Rigor in the Science Classroom

1. Rigor in the Science Classroom Gary Carlin, CFN 603 917-714-7448, gcarlin@schools.nyc.gov

2. Instructional Patterns in Science Most science students spend much of their time learning definitions and labels that apply to natural phenomena and scientific processes. What process is responsible for producing the rounded shape of the particles shown on the stream bottom in the cross section? [1] Which term is defined as a measure of the average kinetic energy of the particles in a sample?

3. Rigor is used to describe: • Educational Expectations • *Instruction (Content, Skills, Process) • *Learning Activities/Tasks • Environment • Assessments

4. Difficulty vs. Challenge • Learning experiences should be sufficiently and “appropriately”challengingfor individual students or groups of students, not simply difficult. • Appropriately rigorous learning experiences motivate students to learn more and learn it more deeply, while also giving them a sense of personal accomplishment when they overcome a learning challenge.

5. Educational Rigor • Assignments that encourage students to think critically, creatively, and more flexibly. • Expectations that are academically, intellectually, and personally challenging • Environments that are stimulating, engaging, and supportive. • Lessons that encourage students to question their assumptions and think deeply, rather than simply giving and recalling information.

6. Rigorous Learning Experiences • “Help students understand knowledge and concepts that are complex, ambiguous, or contentious, and they help students acquire skills that can be applied in a variety of educational, career, and civic contexts throughout their lives”. • … Nice idea, what does this look like in your classroom with your students?

7. More Expansive View of Rigor • Must includeCritical-Thinking Skills such as: • interpreting and analyzing data, • making and using both primary and secondary sources to support an argument or position, • arriving at a novel interpretation of an event or phenomena after conducting extensive research.

8. Critical Thinking • Formulating and articulating thoughtful, penetrating questions • Identifying themes or patterns and making abstract connections across subjects • Developing well-reasoned, persuasive arguments and evaluating and responding to counterarguments • Examining concepts or situations from multiple perspectives, including different cultural perspectives • Questioning evidence and assumptions to reach novel conclusions • Devising imaginative ways to solve problems, especially unfamiliar or complex problems

9. Foster Student Questions • A. Observe, Infer, Explain, Question (OIEQ) • B. Discrepant Event • C. Compare & Contrast • D. Relationships • E. Look Back (Connect) – Ahead (Predict)

10. Themes & Patterns • Unifying or Dominant Idea for a Lesson, each Unit, and the Course • “Unit Motif” (Wall Paper) • Arrangement of Repeated Parts, Applications, and/or Sequence

11. Arguments in Science • Arguments are supported by factual claims. • Afact can also be the primary claim of an argument. • In our science classes we will be most interested in factual claims reported by others in primary and secondary sources and those that you arrive at yourself – through a laboratory experiment

12. Creating an ArgumentFind Language …

13. Multiple Perspectives • Create Character/Roles as you teach • Work with Real Locations • “Story” – Protagonist/Antagonist • Change – Historical, Discovery, Technology, …

14. Encourage Novel Conclusions • A. Rule out the expected conclusions or methods to solve a problem. • B. Use the expected method/procedure as a basis of comparison for other methods • C. Provide limitations that prevent and expected conclusion from being reached • D. Improve … (a design, outcome, structure …) • E. Create a “real-world” solution for a given situation

15. Relationships • What’s the Relationship between … ____________ and ____________? … Chromosomes and Enzymes? … Temperature and Pressure? … Potential and Kinetic Energy? … Velocity and Acceleration? … Index Fossilsand Geological Dating? … Work and Power?

