Respond to the following:
Now that you have had a few weeks to think about and analyze STEM models as
well as ways to implement, what are some new ideas you have acquired? How can
some of these ideas apply to your current practice? Feel free to add/modify
this prompt as you see applicable for your context.
I
have spent the last year teaching both science and social studies to middle
schoolers at a small private school located east of Seattle. This middle school is in its infancy and I
came to teach during its third active year.
The schools goal has always been
to follow the Seattle Girl’s School problem based learning model (PBL). I entered with the full intension of being
one of three STEM instructors. I now see
that I am really just a science teacher although, my aspiration is still to eventually
gain a complete STEM curricular model to follow and teach. My school seems to follow more of a SteM
model with Science and Math acting as the most important components. That said, the science curriculum that we
follow is hands on and problem based
with, albeit a lesser, amount of engineering and technology incorporated into
student learning.
One of the topics that has really hit home for me during
these first few weeks of study has been the idea of having clear learning targets.
Targets that are clear to our students and easy to assess. As a first year science teacher, I followed
the pre-bound curriculum almost to a “T” last year. I was a bit fearful to deviate from it, in
case I left out something important! Foss
Science is great about giving students plenty of hands on experiments and each
unit starts with a “Focus Question.” The
problem I found was that sometimes the focus questions were very broad and
other times we just never fully answered them by the time we finished the
unit. When I began to contemplate over
the need for clear learning targets, I realized that I had done quite a
disservice to both my students and myself.
Williams states quite eloquently that, “This is why good teaching is so
extraordinarily difficult. It is relatively
easy to think up cool stuff for students to do in classrooms, but the problem
with such an activity-based approach is that too often, it is not clear what
students are going to learn (p.63).”
So I guess my biggest take away thus far has been that as
a teacher I need to be more clear with regards to my learning objectives. This is really important as I want my
students to not only enjoy the problems that I present but to actually reach
the learning goals that I have intended and aligned with the NGSS
standards. Having clearly denoted
learning targets (I like the I can statements) written ahead of time on the
whiteboard will help keep everyone on track.
I plan to continue to pose those important and interesting problems for
my students to solve but with the addition of clear learning expectations. Those that integrate all STEM content areas
with equal rigor being upheld.
Reference
Wiliam, D. (2011). Embedded Formative Assessment.
Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree.
https://www.fossweb.com/
