Wednesday, February 13, 2019

Phenomena-Based Instruction Isn't Only for Science

I have heard of an “integrated” elementary unit on apples. The class does science by cutting open the apple and looking at the seeds, learns about Johnny Appleseed for social studies, writes about their favorite type of apple for English Language Arts (ELA), and does some apple-based word problems for math. Building on current instructional approaches with the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), phenomenon-based integrated learning looks a bit different. 


Figure 1: New Jersey Summer Bat Count Longitudinal Data, n = 22 sites (Conserve Wildlife NJ, 2016).

In another third-grade classroom, student groups are given copies of this bat data (Figure 1). The teacher asks, “What do you notice?” and “What do you wonder?” They’re immediately engaged in number sense and mathematical thinking. In science, small groups become experts on different challenges bat populations are facing and share those with the class, comparing the impact of each. In social studies, they learn to make sense of maps as they see where the white nose fungus has spread across the country and within their state. For social studies and ELA they write a letter to a local government official talking about why bats are important and why white nose syndrome is a problem (which also builds on science learning about ecosystems). Overall in this unit, students are asked to collaboratively make sense of this phenomenon of bat population change from science, mathematics, social studies, and ELA lenses. 

This sense-making approach is central to the NGSS and inquiry-based instruction. It has been discussed for years, but professional learning rarely supports teachers in seeing how it connects across all subject areas. It’s no wonder that elementary educators are overwhelmed, when they feel their modes of instruction have to be completely different in every subject. Inquiry-based approaches could meaningfully form the core of every subject, connecting schoolwork and better mirroring real-life endeavors. Inquiry allows for teachers to connect to students’ lives and interests, making learning more engaging and more equitable. 

To further illustrate how a phenomenon-based inquiry approach works across subject areas, it’s useful to elaborate on how it connects to the standards and unique goals in each core subject. 

The national C3 Framework emphasizes that “inquiry is at the heart of social studies.” My daughter, however, memorized every president, every country, and every country capital in her middle school social studies classes. That’s information she could find in under five seconds on her phone. She didn’t learn skills to find information. She rarely, if ever, had opportunities to make sense of historic and societal events with a group of her peers. Instead, student learning about a topic such as supply and demand should be more than memorizing definitions; it should include speculating why a student’s favorite new game is sold out at a store (the phenomenon) and welcoming a store owner to the classroom to discuss stocking and pricing decisions. Students in fifth grade should not simply read a chapter about slavery within a heavy book and answer some comprehension questions. They could come to understand some horrors of slavery through reading and comparing aseries of slave narratives from the past and present–delving into a phenomenon of oppression throughout history and continuing today. They don’t recreate a sugar and slave trade triangle; they problematize events, dig into them from multiple perspectives, and connect them to their world now. 

Math might be the most difficult core subject for teachers to conceptualize as making sense of a phenomenon. Instructionally, it is well entrenched as a worksheet or a listing of many similar practice problems. Students largely replicate a skill their teacher shows them, having to be shown how to do a problem if it varies in any significant way from the examples. Math can, however, be practical and beautiful as students learn how to make sense of the world mathematically. In particular, the Standards for Mathematical Practice of the Common Core encourage creating opportunities for students to think about and solve novel problems mathematically, not simply repeat a standard algorithm. Generally, mathematics instruction and textbooks start with a skill and practice problems that vary a little bit from what’s been learned before. Students then do a long series of practice problems and probably a couple word problems, which really only ask students to plug new numbers into previously practiced ways of doing. Conceptual understanding may or may not be emphasized. The math section doesn’t start with an interesting problem, based on a phenomenon that relates to the students. Instead of having students replicate an area model for 5x4, we might start by saying, “We need a new rug that will fit all 20 students in this area of the classroom.” Or, instead of adding decimals, we might say, “I run a store and need to figure out if my assistant did a review of sales correctly.” The goal is not to learn isolated mathematics skills, but rather how to approach problems. An example of this type of work is the “3 Act Tasks” from Dan Meyer, where students are asked to use mathematics to make sense of a particular situation, such as how long it will take an octagonal tank to fill up. 

In a practical sense, the phenomena used for ELA can be anything that is going to meaningfully engage students and allow for standards connections, such as a recent polar vortex weather event, a school shooting, or the opioid epidemic. Students read, research, interview, write, and argue about the phenomenon as they consider various viewpoints and formulate their own. They dig into related fiction and nonfiction texts, and/or develop and share their own related stories. The phenomenon itself could even be the writing, the media, the “text” (slides 24-30 here). Why did the person write or create this piece? How would you create a text to convey the same tone and message? Why did the character within the text act a certain way? Students collaboratively ask questions of this phenomenon (this text), seek more information about it, and connect it to their lives in order to make sense of it.

In science, a group of students likewise begins by engaging with a meaningful phenomenon—by meaningful, I’d say it prompts students’ curiosity and links to standards-based goals. Students use their background knowledge, figure out what they can about what they’re observing, and ask questions. They collaboratively create, share, and reflect on an initial model that shows their thinking about the phenomenon. This process is not “one and done.” They keep coming back to the phenomenon and their models as they do experiments and research, have peer discussions, and investigate related phenomena. They build up evidence and understanding, leading to an explanation that ties their evidence and scientific learning together.

The NGSS also emphasize an engineering approach within science. A science, tech ed, or STEM class should similarly move beyond activity-doing (e.g., building the tallest spaghetti tower) and have students using background knowledge to solve meaningful problems. Considering our earlier bat example, students might design bat houses to address habitat loss, drawing them out with proper measurements so they’re the right size for bats and bat groups in their region.

