TE 804 Name:
INQUIRY TEACHING INVESTIGATION PLAN
Purpose
At this point in your career, you should have enough skill and confidence in what you can do in a classroom that you can turn some of your attention to students’ ideas. We will study how students learn particular content for two purposes: too identify conceptual barriers and design scaffolding to help students over the barriers and to practice using embedded assessment to adjust teaching.
Problem and Hypotheses
For this teaching investigation, we are studying the perennial problem of students not learning as much or as well as we would like. Our basic hypothesis is that complete inquiry activity cycles with scaffolding and embedded assessment to guide adjustments are part of the solution. Specifically we believe:
· If I include the appropriate scaffolding at each stage of the inqiury cycle, then my students will be able to learn the content despite the anticipated problems.
· If I use appropriate embedded assessment, then I will be able to adjust my teaching when needed, because I will have adequate timely information about students’ ideas.
Plan
For this teaching investigation, choose one objective, carefully design an inquiry activity cycle to help students achieve it. To be effective you will need to try to anticipate as well as research the problems students will have at each stage, design embedded assessment that will allow you to follow students’ thinking and scaffolding that will help students over the anticipated problems.
Common problems that you might expect include:
· Motivation – students seeing no connection between their lives and the content
· Concepts that are counter-intuitive.
· Concepts that are difficult to experience directly.
· Standard representations of concepts (diagrams, vocabulary) are confusing.
Remember that scaffolding does not mean telling – don’t do this, do this. Some of the ways we have learned to scaffold include:
· Modeling and coaching smaller steps then the whole process.
· Using discrepant events that confront students’ misconceptions.
· Modeling and coaching inquiry skills.
· Extra coaching, particularly giving timely feedback.
Objective
Copy ONE objective from your unit plan. This should address a topic that you are going to teach late in February.
Checklist
· Does the objective match to your big ideas?
· Does the objective include both important content AND important scientific skills (explaining, using data, making predictions, comparing & contrasting…)?
Content
Write one paragraph that describes the Big Ideas associated with the objective. These are the ideas that you want students to walk away with at the end of the inquiry cycle. DO NOT write these in the form of objectives.
Checklist
· Are the big ideas clear and accurate?
· Are the big ideas important?
· Are they written as the explanations, not things students will be able to do?
· Do they match the objective?
Teaching Plan
For each stage in the inquiry activity cycle (Engage/establish a problem, questions, evidence: data & patterns, explanations, theories/models, communication ), describe the major activity(s), any problems you anticipate or found in the literature (be sure cite any research you did), how you will scaffold students’ learning during that stage, and the embedded assessment (preferably written) you will use. You can do this in linear form (see page 3) OR in grid form (see page 4). Make sure your descriptions have enough detail that we can judge their relevance. You may need to include worksheets, lab handouts, written assessments, or other materials that you will use. Think ahead so that you can make sure to give us copies of these materials.
Checklist
· Do all of the activities address the same ideas – all based on the same objective?
· Is each activity appropriate for its stage of the inquiry cycle?
· Are the anticipate problems realistic? Have all of the realistic problems been identified?
· Will the proposed scaffolding address the problems identified?
· Is the proposed scaffolding doable and realistic?
· Does the embedded assessment include specific questions?
· Will the embedded assessment reveal enough about students’ thinking that you can take corrective action if need be.
Establish a Problem/Engage
Major Activity(s):
Anticipated and/or Researched Problems:
Scaffolding:
Embedded Assessment:
Questions
Major Activity(s):
Anticipated and/or Researched Problems:
Scaffolding:
Embedded Assessment:
Evidence: Data and patterns
Major Activity(s):
Anticipated and/or Researched Problems:
Scaffolding:
Embedded Assessment:
Students’ Explanations
Major Activity(s):
Anticipated and/or Researched Problems:
Scaffolding:
Embedded Assessment:
Scientific Theories or Models
Major Activity(s):
Anticipated and/or Researched Problems:
Scaffolding:
Embedded Assessment:
Communication
Major Activity(s):
Anticipated and/or Researched Problems:
Scaffolding:
Embedded Assessment:
Major Activity(s) / Anticipated and/or Researched Problems / Scaffolding / Embedded Assessment(including specific Qs)
Establish a problem /Engage
Questions
Evidence: Data and patterns
Students’ Explanations
Scientific theories or models
Communication