desired results
In today’s world, we hope that science and technology can solve problems our communities are faced with and progress them for the better. This idea that the people influence science is the big idea of this project. Students often don’t understand how what they are learning about in science relates to the real world or how science influences their lives and others. Through this project, students will learn scientific concepts and study how that affects or has affected society.
The relation between the natural sciences and social sciences are and have always been influential towards one another. In the first half of the 20th century, our world was consumed by war. During this time, many governments would fund scientists research in the relation to wartime applications. Today, many scientific advances are in the forms of renewable energy resources, genetic engineering, or biotechnology. There is a pattern in this relationship, science responds to the needs of society. As the needs of society change with time, so does the research and breakthroughs of science.
The knowledge base for this project is two-fold: understanding and applying life science's structure and function concepts to real world phenomena and understanding the structure and function of society and it's influences on science. Through the sequence of units taught in seventh grade life sciences, students will learn science concepts from structure and function of living things; growth, development, and reproduction of organisms; matter and energy in organisms and ecosystems; interdependent relationships in ecosystems; and lastly, adaptations and natural selection. While the knowledge base for the science progress in scale from micro to macro, students will also align different societal issues in a scale factor as well. The topics that will align to the science units are; understanding how a society functions; examining food desserts; the ethics behind designer babies; land use and the effects on bees; asian carps effect in the Great Lakes; and lastly, the many angles of belief on evolution.
This project combines two different disciplines, learned in different ways. To develop students’ understanding of scientific concepts, a model based inquiry approach will be used to investigate and discover ideas connected to a puzzling phenomena. Whereas for the society component, students will examine the multiple perspectives constructed by different societies in relation to the scientific concept. Due to the nature in which scientist and sociologists/historians communicate, students will communicate their understandings in a narrative format while supporting their viewpoints with evidence from experiences, investigations, and non-fiction literature.
The relation between the natural sciences and social sciences are and have always been influential towards one another. In the first half of the 20th century, our world was consumed by war. During this time, many governments would fund scientists research in the relation to wartime applications. Today, many scientific advances are in the forms of renewable energy resources, genetic engineering, or biotechnology. There is a pattern in this relationship, science responds to the needs of society. As the needs of society change with time, so does the research and breakthroughs of science.
The knowledge base for this project is two-fold: understanding and applying life science's structure and function concepts to real world phenomena and understanding the structure and function of society and it's influences on science. Through the sequence of units taught in seventh grade life sciences, students will learn science concepts from structure and function of living things; growth, development, and reproduction of organisms; matter and energy in organisms and ecosystems; interdependent relationships in ecosystems; and lastly, adaptations and natural selection. While the knowledge base for the science progress in scale from micro to macro, students will also align different societal issues in a scale factor as well. The topics that will align to the science units are; understanding how a society functions; examining food desserts; the ethics behind designer babies; land use and the effects on bees; asian carps effect in the Great Lakes; and lastly, the many angles of belief on evolution.
This project combines two different disciplines, learned in different ways. To develop students’ understanding of scientific concepts, a model based inquiry approach will be used to investigate and discover ideas connected to a puzzling phenomena. Whereas for the society component, students will examine the multiple perspectives constructed by different societies in relation to the scientific concept. Due to the nature in which scientist and sociologists/historians communicate, students will communicate their understandings in a narrative format while supporting their viewpoints with evidence from experiences, investigations, and non-fiction literature.
