators, your very own PLC!
Author: Joan AnconaWelcome 2021
We made it! We made it out of 2020 and into 2021 and there is light at the end of the tunnel. Oh, and it feels so good. We really have learned a lot and will be better in the end. That feeling of relief upon entering this new year is a common one all across the globe. One thing for sure is that we are not alone in this one. Everyone, everywhere will remember 2020. We had a shared experience world-wide, how amazing. Even though we often think we just want things to go back, now when we take a look at the world around us we realize that the only way we can move is forward. So what can we as elementary science teachers do on this forward path? What if we hardly got to science at all in 2020? Have we failed our students just at the time when they need to learn science the most? It’s going to be OK. You have undoubtedly been doing more science and engineering than ever - not less. It's the thinking like a scientist, and doing like an engineer, that is the most valuable part for our students, not the specific content. You and your students got to act like scientists and think like scientists and see themselves as direct participants in science and engineering, everyday. That is moving forward. The world we are living in is filled with science and engineering questions, problems, activities, investigations, and discussions. We are all involved and we have all been learning. Best of all, for the past year we were not just learning things that someone else already knows or that someone found out long ago. We have been constantly uncovering and discovering, measuring and debating, suggesting and exploring things that no one has built an expertise about. We are all working together to move our world into uncharted territory. We continue to argue our ideas using evidence we collect from the world around us, just like scientists. That is moving forward. You may think that there is still not enough time for official “science” lessons and that ELA and math have added significance this year. But remember science is all around us. Squeeze it in. Try this game with your students. Run these quick discussion sessions a little bit everyday, at the beginning of home room time, between math and recess, before writing time, whenever you have a minute or two to squeeze it in. Brainstorm in small groups, or reflect individually. Answer the question: What have you been doing that is just like a scientist or an engineer? Use the Science and Engineering Practices to come up with a master list of all the things you and your students have been doing throughout this year that are just like the work of a scientist or an engineer. I have a head start for you in the examples below - have fun with this! Your students will gain so much from knowing that they are scientists and engineers already. And when we are able to return to “official” science classes, we will all be ready with our developing skills and knowledge. Asking Questions and Defining Problems: What will school be like? How can we do investigations with students who are distanced? What is the best room arrangement for students to allow them to have learning conversations safely? What will my teacher want me to do? What kind of materials will I need to learn at home? Developing and Using Models: Using shoes in rows as blocks in a bar graph - Drawing plans for my classroom and work environment - Representing my classroom in a Bit-moji picture - Practicing fractions while cooking in the kitchen Planning and Carrying Out Investigations - Having practice zoom meetings with students just to see what will happen - Playing with new software and online classrooms and interactive remote learning tools to see which works best - Taking a chance and participating on a camera to see how my classmates will react Analyzing and Interpreting Data - Discussing survey data collected from parents and colleagues - Discussing what’s working and what’s not for my at home classroom - Counting up how many students participate in each kind of assignment Using Mathematics and Computational Thinking - Measuring the distance between student chairs - Keeping track with hash marks how many times my teacher says Ummmm - Estimating how long it's going to take to finish this assignment and pass the computer to my sister Constructing Explanations and Designing Solutions - Finding the best way to use your cell phone as a document camera - Coming up with the best background for sharing while I am on camera - Designing a new way for students to work in small groups while wearing masks. Engaging in Argument from Evidence - Explaining (again) why we need to wear masks all the time - Explaining to your teacher what they do that makes the lesson easier to hear - Explaining to parents why students need to participate every day Obtaining, Evaluating, and Communicating Information - Researching the best way to do demonstrations for remote learning - Sharing your screen to show your classmates your work - Deciding which expert to listen to when it comes to remote learning Remember, Science is all around us! Imagine being in an airplane flying 30,000 feet above where the cars and trucks look like the size of ants and caterpillars. The land looks like the patchwork of a quilt and the bodies of water meander through the shades of greens and browns. You’re nearing your destination. The pilot comes over the loudspeaker and informs the crew and passengers that you will begin making your descent. Looking out your window, your view of the landscape begins to look a little different with more details and dimension. You are able to see the make and color of the cars and trucks, and you can see if the bodies of water are for motorized boats or preserved for nature. It’s these various views that helps orient you to where you are in the world at that moment in time. And, 30,000 feet above looks quite different than at ground level.
