Small Group Instruction in Elementary Science

This one has been a long time in coming.  It has taken me awhile to sort out the ideas.  Many of you are familiar with small group instruction in reading and math.  This type of small, needs-based grouping is an essential element in most elementary classrooms.  However, when I was asked to consider this same idea for elementary science, it was uncharted territory.  Sure, we've all done group work.  Everyone builds the same windmill or does the same experiment.  I need to be clear.   The goal is to have each group or each student working on something that meets their needs.  Before you go and get the pitchforks and torches, I am not advocating for there to be multiple hands-on experiments going on at the same time.  That would create a potentially unsafe environment.  Someone would lose an eyebrow.

However, consider this, what if we grouped students by their needs in science by using the results of rigorous pre-assessment.  In my world, that is a combination of traditional multiple choice and constructed response type questions which needs to include questions on prior knowledge.  It would also include some sort of performance based pre-assessment.  These performance pre-assessments would emulate the end of unit performance assessment.  

In our NGSS curriculum, these are either a physical object and in some cases it is based on developing an explanation (verbal or written).  In either case, the result is the teacher receives data on what the students already know.   This then allows students to be grouped based on their needs.  For the most part, this would only impact the depth and complexity of the final product the group creates.  What we must avoid is the age old trap of grouping kids so that there is a "leader" in the group who can teach the rest of the students.  Where is this "leaders" opportunity to grow?   Let's also be honest in the probability that this leader does most of the work for the other students.   Where is there opportunity to learn?  

Part two goes from the group level to the individual student.  One of the main benefits to going one-to-one is the capacity to serve out a variety of learning objects (video, audio, image, interactive media, etc.)  A number of vendors produce products of this type, but I painted myself into somewhat of a corner.  With my dogged insistence on locally relevant storylines, no one provider produces learning objects specific to the needs of our curriculum.

With many of the units, I have created eBooks which package related content into one learning object.  I have used a package called SoftChalk.  It is essentially a WYSIWYG webpage creation tool.  I am able to find and organize content from our providers and external sources.  These eBooks also help reduce teacher workload.  Rather than ten learning objects a teacher has to send to students, they only have to send one.  Students can then choose the object they need to understand the concepts.  A recent update also includes the capacity to give students immediate feedback on embedded quizzes.  For each multiple choice answer, a specific learning object can be identified to provide students with the content they need at that moment.

This is a far as  I have gotten so far.  Would love to her other ideas.

A Look Back on Two Weeks of Curriculum Writing

The dust has settled on curriculum writing.  My regiment of writers have started their vacations and I am left with a full Dropbox Don't worry.  I also have everything backed up on at least two flashdrives.  You only make that mistake once.  The files include unit level documents such as the scenario, unit outline, and pre/post assessments.  More importantly, there are a series of files for each lesson.  This includes the teacher lesson plan, student storyboard, interactive notebook pages, and lesson assessment.  The student storyboard is a draft document I will use to create learning objects for our learning management system.

Trying out hands on experiments is one of the perks of curriculum development

The objects will be composed in SoftChalk.   This program allows me to embed a variety of media.  The variety allows for a more personalized learning experience.  This even extends to the text on the page.  When a student clicks on a highlighted word, a definition or image will appear.

As we begin to think about a fully digitized curriculum, one of the big rules we came up with was "Device When Appropriate" or DWA.  I initially found  that my writers felt compelled to develop some digital asset for each lesson.  After talking with them about their lesson, it quickly became apparent that it was really not needed in all lessons.  In a number of lessons, it could also be a huge problem.  Think about a hands-on lesson involving water, soil, or chemicals.  One spill and you lose a computer.  Additionally, I am loathe to replace hand-on experiences with digital ones.  Experiments always work in the digital world.  Kids need to grapple with the gremlins inherit to science and engineering experimentation.

Sometimes a mirror is the best device to use

Many of you are familiar with interactive notebooks and are probably confused by the inclusion of them in my list of developed materials.   I've worked to convert teachers from a worksheet based format to interactive notebooks.  Until I can get everyone acculturated to using notebooks, I wanted to provide some training wheels.  The sample below gives you an idea of what is provided.  These pages are copied and bound in small books for each unit.

Each lesson would use two pages.  It starts on the upper left side with students being asked what they already know about the topic.  The right side constitutes the instructional side of the lesson.  At the end of the lesson, the the student is prompted to show what they now know as a result of the lesson.  The beauty of this format is teachers can see where students started and where they grew by the end of the lesson.

Lastly, perhaps the most important realization I had was the tendency of teachers to write curriculum which directs students to a single answer for a problem.  All the problems we wrote into our units are fairly open-ended in how they can be "solved".  I have attributed this tendency to twelve years of brute-force convergent thinking where all problems were solved with A,B,C,D, or E.