Scaffolding

1. Scaffolding Addressing the Need To Knows

2. NTKs Identified so far

3. Goals • Practice identifying skills and need-to-knows for a project, and connecting learning activities to those NTKs and skills. • Anticipate Need-To-Knows for your own project, and map them to specific scaffolding activities. • Consider how you want to structure your project management • Analyze/Consider the workshop model for providing instruction in a PBL classroom.

4. Let’s say you’re teaching Mountain Zoology • You have given your students the task: “Experimentally determine whether it is feasible to domesticate an Abert’s Squirrel”

5. What will they need to know? What skills will they need? Need to Know Skills • Example: where do Aberts’ squirrels live?

6. Next: consider some lessons that you might implement to teach the skills, or answer the NTKs Want some example Activity Ideas? Click here.

7. How will you assess? How will you grade?

8. Some Typical Learning Outcomes • Content Literacy • Written Communication • Oral communication • Collaboration • Critical Thinking • Work Ethic Back to last slide

9. Now consider your OWN project • Take out the Project Overview Form that you’ve been developing this week. • Identify 1 NTK that you anticipate your students identifying (2nd page, last section) • Fill out the rest of the row. • Check HERE for sample activities

10. Example Activities & Products Project Activities Products of Activities Benchmarks Peer Reviews Rough Drafts Outlines Proposals Summaries Storyboards Concept Maps Rubric Reviews Lab Reports Graphic Organizers • Small group workshops • Variety of resources • Guided practice (individual or group) • Journal prompts • Discussion boards • Inquiry based activities • Labs • 1:1 support • Peer editing • Peer tutoring • Discussions/roundtables/debates • Warm-ups • Reflections • Straight-up Lecture Back to last slide

11. PART IIHow will you deploy and manage each activity in the context of the project?

12. Spectrum of Scaffolding • Please read quietly – both pages. • Be ready to share any big take-aways, or questions as a result or your reading.

13. Take-Aways? Epiphanies? Questions?

14. Consider this Week What have you seen as activities to support NTKs? Where is the instruction…and where are the students on the Spectrum of Scaffolding?

15. Workshop Management • Make sure the rest of the class is engaged in a meaningful (and well-structured) task • Ask the students to bring something to the workshop (students should come prepared) • Optional Workshops – use a self assessment to help students opt in • Establish the practice as an essential element of Daily classroom rituals and routines • Keep the Direct Instruction short and focused on the “Need to Know’s” – Make references to how the direct instruction relates to the project they are working on. • Make it a school wide approach… students will get used to it • Keep with it… it takes time to establish it as part of the classroom culture. • If you have support staff, like instr. coaches, at your school, then they can help provide supervision as you create the climate necessary to run workshops.

16. Checking for Understanding • Here are some questions to consider. If you can answer them for yourself to your satisfaction, then you have a good start. • Why would you do a workshop instead of whole-group lecture? • How will you initiate any workshop? • Which of your NTKs might be appropriately addressed by a workshop?

17. Appendix: An example of generating a scaffolding activity

18. You have conceived of a project • Let’s say that I want to teach Newton’s 3 Laws of motion • I design a project that has them designing a game to be played by astronauts on the moon. • First step: make an entry doc • Meanwhile: I’m thinking about activities that might be helpful for teaching them the 3 laws.

19. Call for Proposals: With the recent interest by the current administration in Washington to create a base on the moon, we at NASA are looking at all aspects of supporting a long-term human presence on the moon. While the most pressing issues are technology-related, we cannot ignore the societal issues that will face the population of those living on the moon. We want to make sure that people working on the moon remain in strong physiologic and mental health. Therefore, to ensure that workers on the moon have opportunity for recreation, we are asking for proposals to create a game that can be played on the moon, that considers and allows for the specific conditions on the moon that are different from earth’s. Applicants will need to develop a game, and then orally present it to a review board that will consist of astronauts (to see if it seems fun), fitness experts (if it is going to provide exercise), and physicists, so that we at NASA know that your understanding of the physics is adequate to the task of accurately predicting what will happen in the game that you propose. Along those lines, be ready to explain the motions of people or objects in your game, referring to any of Newton’s Laws. The extraordinary proposal will have predictions of motion with appropriate equations and calculations clearly shown and referenced. You make your Entry Doc

20. We know… NASA is looking to support human presence on moon Must create a game to be played on moon by astronauts Must present to a team of experts. Must show understanding of the physics involved Must explain motions of objects or people You make your list of Anticipated “Need-to-Knows” • We need to know… • Will it be inside or outside? • What equipment can be used? • How long should the game be? • What is the physics involved? • What are Newton’s Laws? • How are the conditions on the Moon different from the Earth’s?

21. Now What? • Projects often allow students to go in a variety of directions initially. • Their direction is based upon their interpretation of what they need to know. • You help with scaffolding activities/assignments/techniques

22. Look at the Need to Knows… • For each need to know, consider: how will the student find this out? • Is it something they can research on their own? • Is is something they can discover in the lab? • Does it require direct instruction?

23. Example • Need to Know: “How are the conditions on the Moon different from the Earth’s?” • I know that that there is no air, and the acceleration due to gravity is much less. (1.63 m/s/s, actually) • Students can find this out via research – which can be a scaffolding activity. • But is it something that they can measure? • I know of a great activity: Use video from astronauts dropping objects on the moon, and analyze to find the acceleration due to gravity on the moon • Voila! Another scaffolding activity.

24. But how do you instigate any scaffolding activity? • PBL ≠ Unstructured learning • In this case, students need to perform a lab. I have several options for implementation: • Set aside a day that all students must do this lab. • Make a requirement (on the calendar, perhaps) that students must finish this particular lab by a certain date. • Keep this in mind, and bring it up when you conference with your groups, and they have gotten to this particular need-to-know. • Any others?

25. How do you connect it to the larger picture? • Continually revisit the Need-to-Knows by invoking them… • In Journals • On the wall • Starting class with them • Starting point for meetings with groups liaisons • Build in time for groups to revisit their own need to knows. • Emphasize and reemphasize that the need to know list is a living document.