- Year 2019
- NSF Noyce Award # 1439926
- First Name Virginia
- Last Name Vandergon
- Institution California State University, Northridge
- Role/Position Principal Investigator
- Workshop Category Track 1: Scholarships and Stipends
- Workshop Disciplines Audience Biological
- Target Audience Noyce Master Teachers, Noyce Teaching Fellows, School and District Administrators, Undergraduate and/or Graduate Noyce Scholars
- Topics Supporting Each and Every Student
- Session Length 30 minutes
Goals
1) How to support scaffold learning for ALL students in a science classroom;
2) Provide a common NGSS experience that models Phenomenon-Based 3 Dimensional Teaching and Learning that ALL students can partake in;
3) Model NGSS pedagogical shifts for science instruction by discussing teacher moves and student moves.
Evidence
Looking at science teaching practices that organize instruction around relevant and complex phenomena help students learn science in a more meaningful way. Allowing students to make their thinking visible through modeling and revisiting these models over time helps students dig deeper into the content and practice of science. By providing opportunities for students to critically think and problem solve, students engage in the practices of science. In order for ALL students to have access to these practices classroom teachers have to shift their pedagogy to provide opportunities for scaffolding and deep learning. Two recent books (of many) that support this work are:
McNeill, Katherine and Joseph Krajcik (2012) Supporting Grade 5-8 Students in Constructing Explanations in Science: The Claim, Evidence, and Reasoning Framework for Talk and Writing. Pearson
Windschitil, Mark, Jessica Thompson, & Melissa Braaten (2018) Ambitious Science Teaching. Harvard Education Press, Boston
Proposal
The focus of this session will be on how to use scaffolding techniques to get all students to develop their own Claim Evidence Reasoning (CER) model around a global climate change related issue. The participants will take part in a hands-on lesson that starts with a phenomenon that students can wonder about and ask questions. Then the participants will, as adult learners, explore the phenomenon by doing a demonstration that helps all students have the same experience related to the phenomenon. Participants will then develop an individual claim of what they observed in the demo using CER. At this point they will have an opportunity to draw out a model of their understanding of their claim. Further explanations will then be scaffolded with some reading and maps after which participants will re-visit their models. Working with a small group they will share their CER models with each other and then collaborate to form a consensus model for their group. If time allows they will do a gallery walk to see what other models participants drew giving peer feedback. Intentional time will be set aside at the end to debrief teacher moves and student moves. Transparency in how to guide students in sense making by using CER will be discussed as well as strategies for reading and consensus building in a science classroom.
