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QUESTION: How do things inside our body work together to make us feel the way we do?

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QUESTION: How do things inside our body work together to make us feel the way we do?

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THEME:  Putting It All Together        ...

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THEME:  Putting It All Together        ...

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1. Review the routines

2. Skim Lessons 9-13 in the storyline

3. If you have not done so yet, download the unit

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The OpenSciEd Instructional Model uses a storyline approach- a logical sequence of lessons that are motivated by students' questions that arise from students' interactions with phenomena.

To help teachers and students advance through a unit storyline, the instructional model takes advantage of five routines-activities that play specific roles in advancing the storyline with structures to help students achieve the objectives of those activities. The routines typically follow a pattern as students kick off a unit of study, investigate different questions they have, put the pieces together from those investigations, and then problematize the next set of questions to investigate.

The infographic below provides a general path through an OpenSciEd unit using the routines.

Purpose

This routine is used to kick off a unit and drive student motivation throughout
the unit. It provides a common experience with a phenomenon that is engaging
and puzzling, eliciting student questions and a drive to figure things out. As part of the routine, students make connections between the classroom experience and their own life experiences and resources. This routine provides the excitement and curiosity that drives the rest of the unit as the students and
the teacher have a shared mission to figure out the phenomena or solve the
design problems.

Routine in Action

This montage shows two different classrooms developing their Driving
Question Boards as part of the
Anchoring Phenomenon Routine.

Anchoring Phenomenon Routine

Kicking off a Unit with an Experience to Motivate Investigation

The Anchoring Phenomenon routine is used to kick off a unit of study and drive student motivation throughout the unit. The purpose of the Anchoring Phenomenon routine is to build a shared mission for a learning community to motivate students in figuring out phenomena or solving design problems. More specifically, the Anchoring Phenomenon routine serves to ground student learning in a common experience and then use that experience to elicit and feed student curiosity, which will drive learning throughout the unit. The Anchoring Phenomenon routine also serves as a critical place to capture students' initial ideas as a pre-assessment opportunity. The Anchoring Phenomenon is introduced at the beginning of a unit.

The Anchoring Phenomenon routine pushes students to represent their initial thinking. Students might represent their thinking in the following ways:

Drawing or writing initial science models, explanations, or design solutions in their science notebooks

Discussing an initial model, explanation, or design solution with a classmate

Creating a shared classroom representation of an initial class consensus model, a Driving Question Board, and ideas for potential investigations

Navigation Routine

Motivating the Next Step in an Investigation

The Navigation routine enables students to experience the unit as a coherent storyline in which each activity has a purpose and is connected to what has gone before and what is coming. It also provides a valuable opportunity for students to reflect on their learning over time. The Navigation routine is conducted throughout the unit at transition points to further solidify the connection between related science classroom resources and topics.

The Navigation routine is all about linking learning across lessons and activities. Students might represent their thinking in the following ways:

Revisiting their initial ideas and focus questions in their science notebooks

Revisiting their individual models in their notebooks to add to or revise their thinking

Recording a "consensus" science model, using a Model Tracker, in their notebooks and publicly in the classroom

Returning to the Driving Question Board to answer questions, add new questions, or refine their questions

Investigation Routine

Using Practices to Figure Out Science Ideas

The purpose of the Investigation routine is to use questions around a phenomenon that lead the class to engage in science practices to make sense of the phenomenon, and then develop the science ideas as part of the explanation. This is the basic structure of the work of three-dimensional learning. The Investigation routine is conducted throughout the unit, whenever students identify gaps in their understanding of the Anchoring Phenomenon.

Students represent their thinking during Investigation routines in many different ways, including these:

Developing a plan of action

Recording observations and measurements

Organizing evidence

Articulating new ideas and comparing them to current models

Revising science models

Revising the Driving Question Board

Problematizing Routine

Motivating Learning through Each Part of a Unit

In OpenSciEd's science classroom resources and units, the purpose of the Problematizing routine is to reveal a potential problem with the current model or explanation in order to motivate students to extend or revise their models. The teacher seeds, cultivates, and capitalizes on an emerging disagreement that reveals the potential problem and gets students to focus on an important question that could extend their science models. The Problematizing routine is often conducted after a Putting Pieces Together routine or at strategic locations where students need to recognize that there is more to figure out.

