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Ambitious Science Teaching Video Archive

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Ambitious Science Teaching Video Archive

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Below you can choose from a series of videos that demonstrate ambitious teaching. If you have not yet viewed the Orientation Series, we urge you to do that first, before looking at others. For each of the classroom series, we've shot an entire unit of instruction so you can see how ambitious science teaching unfolds over time.

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Below you can choose from a series of videos that demonstrate ambitious teaching. If you have not yet viewed the Orientation Series , we urge you to do that first, before looking at others. For each of the classroom series, we've shot an entire unit of instruction so you can see how ambitious science teaching unfolds over time.

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Middle School Life Science Lesson: Energy Transfer and Transformation in Photosynthesis MS:LS 1-6: Construct a scientific explanation based on evidence for the role of photosynthesis in the cycling of matter and flow of energy into and out of organisms. Ultimately, we want students to have a deep understanding of how photosynthesis provides the connection between energy and matter in an ecosystem.

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Teaching Channel: Making Claims from Evidence

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Teaching Channel: Making Claims from Evidence

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Discussion and Supporting Materials

Thought starters

1. What are some ways that students use the Science and Engineering Practices in this lesson?

2. How does Ms. Cope use an interesting phenomenon in order to help students understand science concepts?

3. What examples do you see of students using evidence-based reasoning?

School Details

Burlington Elementary School
5946 North Orient Street
Burlington KY 41005

Data Provided By:

Teachers

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Students in Becki Cope's second grade class carry out an investigation to compare solutions designed to slow wind and/or water erosion from changing the shape of the land. Students make claims to support the effectiveness of their solution, construct arguments, and compare multiple solutions.

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NGSS Planning Cards from Paul Andersen's Wonder of Science

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NGSS Planning Cards from Paul Andersen's Wonder of Science

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HHMI Biointeractive: Hundreds of Free Resources for Science Educators

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HHMI Biointeractive: Hundreds of Free Resources for Science Educators

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K-12 NGSS Aligned Activities for Earth Science

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K-12 NGSS Aligned Activities for Earth Science

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Here you can find suggested Earth science related activities. Most are categorized based on the Next Generation Science Standards, and the earlier National Science Education Standards. Activities are also marked with an appropriate grade level. These Earth science activities are fun and educational. To access these activities, click on the activity name in the chart below.

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Data Nuggets - Activities that Bring Real Scientific Data Into the Classroom.

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Data Nuggets - Activities that Bring Real Scientific Data Into the Classroom.

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Below, you will find a table of all the current Data Nuggets available. Click on the Title to open a page displaying the Data Nugget, teacher guide, student activities, grading rubric, and associated resources. The table can be sorted using the arrows located next to each column header. It can also be searched by content area using the search bar, located to the top right of the table.

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Below, you will find a table of all the current Data Nuggets available. Click on the Title to open a page displaying the Data Nugget, teacher guide, student activities, grading rubric, and associated resources. The table can be sorted using the arrows located next to each column header.

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Checklist for Facilitating Science Discussions 

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Checklist for Facilitating Science Discussions 

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GROUP LEARNING ROUTINES - Resources Index

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Qualities of a Good Phenomenon Checklist

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Qualities of a Good Phenomenon Checklist

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Talk Resource Tools : StemTeachingTools (en-US)

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Edutopia is a free source of information, inspiration, and practical strategies for learning and teaching in preK-12 education. We are published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.

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The Organism Scale units ( Animals, Plants, and Decomposers) engage students in tracing matter and energy through organisms (e.g., mealworms, lettuce plants, and bread mold). These units address the same big ideas in different contexts, focusing on the processes within an individual organism. The Carbon-transforming processes addressed in these units are photosynthesis, cellular respiration, digestion, and biosynthesis.

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The Organism Scale units ( Animals, Plants, and Decomposers) engage students in tracing matter and energy through organisms (e.g., mealworms, lettuce plants, and bread mold). These units address the same big ideas in different contexts, focusing on the processes within an individual organism. The Carbon-transforming processes addressed in these units are photosynthesis, cellular respiration, digestion, and biosynthesis.

