In the first chapter Wiggins and McTighe talk about the “twin sins” of curriculum design.  When you just jump into curriculum without a purposeful process you might not accomplish anything in the classroom.  The first danger that is often so tempting for teachers is activity-focused teaching.  It is easy as a teacher to fall in the trap of looking for fun activities for the classroom.  These activities engage the students and make them excited to be in class.  The classroom can look active and dynamic.  However, if the activity just engages the students and is not tied to a learning outcome then what is really the point.  Was the students’ engagement really worth it? If you string a set of exciting activities together the students will be busy and maybe even enthusiastic.  But what have they learned?  How have they progressed?  It is important not to forget the importance of engaging activities in teaching concepts but the learning goals must always come first.  The learning goals are what drive the selection of activities and not the reverse.

The second sin addressed in chapter one is coverage.  This is a typical problem in science classes that are organized around a textbook.  The national standards have done a pretty good job of defining the scope of science learning that should take place K-12.  The coverage approach works to just make sure that all parts of the standards have been covered or addressed.  This would be great if the goal of schools was teaching.  Schools are not institutions of teaching; they are institutions of learning.  The coverage model does not look at what has been learned by the students.  In fact if teaching did not accomplish any student learning it would not have much purpose at all.  So our schools should be looking at the learning and viewing teaching simply as a vehicle to get there.

To this end the second stage of the template addresses how you know what the students have learned.  Performance tasks and other assessments must be determined before you start looking at what activities should be chosen.  The performance tasks should be grounded in the goals, understandings and questions defined in stage 1.  In my unit I included the following assessment

The 2012 manual for administrators and teachers involved in the fourth-grade tests says that NYS Science Performance Test is meant “to serve as a basis for determining students’ needs for academic intervention services in science.” The test is designed to measure the content and skills contained in the Elementary-Level Science Core Curriculum, Grades K–4. It has two parts, a written test and a performance test.

The Written Test consists of multiple-choice and open-ended questions and requires about one hour to administer. The Performance Test (Form A) consists of hands-on tasks set up at three stations and requires about 75 minutes to administer.

Here is a question from the 2011 written test:

It rained on a hot summer afternoon and a puddle formed. After several hours, the puddle was gone. Which two processes made the puddle form and then disappear?

A) precipitation followed by evaporation

B) deposition followed by evaporation

C) precipitation followed by runoff

D) deposition followed by runoff

The hands-on portion of the 2012 test involves setting up stations along prescribed diagrams. The three stations are named: Measuring Objects and Liquids, Electrical and Magnetic Testing, and Ball and Ramp. At each station, test administrators are supposed to print out the diagram and fold it on the dotted line and tape it to the bottom of the station so that the diagram faces the student.

Here is what the “measuring station” looks like:

How wonderfully mechanistic and well-organized. If only it all proceeded like clockwork, giving educators diagnostic tools that they could immediately use as “a basis for determining students’ needs for academic intervention services in science.”

Is the testing system set up to achieve this goal? Probably not.

Students are tested in late May each year. They finish school and head into a long vacation where much of the material they were tested on likely slips their minds. If educators a) spent the summer carefully analyzing each student’s results in the context of the instruction they received in the preceding elementary school years, b) accurately identified the gaps in each student’s conceptual knowledge, and then c) planned the types of interventions that will happen in the following years to close those gaps, there could be hope of successful intervention.

But having this productive conversation of “How do we use this information to improve things?” is not the normal inclination that surfaces when test results are released. That is in part because of how those of us who write about and study educational policy react when results are released. We are rarely neutral or scientific in how we present standardized science test results.

Instead we want to attack or defend. We get into arguing about issues like whether or not standardized testing is even valid; whether it is even a reasonable proxy for “real learning” (especially in the sciences); whether test results should be used to determine teacher performance or pay; and whether we can address the great imbalances in achievement that we see by school, district or socioeconomic group.

These discussions are important. There is no doubt they will adamantly continue. But just once in a while, perhaps, at least for the interest of arguments’ sake, we in the pundit world might consider if and how the testing that is happening (and will continue to happen no matter what we write) could have some useful purpose. We think for a living. Perhaps we could open our minds and consider this particular thought experiment. If we care about education and want to support educators and students in the trenches, we owe them that much.

This was originally posted on the Demos Policy Shop Blog.

You can hear a sister-podcast featuring a second story from the “Science Teachers” event at the Story Collider’s own web site: storycolider.org. This week, catch Ed Gavagan, architect and storyteller, talk about a time when a science teacher touched his life.

This session was taped in from of a live audience at 92YTribeca.