Putting Pieces Together Routine

Using the Science Ideas We've Built So Far

In the Putting Pieces Together routine, students take the ideas they have developed across multiple lessons and figure out how they can be connected to account for the phenomenon the class is working on. In our science classroom resources, this routine serves to help students take stock of their learning and engage with the class to develop a consensus representation, explanation, or model to account for the target phenomenon (the phenomenon anchoring the unit or learning set).

The Putting Pieces Together routine is conducted at strategic moments when students have synthesized evidence from a range of situations to construct an important component of the explanatory model. This is often at the end of a lesson set and at the end of the unit.

Students typically represent their thinking through the following:

A gotta-have-it checklist

A class consensus model

Portions of the OpenSciEd Instructional Model were adapted from tools and processes developed by NextGen Science Storylines at Northwestern University NextGen Science Storylines at Northwestern University and from the Next Generation Science Exemplar System Project (NGSX) at Clark University and Tidemark. Reiser, B. J., Novak, M., & McGill, T. A. W. (2017). Coherence from the students' perspective: Why the vision of the framework for K-12 science requires more than simply "combining" three dimensions of science learning. Paper commissioned for the Board on Science Education workshop "Instructional materials for the Next Generation Science Standards". Retrieved from http://sites.nationalacademies.org/cs/groups/dbassesite/documents/webpage/dbasse_180270.pdf

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Science Classroom Resources - Science Model Design - OpenSciEd

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Learn about the storyline approach OpenSciEd uses in our science classroom resources. Learn how our science model is designed for the most effective lessons possible!

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Review Lesson 2: "Can we see anything inside M’Kenna that looks different?"
Identify: What do students do and figure out?

Teacher Slide Deck
Student Procedure

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Zoom Meeting Link

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Read this short one page article about the importance of thinking like a kid at times during this training.

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Please review sections:

“What is the role of disciplinary core ideas in OpenSciEd” through “What is the role of cross cutting concepts in OpenSciEd” on pages 8-9.
and

“ Assessment System - Types of Assessments” on pages 49-50

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Equitable Sensemaking PD - 2.1 Scientist Circle

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Participant Google Drive Folder
Jamboard

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OSE Tool + Team Time: Jamboard w number drawings - Google Jamboard

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Metabolic Reactions day 4 - Google Jamboard

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Metabolic Reactions Lesson 13 - Google Jamboard

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Unit 7.3 Thinking Deeper Lesson 8 Remote

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7.3 Metabolic Reactions Unit
Requires Registration

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M'Kenna Symptoms Interview - 7.3 Metabolic Reactions Lesson 1

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OpenSciEd Communicating in Scientific Ways Poster (1)

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Simulation links are about 2/3 of the way down on the left

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Unit Summary

This unit on metabolic reactions in the human body starts out with students exploring a real case study of a middle-school girl named M'Kenna, who reported some alarming symptoms to her doctor. Her symptoms included an inability to concentrate, headaches, stomach issues when she eats, and a lack of energy for everyday activities and sports that she used to play regularly. She also reported noticeable weight loss over the past few months, in spite of consuming what appeared to be a healthy diet. Her case sparks questions and ideas for investigations around trying to figure out which pathways and processes in M'Kenna's body might be functioning differently than a healthy system and why.

Students investigate data specific to M'Kenna's case in the form of doctor's notes, endoscopy images and reports, growth charts, and micrographs. They also draw from their results from laboratory experiments on the chemical changes involving the processing of food and from digital interactives to explore how food is transported, transformed, stored, and used across different body systems in all people. Through this work of figuring out what is causing M'Kenna's symptoms, the class discovers what happens to the food we eat after it enters our bodies and how M'Kenna's different symptoms are connected.

Unit Examples

Simulations

Additional Unit Information

Building Toward the Following Standards and Practices

This unit builds toward the following NGSS Performance Expectations (PEs):

MS-LS1-3: Use argument supported by evidence for how the body is a system of interacting subsystems composed of groups of cells.