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New Visions Living Environment Curriculum

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New Visions Living Environment Curriculum

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Living Environment - New Visions Science Curriculum

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Science Curriculum & Professional Learning Team

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Is it important to distinguish between the explanation and argumentation practices in the classroom? : StemTeachingTools

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The vision laid out in the NRC Framework for K-12 Science Education asks learners to engage in the science practice of 'constructing explanations' and also in 'argument from evidence' (along with six other practices). But, some curricula and PD resources don't make this distinction.

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It may feel a little unusual to think that the more your students talk in class, the more they might learn. But that is just what we, researchers and professors at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, have found to be true. Constructive conversation and meaningful interaction throughout a lesson not only develop students' crucial communication skills, but also give them a richer understanding of the content.

Although new education standards in college and career readiness highlight collaboration and communication as critical skills, this type of peer-to-peer interaction is actually quite rare in the classroom. While common activities such as whole class discussions, jigsaws, and think-pair-shares can produce the appearance of constructive interactions, they often don't provide enough substantial opportunities for students to engage in back-and-forth dialog, especially for ESL students.

So what can we do to make sure our students are getting the opportunities to learn deeply about a specific topic AND hone their communication skills?

Build A Culture Of Conversation

The first step is to build a culture of conversation in your classroom where it's okay to make mistakes and okay to say things that are not polished or perfect. Knowledge is something that's generated throughout time -- you want to help your students build towards an answer, not necessarily get it right immediately. Make sure each question or discussion:

has a purpose for conversing that connects to objects

requires thinking and doing something with ideas

encourages students to share novel ideas and to learn from one another

So how can you tell if the conversations you're fostering are constructive? At Stanford, we developed a Conversation Analysis Tool that looks at two primary dimensions of conversation. You can use these concepts to quickly understand how effective a conversation is, and how to insert prompts that will guide it back in the right direction and accomplish your objectives.

Dimension 1 -- Turns build on previous turns to build up an idea

Ask yourself, "Can they or did they build on each other's ideas throughout the exchange?"

Dimension 2 -- Turns focus on content or skills related to the lesson's objectives

"Are they talking about the prompts and addressing the prompts?"

"Are my prompts mapped to my objectives effectively?"

"Do the turns address the lesson objectives?"

If you feel that your students are not quite ready to engage at either of these two levels, there is a third dimension - Dimension 0 -- which we added as a preliminary step that focuses on whether or not students are effectively taking turns during the conversation. If you are just starting to develop your "Culture of Conversation," this is a good way to do an initial assessment.

School starts in a few weeks. Are you ready to try this?

Start Fresh: Establish A New Classroom Culture

The first month of classes is a crucial time for establishing a new classroom culture.

1. Look at the big ideas in each unit to draft conversation prompts

2. Think about what you want to see (content, language, thinking, conversation skills)

3. Practice with the conversation analysis tool(s) (samples in course)

4. Write model conversations that show features

5. Share your conversation goals with your students and involve them in the assessment process

Online Course: Effective Conversation In the Classroom

Want more in-depth practice at guiding and assessing effective conversation? Stanford has a short online course designed specifically to help K-12 educators create meaningful conversations among students. The course, Effective Conversation in the Classroom, is being offered this August in three online sessions over three weeks. Registration is open at scpd.stanford.edu.

The course has been developed by Understanding Language/SCALE, a recently merged research and practice center based at Stanford University that focuses on both language and performance assessment in K-16 settings. The mission of UL/SCALE is to support educators and policymakers in transforming systems to advance equity and learning for students -- particularly for English Language Learners (ELLs) -- by illuminating the symbiotic ways students learn language and academic content, and through the development and use of curriculum-embedded performance assessments. Classroom teachers and instructional coaches for grades K-12 and in all subject areas are welcome and encouraged to take this course together with their colleagues.

The teaching team consists of Professor Kenji Hakuta, Dr. Jeff Zwiers, and Dr. Sara Rutherford-Quach, who together have been designing and offering online professional development courses for educators for four years.