16. … AND Academic Relevance • Learning experiences that are either directly applicable to the personal aspirations, interests, or cultural experiencesof students (personal relevance) or that are connected in some way to real-world issues, problems, and contexts (life relevance). • Choice, Varied Content, Skill Acquisition, Current Event, Practical Context, Career Choice …

17. Rigor/ Relevance Framework

18. “Elaborated Communication” • Explain or Justify their thinking or conclusion (reflect, analyze, apply, evaluate, …) • Applying core academic knowledge, concepts and/or skills in addressing a problem or issue • Making intra-/inter- discipline connections • Citing/evaluating sources and referencing/supporting/challenging other student responses and evidence

19. Answering a Question • A. “Answer” • B. Explanation (why, process, check) • C. Strongest Evidence (cite) • D. Check – or – Additional Evidence (cite) • E. Why it couldn’t be a Different Answer

20. Cite Evidence from Text • 1. State the Title of Text • 2. Indicate Paragraph • 3. Sentence Number • 4. … it states that … and this supports my claim because … • For example: In the text: Artic Meltdown, in the 2ndparagraph, 3rdsentence, it states “A reduction in ice-covered areas exposes more land surfaces.” and this supports my claim because …

21. Answer Challenge • A. Answer you are Challenging • B. Part of Answer being Challenged: Conclusion, Support Evidence, Check … • C. Counterclaim or Evidence to Refute (cite) or better support • D. Explanation of why your “answer” and/or evidence is better or correct • E. Summary Statement of Challenge

22. “Cycle of Rigor” • Go beyond what is “easy” (Data: C/S/P) • Engage in a “challenge” (application, OEQ, new) • Time to pause, reflect on learning (“restart cycle”) ***** • Introduce a complex text, task, or idea and give “sufficient time” to process it and then re-introduceit (multiple times) until students can independently master it. 

23. What and How we Teach • What “kinds of questions” are you asking/PURPOSE? • And what is the expectations of the other students who are not answering a specific question? (Capturing information?) • How are you building to those Pivotal or Open-Ended questions that require use of conceptual understandings, making connections, challenging of ideas, and lead to new questions? • Are students given “thinking time” in which they “re-process” specific information to answer a question, apply to a real-world application or even a new, unique, or different situation? • In DISCUSSSIONS are students referencing specific texts, demonstrations, laboratory experiences, classroom tasks and activities, and other student responses ?

24. Check Understanding • Application • Situation (Roles) • New/Additional Information • Defend Thinking: Explain why/how …

25. Application • The application allows the teacher to assess student understanding and ideally, provides students with the opportunity to “use what they have learned”. • Students can now explore questions or problems that are “different” (higher level, different format, have something new that students should be able to figure out) from the questions/problems from the developmental section. • And most importantly, the application connects the ideas/concepts of the lesson to the real world.

26. “Chunk Summaries” (3-5) • For each “chunk of a lesson”: • Stop and ask students to “summarize” main points/ideas ( Think Bullets) • Create/Modify notes and visuals • Create an Analogy • Ask a Question

27. Medial Summary • Provides students with an opportunity to revisit the AIM to see what they have addressed in the lesson at the halfway point AND what they still need to address to complete to “answer the AIM”. (Summarize then Predict: “What’s Next”) • Helps students focus their thinking, practice summation, and learn ways to re-process information into new formats (ie. a graph, table, diagram, etc.)

28. Final Summary • Reviews main ideas, essential points, and highlights of the lesson and describes how they were used to answer the AIM. • Initiate related, deeper, and/or interesting questions, insights, or issues. • Intra- and Inter-unit connections and relationships

29. Examples of a Simple Summaries • Verbal Recap/“Condenses and Connects” • “Process a Visual” to “Put it All Together” • *Filling in a Graphic Organizer/Template • *Writing of an Explanation/Description/Connection/Summary • Demonstration/Explanation of a final “Summary Problem(s)” • *Creation of a “process steps chart”, “problem check steps” or a “skill evaluation rubric”, etc. for future class use

30. Summary Reflection • ►How did the summary bring out and connect the highlights of the lesson? Explain. • ► How did you/students assess the summary of the lesson? Explain. • ►How/Why did you supplement the student’s summation? Why? • ►How did the “reprocessing” of the lesson’s content, help students develop greater understanding?

