This is week two of a book study of Ambitious Science Teaching (Windshitl, Thompson, & Braaten, 2018) with a nationwide group of science educators. The study was organized by @sbottasullivan. We are working through one chapter of the book each week and I will blog about each chapter. This post is about Chapter 2, Planning for engagement with big science ideas. You can follow our book study using #ASTBookChat on Twitter.
This chapter describes a unit planning process. This unit planning process is very different than the methods in which most science teachers have been trained. The rationale for this process is compelling. A anchor-driven unit has advantages over traditional topic-driven units.
Selecting a good anchor takes time and thought, but is essential to creating a high-quality unit. The anchor must be complex enough that multiple science ideas are needed to explain it. The anchor must also be relevant to studentsʻ lived experiences. In this way, the choice of anchor contributes to equity and rigor, which were two of the major concepts in my Chapter 1 post.
As we design a unit, we should identify the big ideas that have explanatory power. Which ideas shed light on the inner workings of the most phenomena? The observation that often the most important big idea in a unit is not even explicitly called out in a typical unit was striking. It is important for us to equip students with the ability to use ideas with great explanatory power that can be used in multiple contexts.
Modeling and explanation of the anchor event are key activities in a high-quality unit. Students engage in iterative cycles of evidence gathering and sense-making as they develop their explanations. Models make their thinking visible. Our teaching goals must include explanations that include the “why” of anchor events. Teachers develop the gapless model that is the explanation of the anchor activity before they design the unit.
Anchor events are the thread that holds together the activities in the unit. The activities help students answer questions about the anchor event and are arranged in a logical order. This chapter describes a process for deciding how to order unit activities.
I am looking forward to the weekly discussion from the #ASTBookChat group on Twitter and synchronously via Zoom each week.
For more about #ASTBookChat, see my previous posts:
Lori Andersen 