Kenji Hakuta, Lee L. Jacks Professor of Education, Emeritus, at Stanford University, is active in education policy. He has testified to Congress and courts on language policy, the education of language-minority students, affirmative action in higher education, and improvement of quality in educational research. Hakuta is an elected Member of the National Academy of Education, a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association, and Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, recognized for his accomplishments in Linguistics and Language Sciences. He has served on the board of various organizations, including the Educational Testing Service, the Spencer Foundation, and the New Teacher Center.

Jeff Zwiers, senior researcher at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, has worked for more than 15 years as a professional developer and instructional mentor in urban school settings, emphasizing the development of literacy, thinking, and academic language for linguistically and culturally diverse students. He has published books and articles on reading, thinking, and academic language. His most recent book is Academic Conversations: Classroom Talk That Fosters Critical Thinking and Content Understandings. His current work at the Center to Support Excellence in Teaching focuses on developing teachers' core practices for teaching academic language, comprehension of complex texts, and oral communication skills across subject areas.

Sara Rutherford-Quach, lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Education and a former bilingual elementary teacher, has more than 13 years of experience working with linguistically diverse students and their teachers, and has conducted extensive research on instructional practices for English learners. Sara was previously awarded a National Academy of Education Spencer Foundation Dissertation Fellowship for her work on the role of silence and speech in an elementary classroom serving language-minority students. Her areas of interest include classroom discourse and interaction analysis; language, culture, and instruction in multilingual and multicultural educational environments; institutional, policy, and curricular change; and educational equity. Sara has been involved with the design and teaching of more than 20 MOOC offerings since 2013, and she also directed the development of many learning modules with the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium and the ELPA 21 Consortium.

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It may feel a little unusual to think that the more your students talk in class, the more they might learn. But that is just what we, researchers and professors at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, have found to be true.

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Qualities of A Good Anchoring Phenomenon

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Qualities of A Good Anchoring Phenomenon

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Practice Brief 28 -- Topics:Instruction
Qualities of a Good Anchor Phenomenon for a Coherent Sequence of Science Lessons

This tool was created in response to a felt need among educators working at Research + Practice Collaboratory project sites where educators and researchers are partnering to develop and adapt curriculum materials to support implementation of the NRC Framework vision. At these sites, educators often found it difficult to select phenomena and design problems to anchor their lessons, yet also found that the selection of phenomena/design problems was critical to their students' learning. In response, Research + Practice Collaboratory members created this short resource to help educators working to adopt this new vision for science education as they select anchor phenomena and engineering design problems.

Instructional sequences are more coherent when students investigate compelling natural phenomena (in science) or work on meaningful design problems (in engineering) by engaging in the science and engineering practices. We refer to these phenomena and design problems here as 'anchors.'

This short tool, "Qualities of a Good Anchor Phenomenon for a Coherent Sequence of Science Lessons," outlines criteria to consider when selecting an anchor phenomena or design problem to fit with the NRC Framework for K-12 Science Education vision.
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Authors:

BY WILLIAM R. PENUEL AND PHILIP BELL - MARCH 2016

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STEM Teaching Tools content copyright 2014-22 UW Institute for Science + Math Education. All rights reserved.
This site is primarily funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) through Award #1920249 (previously through Awards #1238253 and #1854059). Opinions expressed are not those of any funding agency.

Work is licensed under aCreative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 Unported License. Others may adapt with attribution. Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Opinions expressed are not those of any funding agency.

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Qualities of a Good Anchor Phenomenon for a Coherent Sequence of Science Lessons : StemTeachingTools (en-US)

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Practice Brief 28 -- Topics:Instruction This tool was created in response to a felt need among educators working at Research + Practice Collaboratory project sites where educators and researchers are partnering to develop and adapt curriculum materials to support implementation of the NRC Framework vision.

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Huge resource - make sure to click through!

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Instructional Strategies to Support Science Instruction

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Earth Science - New Visions Science Curriculum

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Materials created by New Visions are shareable under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license; materials created by our partners and others are governed by other license agreements. For more details, please see this page.

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Paul Anderson's website!

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The Wonder of Science was created to support the next generation of science teachers. All of the resources are licensed under Creative Commons licensing.