Differentiated project
LESSON STRUCTURE
tHE 60%
Only a few pages into the introduction of Almarode's text, he highlights the findings of an education researcher named Graham Nuthall who has declared that students already know 60% of what we expect them to learn in our classrooms each year.
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You can bet I didn't skimp on highlighter ink for that statement!
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And, the notion stuck with me. For years I had researched and experimented with instructional trends that would encourage my students to accept more responsibility for their learning. I tried the flipped classroom. It wasn't a success. It required too much student time and focus outside the classroom, in the midst of their sometimes complex personal lives and away from the positive, nurturing environment where they are able to get help if they need it. Yes, they were able to choose to take control of their learning with the resources and structure of a flipped classroom, but they could much more easily choose not to. In contrast to what I now understand the "student-centered classroom" to be, the flipped approach seems more focused on forcing students to demonstrate effort and responsibility than encouraging true ownership of the learning process.
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"If they actually know 60% of what I'm going to teach," I thought, "I can challenge them to do so much more with our time together."
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It's obvious that most students don't know much about nuclear fission, the electronegativity of atoms or the partial pressure of gases when they begin their chemistry course in high school, so I did hesitate to accept this idea. In fact, for all of my years teaching at Agora, I've believed and tried to convince others of the exact opposite: too many students enrolled in this college-prep course weren't properly prepared for it and/or didn't have the reasoning skills to reach their goals. If I was going to believe in "the 60%", I would have to make a very purposeful choice to do so; it wouldn't come naturally.
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As it turns out, believing in "the 60%" was the only thing that made this classroom transformation possible for me. Even then, it was unnerving, at best. There were days I might have actually held my breath while I waited for them to complete an activity, shuttering to think that they may refuse to do it at all or that the majority would claim they "just don't understand". I went prepared to every lesson with an answer key completed, just in case no one stepped up.
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Psst . . spoiler alert! THEY STEPPED UP.
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integrating PRIOR KNOWLEDGE
When he conducted 1,400+ meta-analyses of more than 80,000 studies involving 300 million students, John Hattie used the data to calculate an effect size for a variety of instructional strategies. Effect sizes provide perspective with regard to what strategies work best and at what point in the learning process they work best; an effect size of 0.4, Hattie says, reflects a year worth of learning. Any strategies calculated to demonstrate an effect size greater than 0.4 should, therefore, produce more than one year of learning.
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The focus of Hattie's efforts were not to critique or rank instructional strategies. Indeed, he values them all! Rather, he was seeking to match instructional strategies to phases of learning: surface, deep and transfer, a taxonomy similar to Bloom's. During the surface learning phase, where "conceptual exploration and learning vocabulary and procedural skills ... give structure to ideas", leveraging prior knowledge was found to have an effect size of 0.65 and integrating prior knowledge was found to have an effect size of 0.93.
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For this reason, I included a "prequiz" at the start of each of my lessons. At the beginning of the year during a general overview unit, these prequizzes were comprised of one or more multiple-choice questions to simply provide me with a snapshot of what students in each class knew about related concepts before I delivered a lesson. Then, I reasoned, I would both leverage and integrate that prior knowledge to each group as appropriate. Over time, though, this practice evolved in a big way. It didn't take long for the cumulative nature of chemistry to become evident to them as automated, multiple-choice prequizzes became higher-order scenarios they considered or problems they solved on a whiteboard while waiting for class to begin. I dubbed this beginning portion of my lessons "Show What You Know: Review and Preview" because it did just that: integrated prior knowledge we'd already introduced and set the stage for new learning, an extension of some more simple principle with which I knew they were already familiar.
Begins a lesson on "Shortcut Electron Configurations"
Begins a lesson on "The Octet Rule"
Begins a lesson on "Combustion Reactions"
Begins a lesson on "Shortcut Electron Configurations"
The incorporation of this additional independent time before class presented an unexpected benefit. I had the opportunity to review each and every student's work to provide individualized feedback so they could refine their approach or clarify any misconceptions in what had already been taught before they moved on to more deep learning.
Sometimes, students' execution of the "Review and Preview" validated my entire approach. In the following video, you'll watch portions of a lesson series that teaches students to use atomic properties to predict molecular properties which result in attractive forces between molecules. In the past, I've used a few student volunteers to model execution of this "Review and Preview" task over an entire class period to a whole-group audience directed by my constant, scaffolded questioning. This year, I believed in the 60% and challenged my students to make and demonstrate these connections themselves. Because they successfully executed the basics before the lesson began, I was able to focus my instructional efforts on deeper learning, comparing and contrasting the variations among different types of attractive forces.
