Bringing together Phenomena, models and student questions to guide the learning of the unit.
This year I wanted to bring together all the strongest instructional strategies that I have been studying this past year, in order to help students make connections. I have been working to chose strong phenomena to launch my units, and to develop student questions. But, I wasn't very good at returning to the questions and phenomena at the end of the unit. Because of this the connections between phenomena and the instruction of the unit was not as tightly linked as it could be. Students were not transferring knowledge. I knew I needed a better way of tracking our learning and changes in understanding during the unit.
I had used KWL charts in the past, but was never a big fan. I was always uncomfortable writing down the "Know" part at the start of the unit, because I knew many of the students' initial understandings were incomplete or incorrect. Even "Think we Know" just didn't sit right with me on a classroom chart.
Then I learned about Driving Question Boards. I had already been employing the Right Question Technique from The Right Question Institute (#Rightquestion). My students were generating strong questions about the phenomena. We were sorting the questions into categories around the Cross Cutting Concepts, using sentence strip pocket charts and sentence strips. We used these questions to drive our investigations and discovered the answers together.
Now, the Driving Question Board would be the glue that brings everything together. The phenomenon would lead to initial models with initial thinking, and then students would develop their questions. The Driving Question Board (#drivingquestionboard) was going to help us organize the questions by Cross Cutting Concepts and keep the questions and our thinking front and center during the unit as it is displayed prominently in the science lab.
“I knew I needed a better way of tracking our learning and changes in understanding during the unit. The Driving Question Board, I am hoping, will be the answer.”
This new Driving Question Board will be a focal point in my science lab, which will follow our thinking through the unit, capturing the changes in our thinking. I will post future blogs about our progress!
Putting Together the Board
The board was designed to follow the instructional sequencing of the unit. The top left corner is where the phenomena will be posted after it is introduced to the students. Underneath the phenomena on the left side of the board is the place the consensus models from groups will be posted. These models will show the small groups' initial models of what is causing the phenomena. The middle section, which is divided into 3 sections, is where the student questions will be posted. The sections are divided by Cross Cutting Concepts, which are compressed into 3 categories rather than 6. The last section will hold the evidence we find to support our arguments about the causes of the phenomena. I used Washi tape to border off each section. It makes great clean lines, but also is a low tack tape and is easily removed. The title cards are from Paul Anderson's Website https://thewonderofscience.com/