Working on students’ ideas
Janet shows multiple ways in which she elicits and then works on students’ ideas. She frequently asks students to share not just their prior experiences with fungi but their ideas about fungi metabolic processes. Each day she presses students to explain big ideas and when not enough students participate she says “turn to your neighbor and come up with an answer.” This think-pair-share strategy allows more students to verbalize their ideas and become involved in whole-class conversations. In small groups, she elicits students’ ideas through the use of non-verbal prompts such as looking in the direction of a quiet participant or putting out her hand as a gesture to invite participation. She also uses verbal prompts such as pre-planned back-pocket questions or in-the-moment hypothetical “what-if” questions that challenge assumptions students make. In these conversations she quickly assesses what alternative conceptions students might be using and poses questions as a way to help students think through alternative explanations. Students are accustomed to this practice of being challenged through the use of questions and will continue to discuss a line of thinking Janet poses to a group after she leaves the group. In addition to adapting questions to challenge students appropriately, she also adapts assignments based on how students are thinking. For example, after the first couple of days of instruction Janet had intended to have students read more about reproduction—but seeing how interested students were in digestion she decided to postpone talking about reproduction and provide students with more instruction on extracellular digestion. Throughout the course of the unit Janet tracked three lines of student thinking and adapted instruction based on how students were thinking. These are described below:
Line of student thinking 1. Decomposition
On the first day Janet noticed that students used the term “rotting” when referencing food they eat and used the term “decomposing” when they imagined something in nature being left over time. Students tended to refer to fungi by using “parasite” language (host) rather than decomposer language. She thought that students might need more help unpacking these ideas and considering the role fungi have in decomposition-- are they a cause or effect? In the following lesson she asked students to clarify what they meant by “rotting” and “decomposing” and designed an assignment for students to consider what would happen if there were no fungi in the area behind the school. Janet also noticed that as students started learning about decomposition, they were not equating it with digestion. Originally she had planned to have students just make a list of definitions for terms related to extracellular digestion but instead had students draw concept maps so that they would have to both consider the definition and to think about how they are linked with other ideas.
Line of student thinking 2: Reproduction
On the first day Janet noticed that students seemed to be using “growing” and “reproducing” interchangeably and she was not clear that they could distinguish between the two. They also used bacteria-like language (i.e. binary fission) to describe these processes. The most popular questions students asked during the elicitation of ideas were: How do they reproduce? How did they get there in the first place? How do they eat? The following day and later in the unit Janet asked the students, “Is this one fungi or multiple fungi growing on this piece of fruit?” and “Did fungi cause the rotting or do the fungi grow on rotting things?” She also assigned students to watch and compare two on-line videos of binary fission and yeast budding.
Line of student thinking 3: Cellular Respiration
During the yeast investigation Janet noticed that some students hypothesized the balloon expansion as a result of hot air rising or as a result of a non-metabolic chemical reaction. In small groups she challenged students to consider alternative explanations by asking students to account for why their balloon remained filled despite the absence of warm air. She also asked students to describe how their experiments were similar or different to a vinegar and baking soda experiment. Throughout the yeast investigations Janet noticed that many students jumped over the step of absorption and cellular respiration. To address this, following the first investigation she asked students to compare their own digestion of food to fungi in order to help students recognize the role of absorption of nutrients. For the second investigation she asked student to hypothesize how their experiments related to both digestion and respiration. She again pressed students to consider these steps when sharing their data with the class toward the end of the unit.
Overall Janet not only elicited students’ ideas but also adapted instruction on multiple levels based on how students were thinking. She occasionally used IRE exchanges but did so with non-consequential material. For example, she used this strategy when eliciting students’ background experiences with fungi (in which her intent is to hear from as many students as possible). But she did not use this strategy when students are trying to explain metabolic processes. Below is a continuum of how a teacher “works on student ideas”, ranging from least effective (if that is the only strategy used) to the most effective.
Monitoring, checking, re-teaching ideas Teacher engages in 1-on-1 tutoring, uses mainly IRE in whole class conversations, and uses students ideas to check for understanding (got it/don’t got it) |
Elicits students’ initial understandings |
References students’ ideas & adapts instruction |