Just as an airplane ride offers multiple views and perspectives of the world, the Phenomenal Science Version 2.0 offers just that! Knowing more about the intentional design of each unit and features will support educators with implementation. The units have been enhanced to include the following resources, airplane ride style: 30,000 foot features: Familiarizing you with the unit
10,000 foot features: Learning Cycles or Assessable Chunks
1,000 foot features: Day-to-day Learning
Ground Level features: Teacher GPS...When to pause, turn, talk, and model
When we think about the flow of a lesson, the component icons are our best clue for thinking about how the students will uncover the ideas they are working with. Remember, 3-dimensional learning happens bit-by-bit and sense-making takes time. Patterns of data lead students to making evidence based claims about a phenomena or offer up solutions to problems. These intentional enhancements in Version 2.0 will aid in the delivery of instruction with students where they have multiple opportunities to observe, process, and dialogue about phenomena all in an effort to ensure that we are creating system thinkers, and problem-solvers for many years to come. Keep this in mind as you use all of the enhancements in version 2.0. Don’t skip the 30,000 features or the ground level features. Each offers a helpful view to guide you and your students to the learning destination. Still using Version 1.0? No worries! Version 2.0 still includes the same great lessons, but with enhancements for teachers to support implementation. We strongly recommend that you switch to Version 2.0 posted on http://phenomscience.weebly.com. In time, the #GoOpen site will reflect the new links, as will Oakland Rubicon Atlas. Still have questions about Version 2.0? Just ask your regional Phenomenal Science Leader! Authors: Jessica Ashley and Linnea GibsonMaking decisions is tough. It’s likely you and your team are having conversations and asking many BIG questions, such as:
We’ve identified two paths to consider for teaching and learning science during the 20-21 school year and beyond. Path 1 - Do you have scheduled time to teach and learn science? Path 2 - Are you lacking the time for science and searching for purposeful ways to integrate with Math and ELA? Whichever path connects with your situation the best, we’ve got you covered with the 4 steps below. Details for both paths are outlined in the slides linked below. We recognize that the “plan” for school may change throughout the year, but taking these four steps will guide you for a more successful year. Step 1: Take Inventory → Discuss and record current Scope and Sequence and what COVID learning included. Step 2: Ask Important Questions → Which units might be best to learn remotely for students? → Which units already have math and ELA connections already built in? → How might I “marry” my Informational Text and / or Persuasive units of study with Science or Social Studies? → “Marrying” an entire unit seems like a big challenge, but I think I could prioritize some lessons or learning cycles. Which lessons or learning cycles are the best candidates for this? → How do my decisions affect the grade levels above or below me? What notes do we want to capture to refer to for 2021 and beyond? Step 3: Become Familiar with Supports and Resources → Some phenomenal educators have shared the resources they used during COVID learning. Step 4: Reach Consensus on a Scope and Sequence for 20-21 → As a team, think through any restrictions on remote learning, resources, access for all students and pacing to create your best Scope and Sequence for moving forward. Use this Slide Deck to guide your grade-level team through a thinking exercise with dialogue, deliberation, and decision making about moving forward for 20-21 and beyond. This is meant to be a tool to support you and is available to use as you wish, so please record your thinking within the slides and share with your colleagues. Trust that the Phenomenal Science Leadership Team is thinking with you! We’re also asking BIG questions! We may not have all of the answers, but we’re here to support throughout the year. As we get into what school will look like in a new normal, keep watching for blog updates on ideas to support hybrid learning, guides for facilitating virtual classes, and so much more to help you this year. Stay Phenomenal! Phenomenal Science Core Principles The Phenomenal Science Units are founded on research-backed beliefs about the process by which students construct their understanding of science. These beliefs and values underlie our instruction and curriculum development in the form of Core Principles. Here are the PS Core Principles in summary:
The following theories form the research support base for Phenomenal Science Core Principles and Key Instructional Strategies. Thus everything we do in Phenomenal Science is founded on these.
Social Learning Theory - Starting with Vygotsky’s research, this theory supports the idea that students learn within a community. The community includes peers, teachers, other adults, and home and family life as well. Discourse, talk moves, and whole-class processing strategies become critical learning strategies as a result. See the Social Learning Theory Blog for more information. Inquiry Instructional Model - As an outgrowth of Constructivist Learning and Social Learning Theory, Dewey’s Inquiry Based Learning in the form of Guided Inquiry becomes the backbone of Phenomenal Science units. Each instructional Cycle follows a modified “Five E Approach” as proposed by Bybee. This model helps us ensure that investigations happen prior to asking students to develop concepts and that student concepts have begun forming before we introduce vocabulary or expert voice. See the Inquiry Blog for more information.
Unpacking the StandardsThe Phenomenal Science Units were developed with a backwards design approach as described by Wiggins and McTighe. This means that the first step to understanding what must happen in a unit is to truly understand what is in the Michigan Science Standards / Next Generation Science Standards bundled in that unit. You can see the bundles of the standards in the Pacing and Alignment Guide (go to the Units page). The following resources and information are helpful in understanding the three dimensions of the standards and how they work together.
Some further helpful resources are: Including Engineering
In the blog Connecting Anchoring Phenomena with the Nature of Science and Engineering, the author has a good description of how you could use the same phenomenon to tackle both an engineering problem and a science question. Appendix I of f the NGSS explains more about the inclusion of Engineering in the standards. It gives these progressions across Elementary grades: In the units, there should be at least one engineering problem tackled in most units. Usually this will occur after the the phenomenon has been explored with scientific questions toward the end of an IC or even the end of the unit. Three dimensional AssessmentsThe second step of backwards designing units is to develop an assessment. This give the unit its "target," and ensures that it stays aligned to the standards. Because of the three-dimensional nature of the standards, most of the unit assessments are three dimensional Performance Assessment Tasks, and some are Item Clusters. You can investigate your unit's assessments in the Evidence of Learning Section (orange charts).
