essential questions& ngss by dr. hilarie b. davis,...
TRANSCRIPT
ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS & NGSSBy
Dr. Hilarie B. Davis, [email protected]
Dr. Bradford T. Davey, [email protected]
Objectives for our time together
1) Understand what makes a question “essential”
2) Understand the role essential questions can play in Next Gen teaching and learning
3) Focus on using, finding, and developing essential questions
Identify the essential questions
Reflect:• What makes a question essential?• Do you use essential questions?• How do you use them?• If you don’t use them, why are you interested in using them?
Essential Questions• Provoke deep thought, lively discussion, sustained inquiry,
and new understandings culminating in meaningful performances
• Require students to consider alternatives, weigh evidence, support their ideas, and justify answers
• Do not yield a single straightforward answer, but produce different reasonable responses, about which thoughtful and knowledgeable people may disagree.
• Spark meaningful connections with prior learnings and personal experiences and create opportunities for transfer to other situations and subjects – relevant!
• Can be either overarching or topical in scope, cutting across units/courses, causing genuine, relevant inquiry into the big ideas and core content, or focusing on a specific topicBoulder Valley School District
NGSS Three Dimensional Learning
The Goal of NGSS
If implemented properly,• the NGSS will lead to coherent, rigorous instruction that
will result in• students being able to acquire and apply scientific
knowledge• to unique situations and • to think and reason scientifically
What is intrinsically motivating to students to participate in this learning process?
How can essential questions engage students in the 3D learning process?
Gravity - Lesson Analysis
Performance Expectations• Meaningful scenario, phenomena, problems• Builds on student’s prior knowledge• Scientifically accurate grade appropriate information• Student use of practices• Differentiated instruction
Reviewing for Performance Expectations
Lesson Link - http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/files/lesson3_moons_rings_relate.pdf
Wavelength Link - http://nasawavelength.org/list/849
NGSS and Inquiry
• Inquiry in many classrooms
• Isolating which factor causes an effect
• Finding relationship between variables
• Testing hypotheses• Reporting findings
• Goal of practice in NGSS
• Explaining mechanism – building a “how and why story”
• Incrementally building an explanatory model
• Key role for disclosure – argumentation, building consensus
Reviewing for Performance Expectations
Meaningful scenario, phenomena, problems
Builds on student’s prior knowledge
Reviewing for Performance Expectations
Scientifically accurate grade appropriate information
Student use of practices
Reviewing for Performance Expectations
Differentiated instruction
How does a question become essential?
• Is taken up a notch with why, what if, under what conditions, what do you suppose…
• Answers simpler questions and then asks why, how or if that is the only answer
• Sounds like a question a child would ask, simple but profound
• Asks about the relationships, context, or value of ideas• Has layers of ideas underpinning the main idea so
students are able to peel the onion and discover the layers of meaning around a core idea
• Has the “duh” factor – the question seems simple at first, but when thinking about the reasons for the answer, it gets complex quickly
Essential Questions in NGSS
Locating Essential Questions in NGSS
Essential Questions (from Storylines)
Matter and Energy in Organisms and Ecosystems• How do organisms obtain and use matter and energy?• How do matter and energy move through an ecosystem?
Ecosystems: Interactions, Energy, and Dynamics• How does a system of living and non-living things operate
to meet the needs of the organisms in an ecosystem?• How and why do organisms interact with their
environment, and what are the effects of these interactions?
Essential Questions and
Performance Expectations
Kindergarten-PS2 Motion & Stability: Forces & Interactions
Essential Question: What happens if you push or pull an object harder?
Performance Expectation-1: Plan and conduct an investigation to compare the effects of different strengths or different directions of pushes and pulls on the motion of an object
PE-2: Analyze data to determine if a design solution works as intended to change the speed or direction of an object with a push or a pull
Middle School S-PS-2 Motion & Stability: Forces & Interactions
Essential Question: How can one describe physical interactions between objects and within systems of objects?
PE-1: Apply Newton’s Third Law to design a solution to a problem involving the motion of two colliding objects
PE-2: Plan an investigation to provide evidence that the change in an object’s motion depends on the sum of the forces on the object and the mass of the object
PE-3: Ask questions about data to determine the factors that affect the strength of electrical and magnetic forces
High School-PS-2 Motion & Stability: Forces & Interactions
Essential Question: How can one explain and predict interactions between objects and within systems of objects?
PE-1: Analyze data to support the claim that Newton’s Second Law of Motion describes the mathematical relationship among the net force on a macroscopic object, its mass, and its Acceleration
PE-2: Use mathematical representations to support the claim that the total momentum of a system of objects is conserved when there is no net force on the system
PE-3: Apply science and engineering ideas to design, evaluate, and refine a device that minimizes the force on a macroscopic object during a collision
Essential Questions and
Learning Progressions
Learning progressions and essential questions
Increasingly sophisticated questions
Motion and Stability: Forces and Interactions
K- What happens if you push or pull an object harder?
3- How do equal and unequal forces on an object affect the object? How can magnets be used?”
MS - How can one describe physical interactions between objects and within systems of objects?
HS - How can one explain and predict interactions between objects and within systems of objects?
Reiser, 2013
Essential Questions Are the Reason to Learn
Using Essential Questions in Instruction
• Post the essential question in a large font in the classroom, on handouts, on assignments so it is the advance organizer, the focus, and the reason to learn
• Ask students to answer the question as best they can in the beginning, and list sub-questions that need to be addressed
• Use the essential question for reflection after every activity:• Add something about how you are thinking about the question
based on what you just did• Look back at the questions you have about the ideas in the
essential question to see how you can answer them• You may want to add to your list of questions
Using Essential Questions in Assessment
• Use those initial responses as a baseline, a needs assessment, a pre-assessment
• After learning experiences, ask students to reflect on their questions, answers and notes about the essential question and add to them to involve them in self-assessment
• Use these reflections to track students’ learning progression and adjust instruction (formative assessment)
• Use students’ last best answer to the essential question as a post assessment, comparing it with the pre (summative assessment).
• Ask students to compare their pre and post answers and reflect on what and how their understanding evolved (self-assessment) and where they can apply that (transfer)
For more informationNGSS Framework
http://www.nap.edu/catalog/13165/a-framework-for-k-12-science-education-practices-crosscutting-concepts
Solar System Learning Progression http://digital.nsta.org/article/Assessing_Student_Progress_Along_a_Solar_System_Learning_Progression/1778703/220071/article.html
Learning Progressions in Environmental Literacy
http://envlit.educ.msu.edu/
Learning Progressions in Science (Alonzo and Gotwals)
http://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789460918247
Learning Progressions in Science: An Evidence-Based Approach to Reform (Corcoran)
http://www.cpre.org/learning-progressions-science-evidence-based-approach-reform