Independent inquiry activities
Following a discussion of the "Review and Preview" activity, outlined objectives and success criteria, vocabulary and any necessary modeling, students embarked upon a guided inquiry activity daily.
These activities, described in my Learning Experiences for High School Chemistry Students book, directly support the "Science As Inquiry" standard that has been embedded throughout all content area standards in PA. Per the PDE:
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Specific student actions within this standard category include the following:
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Compare and contrast scientific theories.
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Know that both direct and indirect observations are used by scientists to study the natural world and universe.
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Identify questions and concepts that guide scientific investigations.
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Formulate and revise explanations and models using logic and evidence.
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Recognize and analyze alternative explanations and models.
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This standard is traditionally satisfied through hands-on laboratory work and, in chemistry, are all macroscopic; observations are limited to what we can experience with our senses. In cyber school, we rely solely on virtual lab activities which, in my opinion, support chemistry content in a more complete way because the sub-microscopic phenomena that create our macroscopic world can be thoroughly explored. In both traditional schools and cyber schools, the problem with the "lab" approach is simply that it occurs too infrequently for students to "develop a deep understanding" of the nature and process of science. Moreover, traditional "labs" are developed as independent or small group activities which require handouts or detailed reports to be submitted to the teacher for grading. With the exception of hands-on technique critique during the lab period, students often endure long wait times to receive critical feedback; Hattie suggests feedback is one of the top ten influences on student achievement, with an effect size of 0.79.
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In my classroom, using the lessons I've prepared, students are completing a "lab" for every lesson. They actively make and record observations, use evidence and formulate and revise explanations every day. The rigor is high and challenge abounds. Critically, the time required for these activities and small class sizes (!), have allowed me the unique opportunity to provide prompt, individualized feedback, ensuring all students develop and refine their inquiry abilities.
"Understanding of science content is enhanced when concepts are grounded in inquiry experiences. The use of scientific inquiry will help ensure that students develop a deep understanding of science content, processes, knowledge and understanding of scientific ideas, and the work of scientists; therefore, inquiry is embedded as a strand throughout all content areas. Teaching science as inquiry provides teachers with the opportunity to help all students in grades K-12 develop abilities necessary to understand and do scientific inquiry."
whole-group discussion & formative assessment [skill practice]
True to the scientific method model I'm trying to mimic in the classroom, once students have been provided adequate time to independently complete and record observations from their inquiry activity, everyone returns to communicate their findings and, together, draw conclusions from the data. These discussions are never open-ended.
First, I've yet to encounter a classroom of cyber students eager to share their thoughts and ideas. Second, any activity where I have not organized the process and/or summary for them in advance has failed, resulting in reported mass confusion and no new learning at all for individuals or the group. In this way, these activities are not satisfying the "Science as Inquiry" standard criteria related to students "identifying questions and concepts to guide investigations".
For these collaborative discussions to be effective in my classroom, they require a great deal of foresight and planning on my part. I have had to anticipate the effect or trend I want them to observe and have structured the data collection tasks accordingly. Those activities best suited for this type of collective analysis are those for which similar types of observations can be made on or for different objects, a type of "divide and conquer" strategy. For example, when students create their own isotopes but only share those that are naturally-occurring and stable with their peers, the entire group can cite evidence from that data to support some underlying features of all isotopes.
curriculum considerations
It is beyond the scope of this work to thoroughly describe the minor changes I made to scope and sequence to achieve student-centered, inquiry-based learning with my students in my classes this year. However, it is worth noting that inquiry skills, despite being incorporated into countless state standards, were not well-developed in the students I taught this year. Though I chose to embrace "the 60%", I was able to reflect on my own teaching practices over the last ten years and acknowledge that students are likely not accustomed to the expectations I lay before them at the beginning of their time with me. For this reason, I did purposely extend an "Introduction to Chemistry" unit at the onset of this school year. With lighter, less rigorous content, I was able to introduce and acclimate my students to a specific and intentional learning environment where they would encounter a series of linked learning experiences and challenging tasks.
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To address all the required standards in the time provided, it was necessary to juggle sequence and pacing. If given the freedom to do so, I'd prefer to continue with this plan in the future. An overview is provided, below:
routine
I have, specifically, been impressed by the speed with which students have adapted to this lesson structure. Notwithstanding the group discussion / skill practice / formative assessment portion normally included at the end of my lessons which was not included, the video provided above demonstrates how efficiently the classroom was managed and how effectively these students spent their time.