Dr. Rankin opened by referencing the recent finding that teacher job satisfaction was at an all time low according to this study:

The MetLife Survey of the American Teacher, conducted annually since 1984 by Harris Interactive, shares the voices of teachers and others close to the classroom with educators, policy makers and the public. The Survey findings also inform MetLife Foundation’s support for education.

Dr. Steiner called for a “Flexner Report” for teacher education:

The Flexner Report is a book-length study of medical education in the United States and Canada, written by the professional educator Abraham Flexner and published in 1910 under the aegis of the Carnegie Foundation. Many aspects of the present-day American medical profession stem from the Flexner Report and its aftermath.

The AMNH MAT Program:

Learn to teach Earth and Space science in New York City through the Master of Arts in Teaching Urban Residency Program at the American Museum of Natural History; the first urban teacher residency program offered by a museum.

The New York State Clinically Rich Teacher Prep Pilot

The New York State Education Department is pleased to announce the institutions that have received preliminary funding for The Clinically Rich Teacher Preparation Pilot Program. These institutions will provide the services outlined in the RFP for the period of July 2011-September 23, 2014.

Hunter College Teacher Residency Program

The New Visions for Public Schools-Hunter College Urban Teacher Residency is a 14-month teacher-preparation program that fully integrates the graduate coursework of the aspiring teacher (resident) with intensive, hands-on experiences in New York City schools.

The Teacher Retention Study Dr. Rankin referenced:

The California Science Project Teacher Retention Initiative (CSP-TRI) began in 2006-07, seeking to reduce relatively high attrition rates among California secondary science teachers. CSP-TRI provides teachers in nine sites throughout the state with access to professional learning communities (PLCs) and intensive, content-focused professional development experieces, in hopes that their improved effectiveness and collegial ties will promote their retention.

Need it be that way?

My first reaction to the news was a smile of potential. I object to disciplinary segregation. I object to teaching physics, biology and chemistry separately, assigning them each a year in a sequence instead of running them parallel with explicit interconnections. I think it’s stupid to segregate calculus, algebra, geometry and statistics, and to segregate mathematics from the natural sciences. Right now, I see relatively few public options for a science-rich education in this country but, if I could productively object to a curriculum that neglected thorough integration, wouldn’t that be wonderful for many of us? My own schooling involved parallel courses in biology, chemistry and physics, and also parallel courses in calculus and statistics. Why not in New Hampshire?

Of course, most people are voicing only grave concern. One response that I encountered was a sarcastic, “I’d like to sit in on the class on alternative theories of gravity!”  Well, as it happens, there are several theories available. Most of us get only the briefest introduction to Newton’s theory, and make practically no headway into it. Hardly anyone reaches the summit that it attained in Lagrange’s hands, for example. And hardly anyone gets to the problems in Mercury’s orbit that, LeVerrier found that in the mid-19th century, Newton’s theory could not handle. Even fewer get to the problems of how quickly Newtonian gravity travels: within the past few decades, there has been some troubling argument that it must be instantaneous for, were it not, orbital systems would be moving in a very, very different way. (Wise Newton generally refused to speculate about the mechanism.)

An alternative class on gravity could examine how general relativity solves those problems, plus a whole lot more — and what high school pupil won’t welcome the appearance of black holes? There could also be the problem of reconciling general relativity with quantum mechanics. Our two best theories seem to be incompatible. That’s a serious problem.

Objectors might claim that all this is purely cerebral, of no practical consequence. A waste of time that could be spent on useful knowledge. Fair enough. I find the same with Newton’s theory, to be honest: who among us really needs it? That inverse square function is just too much bother for the contexts that we deal with. I still haven’t met a single person who launched a satellite from the back yard. For the most part, I meet people who might throw a ball, or who drop things that subsequently fall. Maybe someone who shoots, from time to time. We don’t measure all this falling with much precision at all; we approach nearly all of it qualitatively. The gravitational theory most appropriate to our context is Aristotle’s. It covers everyday experience for nearly everyone. It is not only sufficiently descriptive, but also sufficiently predictive. It requires no fancy matrix algebra, no Lagrangian operators, no trigonometry, no polar coordinates. No calculus. Not a single bra, nor ket. It’s within reach of many more students than Newton’s theory, let alone the relativistic and quantum contenders.

Sell me that, New Hampshire! That’s exactly what I’d like my tax dollars to buy!

And while we’re at it, I also find it objectionable, indeed abhorrent, to study topics outside their original languages. Translation perverts the natural context, and sacrifices the modes of thought inherent in the languages used. New Hampshire will have to bring in Latin and French for the Newtonian theory, plus Greek and Arabic and Hebrew for Aristotle’s. As for the English appropriate to more recent sciences, we’ll need grammar and etymology and historical linguistics.

