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InTASC Standard 8: The teacher understands and uses a variety of instructional strategies to encourage learners to develop deep understanding of content areas and their connections, and to build skills to apply knowledge in meaningful ways
In the image above, students collaborate and test out their device on the Wind Turbine Design Project featured below.
Introduction
Introduction
It is critically important in my science classroom to provide my students with the opportunity to collaborate with peers. When students work closely with other learners who have different background knowledge, perspectives, skills, and learning styles, this leads to more effective long-term learning. I utilize a variety of collaborative strategies such that my learners are able to build off of one anothers' science content knowledge and make meaningful connections between core ideas and concepts. Students are empowered to be leaders in their own discourse and in assignments. Further, when supporting their peers in developing conceptual knowledge, students strengthen their own science skills, knowledge, and understandings.
Collaborative Discourse
Collaborative Discourse
In order for students to build on their science content knowledge, engaging in productive discourse and collaborating with other scholars is key. Students develop greater understanding of the content by talking through their accumulating knowledge with one another than by listening to formal presentations from me. Students are able to grapple with challenging science questions and work together to problem-solve. This, in turn, strengthens our feelings of community and increases students' collective motivation to learn. To support my science students in engaging in effective discourse, I utilize Turn and Talks, Think-Write-Pair-Shares, gallery walks, discussion diamonds, whole group KWL charts, and a unit driving questions board.
Turn and Talks and Think-Write-Pair-Shares
Turn and Talks and Think-Write-Pair-Shares
One instructional method that I utilize in my science classroom to promote productive student discourse and collaboration are Turn and Talks and Think-Write-Pair-Shares. Turn and Talks and Think-Write-Pair-Shares are used daily in my lessons to elevate student-generated ideas, highlight student thinking about new concepts, and allow students the time and space to collaborate with their peers. Rather than providing students with definitions of new concepts right away, I instead provide students with questions to consider. Students either turn and talk to other students at their tables about the question or think about the question and write down their ideas before talking and sharing with their table mates. In both scenarios, scholars use their own background knowledge to answer challenging questions and probe for understanding. Collaborating with their peers allows them to more effectively brainstorm their answer and deepen their own thinking.
These instructional strategies allow students to build their skills of accountable and productive science talk and their ability to synthesize and summarize new data. These strategies can help students apply their scientific thinking in novel, challenging, real-world ways. Further, Turn and Talks and Think-Write-Pair-Shares deepen student understanding because students have to defend their answers for these rigorous questions to their peers with evidence-based reasoning.
Turn and Talk and Think-Write-Pair-Share examples
Turn and Talks and Think-Write-Pair-Shares give students the opportunity to engage in collaborative discourse and work together to understand new concepts. In our first unit, How can I make new stuff from old stuff? it is especially important that students work together to answer challenging questions because chemistry is difficult to visualize and relies on models, examples, and analogies to deeply understand content. These questions and opportunities to share with one another help students make connections between chemistry and their own lives.
Images in PowerPoints are all GIFs from https://giphy.com/
Gallery Walk
Gallery Walk
Another instructional strategy that I use to support students in engaging in collaborative discourse are gallery walks. Students work with their table groups on chart paper to answer a question. Students have the choice to write their answers or draw and label their answers. Following, chart paper is posted around the classroom and groups rotate to other scholars' chart paper, leaving comments on post-it notes. Students are encouraged to write comments regarding content, adding on to other groups' work or asking questions to push their peers' thinking.
Gallery walks build students' skills of summarizing challenging new science information and working collaboratively to solve problems, develop innovative solutions, and improve their observational skills. Gallery walks also help students to apply their in-class learning and individual research to come to a collaborative consensus with their groups. Gallery walks further deepen students' understanding of challenging science content, (for example, such as types of renewable energy options,) as they actively listen to their peers and tackle real-world scenarios together.
Gallery Walk examples
In this example, students collaborated to demonstrate their knowledge of different types of renewable energy, including wind power and hydropower, (shown here,) to answer the questions, How is this energy used and why is this energy better than using non-renewable energy?