31. Rigor Start with having … • A detailed, clear syllabus with learning objectives; curriculum maps, unit plans, performance tasks, grading rubric, pacing calendar, etc. • Technologyto enhance efficiency of content delivery, engage students, and connect to real-world • Knowledge of your students (contact, interaction, praise, showing interest, meeting w/students) • In-class small group discussionsand report findings (think-pair-share)

32. And Should Also Include … • Writing (journals, varied levels of writing, writing across the curriculum, etc.) • Problem-solving (case studies, group activities, essay exams, etc.) • Oral communication (debates w/expert judges, summary presentations, role playing) • Reading/comprehension (reading and analyzing – ie. in-class discussion, quizzes, summaries, etc) • Collaborative group activities, tasks, and/or projects • Socratic method/interactive discussion

33. Hess’ Cognitive Rigor Matrix & Curricular Examples: Applying Webb’s Depth-of-Knowledge Levels to Bloom’s Cognitive Process Dimensions – M-Sci

34. Instructional Rigor Rubric (Holistic)

35. Instructional Rigor Rubric (Analytic) Adapted from International Center for Leadership in Education, CREC 2012 Blended Solutions Instructional Rigor Module

36. Academic Rigor for Project/Task

37. CREC: Rigor in the Science Classroom • CONTENT: Rigorous content is cognitively complex, thought-provoking, challenging and conceptual. • SKILLS: Rigorous skills foster independent, self-directed and productive learners who are creative and critical thinkers, problem- solvers, and innovators. • ENVIRONMENT: Rigorous environments ensure students perform at their maximum potential while building their will to persevere.

38. CREC Science Rigor Rubric: Content

39. CREC Rigor Rubric: Skills

40. CREC Rigor Rubric: Environment

41. Where Does it Start?

42. Roadblock to Literacy • Existing accountability systems create incentives to drill students in simple,formulaic kinds of writing at the expense of time they might otherwise spend teaching them to write thoughtful, independent and varied kinds of papers in science

43. Typical Science Regents Writing • LE:67 A farmer planted two corn varieties, one of which was very tasty but had small ears, and the other one had large ears but did not taste nearly as good. The pollen from one variety was used to fertilize the other variety of corn. State one biological advantage this method of reproduction has over cloning. [1] • ES:85 State one advantage of using solar energy instead of burning fossil fuels to produce thermal energy for your home. [1] • Chem: 74 Explain, in terms of charge distribution, why a molecule of the 2-propanol is a polar molecule. [1] • Physics: 69 Explain what is meant by an atom being in its ground state. [1]

44. Identify Major Writing Skills Students will develop writing skills to: • 1. Describe, explain, and predict natural phenomena in their own words. • 2. Identify and describe reasons, outcomes, relationships, connections, and analogies in scientific processes and phenomena. • 3. Pose and evaluate arguments, design and interpret scientific experiments, and apply conclusions to persuade, expand, or modify scientific understandings • 4. Construct a written response that demonstrates conceptual understanding from multiple sources of information: text, diagrams, tables, graphs, charts, pictures, graphic organizers, etc

45. 1. Describe, explain, and predict natural phenomena in their own words

46. 2. Identify and describe reasons, outcomes, relationships, connections, and analogies in scientific processes and phenomena

47. 3. Pose and evaluate arguments, design and interpret scientific experiments, and apply conclusions to persuade, expand, or modify scientific understandings

48. 4. Construct a written response that demonstrates conceptual understanding from multiple sources of information

49. It Starts With the Teacher • Best teachers of discipline-based literacy practices are themselves able to : -read, write, and think like a scientist. -aware of the specific challenges that people tend to face when learning to read and write in these ways for the first time.

50. Start with “FACTS” • Conclusion/Inference/Different if … • Reason(s)/Possible/Leads to … • Explanation (Explain why …)/Based on … • Relationship/Directly related to … • Evidence (Best Supports) • Impact/Concern/Increase-Decrease • Demonstrates (Situation, Example, etc.)