Summary 

If we value teaching that connects to authentic thinking and doing, we must provide students opportunities across subjects to make sense of their world. The challenges we face cannot be solved from one disciplinary lens; students must learn how to bring varying epistemologies and diverse perspectives together to effect change.

The beginning elementary apple unit example could be redesigned. Students might start in science by observing an apple tree with a branch of a different type of apples on it. They learn about, and observe, the structure and function of apples and apple trees, delving into comparative structure and function of plant life. They connect that to learning about heredity and reproduction. In social studies, their phenomenon might be simplified data on the amounts of different types of apples that are bought along with their cost, where students use that to build a basic discussion of supply and demand. They further look at apple consumption per region on a map, considering about their own region, geography connections to apple growing, and their cultural connections to apples. In mathematics, students would investigate apple production numbers, per area and per tree per year. They’d connect that to learning about geometric area and multiplication, continuing their work by investigating production numbers within a faltering orchard and determining whether it makes sense to plant new trees considering long term yield vs. short term loss. In ELA, their first text—their phenomenon—is an apple cookbook. Students build from there to write out clear directions for how to make and cook a certain type of dish, using apples or another type of vegetable or fruit used at home. They collaboratively revise their directions and create and publish a class recipe book, comparing that to recipe books of other classes across the country.

Of course, teachers need instructional materials that support this type of learning, and they need time for collaborative professional learning to put it into practice and reflect on how it goes. As teachers note, this type of instruction takes more time. It’s worth it for student learning.



Monday, February 4, 2019

[Guest Post!] Student Feedback and Standards Based Grading

So, your district is considering a switch to Standards Based Grading (SBG)....

Are you excited for that change or does it make you nervous?
Are the student results going to be worth the struggle of changing your grading philosophy and practices?
Will people just say, “This too shall pass”?

The above are very real questions in the hearts and minds of teachers as they ponder a switch from traditional grading to SBG. Our district began the conversion from traditional grades to SBG 6 years ago. We could probably write pages about our transition process, but instead today we are going to focus on three outcomes of our switch to not only standards based grading, but also to standards based reporting (on their report cards, our students see their grades as 1-4, not A-F).
  1. Greater emphasis on students mastering science practices, less emphasis on memorization of content (our curriculum became more rigorous).
  2. Well-defined rubrics provided us (teachers, students, and parents) with a richer understanding of what students were able to do, and most importantly, what the next steps were in learning. 
  3. Well-defined rubrics and aligned assessments lead naturally into improved feedback (teacher → student, student → student, student → self, and student → teacher). 
In our freshman-level biology course, we built our mitosis and DNA unit around cancer - a very high interest subject to our students. The science practices that were assessed in this unit include questioning and constructing an explanation by supporting it with reliable evidence. Instead of having our freshman solely take a test that provides them an opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge of mitosis, cancer, and DNA, we also give students the chance to ask their own questions and then research the answers to guide their own learning. Here is our Mitosis, Cancer, and DNA: Research Assessment. We collected students’ generated questions throughout the unit, organized their questions into topics, and then provided those questions back to students in this assessment. Students were asked to select two of the questions (or generate new questions), then use reliable sources to answer the questions.

You will notice two things. First, by providing these types of opportunities in our class, we are placing emphasis on our students being curious and driving their own learning. Our curriculum has actually become more rigorous because students dive deeper into the content than what we would have probably covered in class as a whole. Second, students are also able to make connections to their real-world, thus giving meaning to the content they are learning in our class. Third, we are placing emphasis on the science practices, the skills in science. We use the same rubric of science practices in all the science courses offered at Marshall High School. Because our standards are centered on practices, we look for ways to have students learn content through the process of doing science. Students learn that all science classes focus on thinking and behaving like a scientist; they must actually DO science, not just learn about science content.

When you move to an SBG world, your rubrics must make sense not only to the educator that is assessing the student, but to the students themselves. As mentioned above, we use the same rubric of standards in all our science courses. Students quickly understand the rubrics involved because all our science teachers use the same language when it comes to expectations. Another key part that aims to ensure clarity is our row under the actual standard (you can see this in blue text in the linked assessment above). We call this row the “What this looks like here?” row. We can say in our standard to “apply scientific reasoning to explain how the evidence supports a claim,” but to a freshman, what does that really mean, and most importantly, what does that look like? Sometimes this row is given to the students, and sometimes it is generated with the students. This hopefully then provides everyone (teachers, students, and parents) with a richer understanding of what students were able to do, and most importantly, what the next steps were in learning.

Our rubrics are written in an “I can” format, and this paves the way to have discussions about their next steps in their learning. One of our favorite things to do in terms of feedback are Mini Conferences; a student and teacher co-assess student work and plan next steps for growth. This also provides immediate and actionable feedback to the students so they can grow in their skills from assessment to assessment. Throughout the semester, we focus on building students’ ability to self assess - with the goal of building a students’ ability to identify and produce more quality work. Additionally, as students see the power in the 1:1 mini conference, classroom culture becomes focused on growth and student productivity. A key component of our feedback system has been to have rubrics that are clearly written, student friendly, and tailored to assessments that connect with student curiosity.

In the comments below, please share other ways that you have increased the role of feedback in your classroom or the way that standards based grading has enriched student learning!

Guest blog authors:

Danielle Bendt, dbendt@marshallschools.org
Life Science Teacher, Marshall High School

Allison Fuelling, afuelling@marshallschools.org
Life Science Teacher and Secondary Instructional Coach, Marshall Public Schools