MS-LS1-5: Construct a scientific explanation based on evidence for how environmental and genetic factors influence the growth of organisms.

MS-LS1-7: Develop a model to describe how food is rearranged through chemical reactions forming new molecules that support growth and/or release energy as this matter moves through an organism.

MS-PS1-1: Develop models to describe the atomic composition of simple molecules and extended structures. *

MS-PS1-2: Analyze and interpret data on the properties of substances before and after the substances interact to determine if a chemical reaction has occurred. *

* This unit reinforces these NGSS PEs that students should have previously developed. In the OpenSciEd Scope and Sequence, these are first built in Unit 7.1. In this new context of metabolic reactions, students will engage in the analysis and interpretation of various forms of data on how molecules change or do not change as they move through digestion. Chemical reactions starting in our mouths and stomachs and continuing throughout the rest of the digestive system drive this change, breaking down large food molecules into smaller ones. Some molecules, like fiber, stay the same throughout digestion and, therefore, do not undergo chemical reactions.

The current version of the unit expands students' understanding of metabolic reactions, which include these Grade 6-8 DCI elements:
LS1.A Structure and Function LS1.B Growth and Development of Organisms

The growth of an animal is controlled by genetic factors, * food intake, and interactions with other organisms, and each species has a typical adult size range.
LS1.C Organization for Matter and Energy Flow in Organisms

Within individual organisms, food moves through a series of chemical reactions in which it is broken down and rearranged to form new molecules, to support growth, or to release energy.
PS3.D Energy in Processes and Everyday Life

Cellular respiration in plants and * animals involves chemical reactions with oxygen that release stored energy. In these processes, complex molecules containing carbon react with oxygen to produce carbon dioxide and other materials.

*There is a slash through the pieces of the DCIs that are not developed in this unit. In the OpenSciEd Scope and Sequence, students will develop an understanding of genetic factors in the OpenSciEd Unit 8.5, how plants do chemical reactions to obtain and store energy in the subsequent OpenSciEd Unit 7.4, and interactions with other organisms in the ecosystem dynamics in OpenSciEd Unit 7.5.

In addition, this unit introduces the concept of food as fuel and lays the groundwork for future units in which students figure out that both food and other sources of fuels are sources of matter and sources of energy, drawing connections between chemical reactions that transfer and convert energy in living and nonliving systems. This connects to the idea identified on page 196 of Framework for K-12 Science Education (National Research Council, 2012): "By middle school, a more precise idea of energy-for example, the understanding that food or fuel undergoes a chemical reaction with oxygen that releases stored energy-can emerge."

You can view the placement of this OpenSciEd Unit 7.3 and associated units within the OpenSciEd Middle School Scope and Sequence.

Focal Science & Engineering Practices

Developing & Using Models

Analyzing & Interpreting Data

Engaging in Argument from Evidence

What are prerequisite math concepts necessary for the unit?

In Lesson 8 students use a NetLogo simulation to discover the relationship between the rate of food absorption and the height of villi that line the small intestine. Prerequisite math concepts that may be helpful include:

CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.6.NS.C.8: Solve real-world and mathematical problems by graphing points in all four quadrants of the coordinate plane.

CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.6.RP.A.2: Understand the concept of a unit rate a/b associated with a ratio a:b with b ≠ 0, and use rate language in the context of a ratio relationship.

CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.7.SP.C.6: Approximate the probability of a chance event by collecting data on the chance process that produces it and observing its long-run relative frequency, and predict the approximate relative frequency given the probability.

CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.7.SP.C.8.C : Design and use a simulation to generate frequencies for compound events.

Students analyze and interpret M'Kenna's height and weight growth charts in Lesson 10. Prerequisite math concepts that may be helpful include:

CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.6.SP.B.5.C: Giving quantitative measures of center (median and/or mean) and variability (interquartile range and/or mean absolute deviation), as well as describing any overall pattern and any striking deviations from the overall pattern with reference to the context in which the data were gathered.