acceptable evidence
scientific
Through MBI, sense-making activities are used to build students understanding of content through investigated designed that allow them to apply the scientific practices of NGSS. All student evidence of investigations will be house in a notebook. Modeling is a valuable assessment tool to show the progress and development of scientific understanding. Developing, testing, revising, and evaluating explanatory models is the skeleton around which MBI units are designed. For each unit, the phenomena is changed, along with the content/science ideas addressed, but the same modeling process is followed: 1. develop initial models; 2. revisit, test, and revise models to improve their predictive and explanatory power; 3. create final models; and 4. apply learned science ideas by creating an explanatory model for a new related phenomenon. “The primary goal of science is the construction and evaluation of scientific models” (Jadrich & Bruxvoort, 2011, p. 12). All of the 8 science and engineering practices outlined in NGSS are aligned closely to modeling. Since modeling is pertinent to MBI, this further reinforces why MBI is such an effective approach to planning and teaching science in line with the goals of NGSS. Scientific models encompass all practices, however, in order to assess NGSS Crosscutting Concepts and Disciplinary Core Ideas, in addition to the practices, three dimensional tasks used to assess the application of these standards. The 3D tasks are developed based on the overarching performance standard, with guidance from the evidence statements aligned to each performance standard. These tasks will be used in a pre/post format. |
societal
Students will learn the societal components of this project through Document Based Questions (DBQ) that align to the scientific concepts. Providing students with access to an array of primary or secondary sources. Primary sources range from, speeches and graphs to pictures and letters or diaries. Secondary sources include a historian's analysis or interpretation of an event, for example, this could be a graph of the droughts in Jamestown over a 50 year span or written narrative. Students will use the documents to analyze the factual evidence for a topic to answer a question. Their historical/societal inquiry and document analysis will be written in the form of a claim, evidence, and reasoning piece of writing. relationship
There also needs to be a product for students to demonstrate their understanding of the relationship between the scientific concepts and the societal influence. Ideally, I would like for students to create poster presentations, similar to what scientists do when they present their research. This would allow for students to collaborate and also integrate their differing perspectives about the relationship of the two components. This portion of the unit could be used as the culminating activity and published online and around the school to inform their immediate community and the public. |
learning experience & instruction
context
On a day to day in my classroom, students are engaging in discussion, collaborating on investigations, collecting data, modeling, and writing written explanations. I practice an almost true ratio of teacher to student work of 40% to 60%. Once the beginning of the year has begun, I am truly a facilitator of their learning and discovery. I have a one-to-one ratio of chromebooks for daily use. We will also have a “twitter station,” consisting of four Samsung Galaxy tablets. Our classroom also has a SMARTboard and Elmo document camera. Currently, I have five sections of the same class: Life Science for 60 minutes a day. Two of the sections each have a high ELL population, one section is co-taught with a special education teacher (unfortunately, never having taught science before or even in the context of MBI) based on student's needed minutes within their IEPs, one section has students with IEPs (who receive Tier 3 interventions for math and reading) but don’t receive any support for science, and the last section is a heterogeneous of “gen ed” students. It is also rumored by our administration that for the second semester we’ll be splitting our sections/grade in a triad and a diad. I would be apart of the triad and for the most part not teach any students with high ELL needs. In essence, I could potentially gain more time in the Spring term, but also lose a sizable amount of students resulting in a smaller year long scope of data (evidence).
I also mentor two AUSL residents (student teachers) for the whole year. With mentoring, the residents have a progression in which they are required to meet mapped out expectations of planning and preparation, instruction, and behavior management. Through the process, I coach them and provide feedback. By approximately January, I teach very little to none, with the exception of Friday’s when the residents are at on campus graduate courses. However, with my Deep Play concept, 20 time, I have dedicated Friday’s to being the students 20 time time.
content
Within each unit, student misconceptions have become consistent over the years. Our first unit, Jennifer Strange, is about a woman who drinks an exceptional amount of liquid and holds her bladder to win a contest. She died just six hours later. Students struggle mostly the idea of diffusion in the context of osmosis. Our next unit on salmonella is new, so I’ll be learning misconceptions and struggles as I go. The third unit of genetics is about twin girls, Remee and Kian, who are different races. Students struggle with believing the truth of this phenomena at first but then mostly struggle with the way in which their mixed parents genes are passed to the twin girls. The fourth unit we’ll examine the pattern in which rats in India bamboo forest swarm only every 48 years. Students misconceptions tend to follow the realization that bamboo produce fruit. In our last unit of evolution, how are Asian and African Elephants related to mammoths or humans related to whales, students struggle with the phylogeny of species.
pedagogy
Ever since I’ve”flipped” my classroom to following the MBI approach, my students are fully engaged and truly guiding their learning. There are four key components to teaching MBI. The first is planning instructional units around a meaningful real world phenomena. The next component is eliciting students ideas and continuing to build a unit around their ideas and misconceptions. The third component of providing students in-depth sense making activities that can include, not limited to, investigations, discussions, readings, service projects, demonstrations, and simulations. After each sense making activity or a couple that are similar in topic, students reflect on their learning through summary charting the patterns/evidence learned, inferring the scientific concepts learned, and applying their evidence and inferences to answer the big question throughout the unit. Students are also provided with ample opportunities to revisit and revise their thinking through modeling. Lastly, students apply their new learning to a new phenomena, using the concepts learned.
technology
Students will use their chromebooks often when researching both scientific components of the project and the societal components. Students will also use the “twitter station,” to post daily wows and wonderings around what their learning. I would also like to embed some Skyping sessions with other schools across the country or world in regards to both components of the project. I’ve looked into blogging as well. Sometimes we can blog/Skype with other classrooms at random, still relating to our chosen topics. I would also like to structure a system to have students track their learning as a class on a class blog website. I think that it’s valuable to have students work “out there” for others to experience and respond to, it provides them an authentic audience to assist in their value of their learning.