The top image shows all of the posters the classes created and the second image is a zoomed in image of one poster. After completing their own charts, students then circulated to other charts hung up around the room and offered questions as well as additional thoughts on post-its. Students chose their renewable energy resource for this activity.
Before students walk around the room with sticky notes to add questions or comments to group chart paper, students work collaboratively to apply their learning and to generate answers to a challenging question. Here, students were tasked with the question, What are examples of chemical reactions in real life? What are examples of non-chemical reactions? Students had to, in groups, come up with as many examples of each as possible, splitting their chart paper in half to do so. Following their initial brainstorming, groups rotated to all other tables to place a check mark next to examples that they had also brainstormed with their own groups and question marks next to examples that they had wonderings about/thought they were in the wrong category. This exercise helped students deepen their learning regarding what are true examples of chemical reactions by having them agree or disagree with their peers' examples.
Discussion Diamonds
Discussion Diamonds
Discussion diamonds are a collaborative strategy that I use to support students in deepening their conceptual knowledge about science by working with peers. Students work in groups of four to complete each corner of the discussion diamond based on a question I pose. Students must then discuss the question and come to a consensus, which is written in the center of the diamond. Through this strategy, students support one another by engaging in dialogue on a challenging question that can deepen their scientific understanding of a particular topic and apply it in a novel way.
Through the practice of using discussion diamonds, students have the opportunity to deepen their content knowledge because they have to defend their answers to a rigorous question or prompt in a group environment. Discussion diamonds further support learners in applying their knowledge of content by asking them to come to a consensus via collaboration. For example, below, students had to apply their knowledge of the scientific inquiry process after they observed an image I provided on the board, (of a soccer player kicking a ball); together, they then created a testable question and an hypothesis based off of the image provided.
Discussion Diamond examples
Students work collaboratively in their table groups. This collaborative strategy can work with groups of 2-4 students. Students each answer the question individually in one of the four corners paper. Following, students work together to form a consensus and write or draw their answer in the center of the diamond. In this example, students were tasked with making observations about a picture on the board; the picture was of someone kicking a soccer ball.
After recording their qualitative and quantitative observations, the students collaboratively created a testable question and hypothesis based on the pictures. Through this process, students deepened their understanding of the scientific inquiry process and of science as a process, more generally. Students worked collaboratively and built off of their own prior knowledge and their peers' in order to deepen their understanding and make connections between old and new content and between their own background knowledge and scientific content they were learning at school.
Here is an example of student collaborative work on a discussion diamond when this instructional activity was first introduced. As can be observed above, students were not detailed in their individual responses and therefore, their collective learning was somewhat shallow.
This is an example of a discussion diamond a few lessons after this strategy was first introduced. Here, students demonstrated a much deeper understanding of the content and used their peers to apply their learning in a consensus within the diamond.
Whole Group KWL charts
Whole Group KWL charts
KWL charts are an another instructional strategy that I utilize in my science classroom to promote collaborative student discourse and deepen science content knowledge. KWL stands for "know," "want to know," and "learned." Throughout a given unit, students add to their own KWL charts in their science binders but also collaborate to fill out a class-wide KWL chart. I facilitate the completion of one class-wide KWL for each of my science classes; thus, charts are specific to the knowledge, questions, and learning goals of each class. Whole group KWLs prompt students to reflect on their learning and make connections between what they already knew at the start of the unit, what they wanted to know, and how they have progressed in their learning. Further, KWL class-wide charts allow for student discourse around the unit-driving question. KWLs support students in productive science talk and making connections between students' prior and new learnings as well as between knowledge across individuals in their table groups.
For our first science unit, How can I make new stuff from old stuff? students continuously referred back to KWL charts when studying for tests or tackling challenging scaffolded worksheets.
Whole Group KWL - High class
Here is the KWL chart for my "high" science class for our first unit, How can I make new stuff from old stuff?
Whole Group KWL - Mid class
Here is the KWL chart for my "mid" science class for our first unit, How can I make new stuff from old stuff?