In addition, within the domain of Measurement and Data in the Common Core Mathematics Standards, students will be drawing on what they have learned across a number of standards under the category of Represent and Interpret data for Grades 1-5 when they are generating and interpreting the tables and graphs of their data collected from the simulation and during analysis of several food molecule graphs in many lessons across the unit.

What modifications will I need to make if this unit is taught out of sequence?

This is the third unit in 7th grade in the OpenSciEd Scope and Sequence. Given this placement, several modifications would need to be made if teaching this unit earlier in the middle school curriculum. These include:

Introducing the students to the concept of a Driving Question Board and a shared set of classroom norms. This would not be necessary if taught after other OpenSciEd units.

Supplemental teaching of the nature of matter, so that students see matter as made of particles.

Supplemental teaching of the foundations for chemical reactions in PEs MS-PS1-1 Develop models to describe the atomic composition of simple molecules and extended structures and MS-PS1-2 Analyze and interpret data on the properties of substances before and after the substances interact to determine if a chemical reaction has occurred . This unit is designed to come directly after two units involved in the foundations of chemical reactions and explicitly builds on those understandings. It is critical to note that students need the idea of chemical reactions and the idea that matter can be rearranged through these reactions yielding resultant materials with different properties to develop the explanations in this unit.

Supplemental teaching of PE s MS-LS1-1 Conduct an investigation to provide evidence that living things are made of cells; either one cell or many different numbers and types of cells and MS-LS1-2 Develop and use a model to describe the function of a cell as a whole and ways the parts of cells contribute to the function. This unit does not introduce cells to students. It uses that prerequisite knowledge to build understanding that the organization of the body goes from cells, to tissues, to organs, to subsystems to multiple subsystems working together in one body system.

Tara McGill, Unit Lead, Northwestern University

Michael Novak, Field Test Unit Lead, Northwestern University

Kate Cook-Whitt, Writer, Maine Mathematics and Science Alliance

Kathryn Fattalah, Writer, The Nora Project

Emily Harris, Writer, BSCS Science Learning

Lindsey Mohan, Writer, BSCS Science Learning

Jamie Noll, Writer, Northwestern University

Barbara Taylor, Writer, Charles A. Dana Center at University of Texas Austin

Heather Galbreath, Pilot Teacher, Lombard Middle School

Michael Clinchot, Teacher Advisor, John D. O'Bryant School of Mathematics and Science

Nicole Vick, Reviewer, Abingdon-Avon High School

Betty Stennett, Reviewer, BSCS Science Learning

Katie Van Horne, Assessment Specialist

Kelsey Edwards, Project Coordinator, Northwestern University

Barbara Hug, Unit Advisory Chair, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

BSCS Science Learning

Natalie Giarratano, Copyeditor, Independent Contractor

Stacey Luce, Editorial Production Lead

Valerie Maltese, Marketing Specialist & Project Coordinator

Alyssa Markle, Project Coordinator

Chris Moraine, Multimedia Graphic Designer

Achieve's Science Peer Review Panel

An integral component of OpenSciEd's development process is external validation of alignment to the Next Generation Science Standards by NextGenScience's Science Peer Review Panel using the EQuIP Rubric for Science. We are proud that this unit has been identified as a quality example of a science unit. You can find additional information about the EQuIP rubric and the peer review process at the nextgenscience.org website.

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This unit on metabolic reactions in the human body starts out with students exploring a real case study of a middle-school girl named M'Kenna, who reported some alarming symptoms to her doctor. Her symptoms included an inability to concentrate, headaches, stomach issues when she eats, and a lack of energy for everyday activities and sports that she used to play regularly.

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Stop and Jot DAY 3 (OSE - Anchoring Phenomenon Routine)

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L8 Metabolic Reactions Modified Handout Connecting the Structure

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Metabolic reactions jamboard - Google Jamboard

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Day 3 Metabolic Reactions PD Presentation Slide Deck

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Click below, then open a new window and make a copy.

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Map M’Kenna’s Symptoms and initial individual model

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Day 2 Metabolic Reactions PD Presentation Slide Deck

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Stop and Jot: Reflecting on the Anchoring Phenomenon Routine

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Stop and Jot: Reflecting on the Anchoring Phenomenon Routine

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LINK