On a day to day in my classroom, students are engaging in discussion, collaborating on investigations, collecting data, modeling, and writing written explanations. I practice an almost true ratio of teacher to student work of 40% to 60%. Once the beginning of the year has begun, I am truly a facilitator of their learning and discovery. I have a one-to-one ratio of chromebooks for daily use. We will also have a “twitter station,” consisting of four Samsung Galaxy tablets. Our classroom also has a SMARTboard and Elmo document camera. Currently, I have five sections of the same class: Life Science for 60 minutes a day. Two of the sections each have a high ELL population, one section is co-taught with a special education teacher (unfortunately, never having taught science before or even in the context of MBI) based on student's needed minutes within their IEPs, one section has students with IEPs (who receive Tier 3 interventions for math and reading) but don’t receive any support for science, and the last section is a heterogeneous of “gen ed” students. It is also rumored by our administration that for the second semester we’ll be splitting our sections/grade in a triad and a diad. I would be apart of the triad and for the most part not teach any students with high ELL needs. In essence, I could potentially gain more time in the Spring term, but also lose a sizable amount of students resulting in a smaller year long scope of data (evidence).
I also mentor two AUSL residents (student teachers) for the whole year. With mentoring, the residents have a progression in which they are required to meet mapped out expectations of planning and preparation, instruction, and behavior management. Through the process, I coach them and provide feedback. By approximately January, I teach very little to none, with the exception of Friday’s when the residents are at on campus graduate courses. However, with my Deep Play concept, 20 time, I have dedicated Friday’s to being the students 20 time time.
content
Within each unit, student misconceptions have become consistent over the years. Our first unit, Jennifer Strange, is about a woman who drinks an exceptional amount of liquid and holds her bladder to win a contest. She died just six hours later. Students struggle mostly the idea of diffusion in the context of osmosis. Our next unit on salmonella is new, so I’ll be learning misconceptions and struggles as I go. The third unit of genetics is about twin girls, Remee and Kian, who are different races. Students struggle with believing the truth of this phenomena at first but then mostly struggle with the way in which their mixed parents genes are passed to the twin girls. The fourth unit we’ll examine the pattern in which rats in India bamboo forest swarm only every 48 years. Students misconceptions tend to follow the realization that bamboo produce fruit. In our last unit of evolution, how are Asian and African Elephants related to mammoths or humans related to whales, students struggle with the phylogeny of species.
pedagogy
Ever since I’ve”flipped” my classroom to following the MBI approach, my students are fully engaged and truly guiding their learning. There are four key components to teaching MBI. The first is planning instructional units around a meaningful real world phenomena. The next component is eliciting students ideas and continuing to build a unit around their ideas and misconceptions. The third component of providing students in-depth sense making activities that can include, not limited to, investigations, discussions, readings, service projects, demonstrations, and simulations. After each sense making activity or a couple that are similar in topic, students reflect on their learning through summary charting the patterns/evidence learned, inferring the scientific concepts learned, and applying their evidence and inferences to answer the big question throughout the unit. Students are also provided with ample opportunities to revisit and revise their thinking through modeling. Lastly, students apply their new learning to a new phenomena, using the concepts learned.
technology
Students will use their chromebooks often when researching both scientific components of the project and the societal components. Students will also use the “twitter station,” to post daily wows and wonderings around what their learning. I would also like to embed some Skyping sessions with other schools across the country or world in regards to both components of the project. I’ve looked into blogging as well. Sometimes we can blog/Skype with other classrooms at random, still relating to our chosen topics. I would also like to structure a system to have students track their learning as a class on a class blog website. I think that it’s valuable to have students work “out there” for others to experience and respond to, it provides them an authentic audience to assist in their value of their learning.
references
Jadrich, J., & Bruxvoort, C. (2011). Learning & Teaching Scientific Inquiry: Research and Applications. NSTA press.