Whole Group KWL - Low class
Here is the KWL chart for my "low" science class for our first unit, How can I make new stuff from old stuff?
Collaborative Assignments
Collaborative Assignments
Working with peers on assignments and projects increases individual student learning and also, enhances students' abilities to connect and apply science learning to the real world. Through scaffolded assignments that require students to apply their science content, students gain a more holistic understanding of content knowledge and are engaged in the process by virtue of working collaboratively. Two specific instructional strategies I use for collaborative assignments include friendly competitions as well as design challenges.
Friendly competitions
Friendly competitions
In order to engage learners and deepen their content knowledge in a way that is memorable, I support students in participating in friendly competitions. These instructional activities are used to help students apply their science content knowledge in novel ways. These engaging competitions also help students work to defend their arguments or decisions with evidence backed by the content they learned in class. For example, in a debate regarding the California water wars, students defended their arguments acting in different roles as the farmers of California, the residents of Los Angeles, environmental activists or politicians. Students had to work strategically together in order to design and implement evidence-backed arguments.
Additionally, competitions are utilized to aid students in reviewing information with their peers and understanding where their own confusion lies. To aid students in this way, I utilize Quizizz, an online forum where I am able to design quizzes for students to compete in based on content that they are currently studying. This study tool allows students to work together in teams to deepen their learning.
Debate: The California Water Wars
Students worked together in this debate competition to answer the question, How should we divide up the water supply in California? To prepare for the debate, students watched and took notes on a documentary about the "water wars" in California. Following, students were split into particular roles. Within their groups, students performed research to deepen their understanding and create arguments.This is an example organizer from a student from the group who were California farmers. Her group's main argument included the idea that farmers need the water to create food for the rest of the state and the country.
Roles for this debate included local Californian farmers, Los Angeles government officials, rural community members, and environmentalists. The example above shows research from a student in the LA government grouping. This student, along with his peers, argued that most of the money is made in LA to support the state, which is why they argue they deserve water access. This student is a very low reader but was still able to succeed in this activity through the help of this graphic organizer and working with peers in this debate competition.
Quizizz
Through Quizizz, I am able to create quizzes that are specific to students' learning needs and backgrounds that connects scientific class content to students' own lives.
Students work collaboratively to answer questions and test their knowledge. Through this friendly competition, students deepen their understanding by working with their peers on particular scientific topics and then testing their content knowledge.
Design challenges
Design challenges
In addition to friendly competitions, another type of collaborative assignment I use to support students is design challenges. This type of instructional strategy helps to increase rigor in my science classroom while simultaneously providing students with the opportunity to collaboratively design solutions together. Bloom's Taxonomy demonstrates that the highest level of student learning is "creation." This exercise moves students from being consumers of science to being designers in science. Although it is important that students are able to evaluate, remember, and analyze information, I must also provide them with the chance to apply this learning in an innovative and intellectually challenging way. Design challenges demonstrate students' deep understanding of content and allows students to make purposeful connections between our in-class learning and their own lives. For example, students worked together to design the most effective wind turbine at harnessing wind power following their learning about the importance of renewable energy. Students' final projects allowed them to show me the extent to which they were able to effectively apply their knowledge of renewable energy to these projects while simultaneously connecting these solutions to their own lives.
Wind Turbine Design examples
Students worked collaboratively to design the most effective wind turbine innovation. Students worked in teams to research designs that currently exist that allow for maximum harnessing of the wind's energy. Students also determined the materials with which to make their models for their designs. In class, I utilized fans to act as the wind in order to measure the efficacy of the designs and, in a friendly way, determine which design created the most renewable energy.
This wind turbine design competition deepened students' understanding of renewable energy, specifically how wind can be harnessed into power. Students thus worked together to build their knowledge and apply their learning in creating and designing solutions to a real world issue.
Links
Links
California Water Wars Documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ts8PfO4KSk
Powerpoint GIFs: https://giphy.com/
Quizizz: https://quizizz.com/admin/quiz/5d03ace313d203001c482ad2/7th-grade-science-2019
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