When a lesson is labeled "New," it
indicates that the lesson plans have passed
a rigorous
instructional materials evaluation that is
closely associated
with relevant educational research,
including the publication Understanding
by Design (Wiggins & McTighe,
2005).
The evaluation
is based on the premise that planning a
lesson "backwards"
produces better student understanding.
This approach has three basic steps:
- Identify desired results
- Determine acceptable evidence
- Plan learning activities and instruction
The report
How People Learn, from the National Research
Council, outlines implications for how we
educate students
and the design of curricula, instruction,
assessments,
and learning environments. Three findings
were highlighted
in guiding our instructional materials
evaluation:
- Students come to new learning with preconceptions about
how the world
works. This initial understanding must be engaged
in order to help students grasp new
concept and information
that they are expected to understand.
- To develop competence in an area of learning, students must have
both a deep foundation of factual knowledge and a
strong conceptual framework. This allows students
to organize information into meaningful patterns
that can be used for future problem-solving.
- To support student learning, students need to be able to
think about
their thinking so that they can
recognize what they
know and what they don't know. First,
the learning
goals must be clear to the student.
Second, students
must be taught how to prompt themselves
and monitor
their own understanding without teacher
support.
The following elements have been added to the
instructional materials
to enhance their quality and
provide teachers
with a better foundation for presenting
salinity studies
to their students. Each of these elements retains the
focus on identifying important content in
order to help
students answer the question; "Why am I
doing this?"
| Big Idea |
May be a standard or benchmark; will be communicated to students
and others as the unifying concept of a
unit |
| |
|
| Key Concepts |
Clarify specifically what students should understand
about science concepts; may be a
benchmark or grade-level
expectation; students should be able to
demonstrate
that they understand in a relatively
uncomplicated
manner |
| |
|
| Knowledge & Skills |
Factual, procedural, and declarative knowledge needed to understand
the key concepts and big idea;
essential vocabulary |
| |
|
| Essential Questions |
Engage students in the content; have no obvious right answer
- open-ended and cause students to think; raise
other important questions that are
frequently interdisciplinary;
often address conceptual foundations
in science;
naturally recur each time the concepts
are taught
|
| |
|
| Prior Knowledge |
What the students have already presumed to have
learned about the key concepts,
knowledge, & skills;
general background knowledge, interests,
and experiences;
specific background knowledge &
vocabulary about
the big idea and key concepts |
| |
|
| Common Preconceptions |
From infancy to adulthood, learners seek out patterns
and explanations for natural phenomena,
forming explanations
that seem logical, but are in fact not
scientifically
correct; instruction must directly
challenge common
preconceptions; idiosyncratic, or
uncommon preconceptions
will confound instruction that is not
tied to frequent
assessments of what students are thinking
|
Special thanks to
the Aquarius
Focus/Advisory Group: A. Tweed, J. Tuomi,
S. Arens, A.
Beesley, R. Fortner, A. Manahan, A. deCharon for the
work performed January 2006, at the
Mid-continent Research
for Education and Learning for informing and guiding
this process.
References
Bransford, J., Brown A. &
Cocking, R.
(2000) How people learn, Washington D.
C.: National
Academy Press
Dean, C. & J. Bailey (2003). A report
documenting
the process for developing an integrated standards-based
instructional unit. Aurora, CO:
Mid-continent Research
for Education and Learning.
Wiggins, G. & McTighe, J. 2nd
Ed. (2005) Understanding
by design. Alexandria, VA: Association for
Supervision and Curriculum
Development