How do we translate Checkbrics to points? How do we assign grades for report cards? This could be a challenge for teachers, and we’ve found that sometimes teachers who are first trying out PS really struggle with this. Here is a resource from ASCD that gives some more background on using Performance Assessments which might help. Several units incorporate pre-assessments. Formative Assessment Probes such as these and Science Formative Assessment are good resources for pre-assessment, but there are many other ways as well. Also, this section from Tools and Traits for Highly Effective Science Teaching called “Before and During the Science Lesson: Using Science Probes to Get at Student Thinking” (p. 41-44) can be a good resource. In the Phenomenal Science Units we've embedded assessment in several places, since the learning, teaching, feedback cycle is continuous. There are also several different types of assessment. The summative assessments for the unit are typically performance assessment tasks like those linked above and can be found in the Evidence of Learning section as well as at the end of the instructional cycles. Other assessment opportunities are highlighted in the Learning Plan Overview as well as in each lesson. Formative Assessment Formative Assessment is critical to teaching science using sense-making strategies. Formative assessment is a “process used by teachers and students during instruction that provides feedback to adjust ongoing teaching and learning to improve students’ achievement of intended instructional outcomes” (CCSSO, 2008, p. 3) As Furtak points out, “formative assessment is something that teachers and students can do together, every day, to monitor student learning and provide timely feedback (Shepard 2000; Trauth-Nare and Buck 2011).” (Furtak & Heredia, 2016)) This makes formative assessment and invaluable tool for teachers engaging students in making sense of science phenomena. The text box details some specific differences that come with three-dimensional formative assessments.
Using the process outlined by Furtak, et al, helps teachers make the best use of the formative assessment process. It is important that the formative assessment used be both rigorous and responsive. Formative assessments help us answer three questions: Where are we going? Where are we now? How do we get there? Teaching science for understanding through sense-making is not a linear process, but formative assessments help us get there. (Gotwals, 2017). [Diagram from Furtak, 2017] Where are we going is answered in the PE’s, unit goals, and learning performance statements. Using a tool like the one shown below (from Furtak, 2017) can also help teachers take students current ideas, thinking and experiences into account when considering the formative assessment goal and tool to use. How do we elicit student understanding? There are three main methods to gather evidence of student understanding: Discourse, Written work, Student Self assessment. (Gotwals, 2017). Choosing a rich task, especially during the Pre Assessment portion of the instructional cycles can be a very productive method for understanding student thinking. Rich tasks are ones that will show what naive conceptions and explanations students are currently holding as well as give the teacher some potential leverage points about which to focus upcoming discourse and investigations. In this way, teachers can allow students to use student-generated evidence to build models, explanations and arguments toward more scientifically accepted explanations of phenomena. The most challenging portion of formative assessment process is determining what can be learned from the results. Two main purposes for the formative assessment is to provide feedback to students and determine our next steps in instruction. Another key challenge for teachers is determining what to be graded. Considering that the key purpose of formative assessment is to give feedback to teacher for planning and students for growth, they should be graded sparingly. Both students and teachers need to have trust in the process and be free and confident to share their thinking about their science ideas. (Gotwals, 2017. DeLeon & Allen, 2015) Using evidence is the hardest piece of the puzzle. (Gotwals, 2017) According to Gotwals the main question teachers need to ask themselves with formative assessment data / evidence: What can you productively do with that idea? Some possibilities include, adding ideas to a Class Question Board or Competing Hypotheses Board; gather evidence as a class to support or refute the idea; use the idea to scaffold small group discourse or as questions in whole class discourse. Another great option for showing student growth and learning is to keep track of student models that change over time - can have a checklist for the model and pieces that you want to see in it. (Gotwals, 2017). Furtak recommends the following tools as helpful as teachers analyze student formative assessment data Finally as can be seen from Research Brief: The Informal Formative Assessment Cycle as a Model for Teacher Practice formative assessment can help science teachers attend to equity in the following ways:
So, with all this background, how do we use formative assessment within Phenomenal Science? There are several areas within the units to look for possible formative assessment tasks. First, in the Learning Plan Overview charts, the right-most column is dedicated to highlighting some of the formative assessment opportunities within each instructional cycle. All of the items in that column would be ones that could provide feedback to teachers and students about student understanding. Secondly, throughout the units there are embedded opportunities for Student Discourse and for Written Work. Discourse happens both in small groups and pairs and in whole class settings. Written work comes especially in the form of notebook entries, models, initial explanations and CER’s. Some instructional activities combine the two especially well such as, Summary Tables, Class Question Boards, Consensus Models or Explanations, and Investigations. For further ideas about formative assessments:
Science concepts are developed through multiple iterations |
AuthorPhenomenal Science Leadership Team Archives
February 2022
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