Someone tell me that this isn’t allowed. Otherwise my next post might be from New Hampshire.

If you lived in New Hampshire, what would your objection be?

1.)   Explore a New Online Resource Each Month- These resources don’t have to be new, as long as they’re new to me! Right now, I’m working to master https://bubbl.us/, and I’ve enjoyed using it to make concept maps, food webs, and other useful representations of information.

2.)   Get Icky- I plan to write more about this in future posts, but many times throughout 2011 I saw students engrossed (pun intended) in lessons that utilized the gross side of science. There are lots of ways to get dirty, sticky, and slimy when lesson planning, and I know my students will thank me for exploring this more.

3.)   Get Real- We all know that students understand concepts better when the concept is given a real world context. For some of the lessons I teach, my go-to real world examples are getting out of date, so I want to spend some time finding applications that will be most relevant to my students.

4.)   Contact People I Admire- So often I read articles about or written by educators who are doing amazing work, and I think to myself “I’d love to pick their brain!” These articles usually include an email or website for these people, and this year, I plan to actually contact them. Whether they offer really helpful advice or just a few words of encouragement, there is no harm in reaching out to people who are doing great work.

5.)   Make Use of That iPad- I’m lucky enough to have access to iPads, and I want to make sure I’m making the best use of the iPad as an educational tool not just a cool instrument for visiting websites. I plan to read a lot of app reviews, and also actually test out the limits of how this type of technology can be used in a classroom.

What are your education resolutions for 2012? Do you have any advice on how I can meet my goals?

I really like that online courses allow me the opportunity to collaborate with teachers across the country and even across the world. In each school district, state, or country, teachers are faced with different constraints and limitations. Since educators are a crafty bunch, we always manage to find ways to overcome these limitations, and online courses are a great way to share best practices and learn from educators with different perspectives. As kind of a side note, online courses also allow me to share my better ideas at a time that is convenient to me. I find that a lot of my best thinking is done in the middle of the night, and it is nice to be able to jump online and post my ideas right then and there. By bringing together teachers from various places and facilitating collaboration at anytime of the day, online courses make it easier than ever to share great ideas.

They’re also a nice way to make new friends and connections. I try to make sure that while facilitating online courses, I allow participants to build a strong sense of community even if they never meet face-to-face. For example, I will create online forums where the teachers are encouraged to share things that may be unrelated to the course content. This can include pictures of grandkids, talk about sporting events, or book suggestions. Although I have never had an in-person meeting with many of the teachers I’ve worked with online, I feel that I have a great sense of who they are both professionally and personally. Even if the online course does have a face-to-face component, some people are more comfortable sharing ideas and thoughts in an online setting so you may get to see a new side to your friends and colleagues.

Finally, online courses encourage me to get creative. I want my online lesson plans to be just as engaging as face-to-face lessons, and sometimes this is more difficult that it seems. I’ve taken online courses that are just lectures or assigned readings and discussions. For me, this is a lot less exciting than a lesson that uses the technology to do something that couldn’t be done in a face-to-face situation. Both taking and teaching online courses have helped me think about the role that technology can play in the classroom (more on this in future posts), and I appreciate that online opportunities spark this kind of creativity.

I know many museums and universities offer online opportunities for educators, but several other institutions are exploring online courses too. Do you have suggestions for online course providers? Have you taken a great online course that we should know about?

An important point in Understanding by Design is that the purpose of schools is not primarily teaching but helping students to learn.  The teaching is the method we use as teachers to accomplish that goal.  We should therefore be focusing our attention on what students are learning and what they can do as a result of education.

Wiggins and McTighe often reference sports analogies such as the soccer coach who prepares her players during practice but then has to stay on the sidelines during the game.  The emphasis in school should be more focused on what students can do independently.

Much of traditional education focuses on the acquisition of skills and facts and of course this is important, but it should fuel the building of meaning and the transfer of understanding to new situations.  In essence we should be preparing our students beyond our classrooms.

The idea of purposeful education that translates into life long learning is not new and can be found in the writing of John Dewey and many others.  What I like about the UbD model is the focus on putting these ideas into practice in a systematic way.  Here is how I use UbD.

When I plan a unit of study such as the plant unit that I have been describing in this blog I start with the National Science Education Standards and determine which standards I am addressing in the unit. Then I develop one to two transfer goals for the unit to describe what the students will be able to do independently.

Next I look at the enduring understandings and essential questions that define the meaning that I want students to strive towards.  Then I am ready to identify key skills and facts that are important for students to know.  Only after I have outlined the goals of my unit using the template can I determine which activities will help me reach my goals.  The teaching follows from the goals and not the other way around.  Below is the UbD template I used for my plants unit with 5th grade.