Succeeding with Inquiry in Science and Math Classroom

Jeff C. Marshall

• Publisher: ASCD
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781416617778
• Topic: Éducation
• Subtopic: Évaluation dans le domaine de l'éducation

Thinking critically. Communicating effectively. Collaborating productively. Students need to develop proficiencies while mastering the practices, concepts, and ideas associated with mathematics and science. Successful students must be able to work with large data sets, design experiments, and apply what they're learning to solve real-world problems.

Research shows that inquiry-based instruction boosts students' critical thinking skills and promotes the kind of creative problem solving that turns the classroom into an energized learning environment.

In this book, real-world lesson plans illustrate highly effective inquiry-based instruction as you learn

* How to engage math and science students at all grade levels;
* Why students should explore a subject before you explain it;
* How to meet rigorous standards and expectations through rich, well-aligned classroom experiences;
* How to develop useful formative assessments and gather critical information during every class period; and
* How to create effective questions that guide students' deep learning and your own professional development.

No matter what your experience with inquiry-based instruction, Succeeding with Inquiry in Science and Math Classrooms will help hone your ability to plan and implement high-quality lessons that engage students and improve learning.

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Part 1

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Need for Inquiry in Your Classroom

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Chapter 1

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What Are Your Values, Practices, and Actions as a Teacher?

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Should you just roll the dice, or is there a better way to determine the instructional strategies and assessments used to guide today's lesson? You are rolling the dice if you choose an instructional strategy based on what is easiest, what you haven't used in a while, or what your default strategy is. This lack of intentionality in your approach assumes that there is not a best—or at least not a better—way to instruct. It is a crapshoot because some days it works, but perhaps not for every student that day or for the whole class when your students are tested on the material.

Just as all our students come with unique experiences and backgrounds, we as teachers all have different experiences and training that prepare us to excel or flounder in the classroom. In this chapter, you will examine the experiences, beliefs, values, and actions that frame your daily teaching practice. An honest self-assessment will provide a starting point from which you can develop clear targeted objectives. Each objective comes with examples of what it looks like and what you need to do to move toward more effective instructional practice.

The difference in student achievement in a classroom led by an exemplary teacher is about 12 months greater than that of the student achievement led by a poorly performing teacher. Specifically, the students in the classroom of exemplary teachers on average progress the equivalent of 18 months in a single academic year versus 6 months of growth for students in the classroom of poorly performing teachers (Rice, 2003). The greatest academic growth is not dependent upon students' gender, race, or socioeconomic status. Rather, the teacher's effectiveness is the single greatest determinant of student success (Darling-Hammond, 2000).

Our students deserve at least 12 months of growth each year from each teacher, and inquiry-based instruction can help you achieve that feat. Furthermore, research shows that students of teachers who have been part of our professional development and have been encouraged to use more and better inquiry-based instruction tend to outperform a similarly matched control group of students by two to seven months of academic growth (Marshall, 2012).

The common theme of various components of this chapter, whether flying at 30,000 feet or zooming in at ground level, is the importance of being an intentional practitioner. We are all intentional at some level, but how well we target our planning, instruction, interactions, and vision toward truly improving the achievement of all students is the subject of this book. Specifically, we will focus on succeeding with students in inquiry-based learning environments. Figure 1.1 gives an overview of values, practices, and actions that we explore in this chapter.

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Figure 1.1 | Perspectives That Inform Your Values and Practices

Perspective
30,000′

Core Values and Practices
Teaching philosophy

Question to Address
What do you value?

. . .

Perspective
10,000′

Core Values and Practices
Core ideas

Question to Address
What is truly important for students to know and be able to do?

. . .

Perspective
1,000′

Core Values and Practices
Success

Question to Address
How do you know when students have been successful?

. . .

Perspective
100′

Core Values and Practices
Strategies

Question to Address
How are students engaged in learning?

. . .

Perspective
Ground level

Core Values and Practices
Interactions, relationships, and learning

Question to Address
How can learning be maximized?

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What Do You Value?

Your teaching philosophy provides the broad 30,000-foot (global) perspective of what you value as a teacher. Let's explore your philosophy.

TIP Your Values

Take a moment to write your teaching philosophy in one to two concise sentences—your elevator presentation of what you value as a teacher. You may need several drafts before you meaningfully capture who you are as a science or math educator. Remember, your philosophy statement is a dynamic statement and should evolve as you grow as an educator over the years.

If you are like most readers, you might now begin to peek ahead to see what the "right" answer is. After all, our educational upbringing has taught us to look for the single right answer instead of seeking thoughtful, unique solutions—a challenge that I address in this book.

It may seem counterproductive at this point to state your teaching philosophy, but I assure you that you will be continually referring to it as you read this book. As you form your philosophy, consider some of the following issues: What is your belief about student success in your class? What fosters student success in your class? What is your role in such success? What do students experience in your classroom that maximizes learning? In our quick-paced, sound-bite, hurry-on-to-the-next-fad world, you may be inclined to skip this exercise, but the explicit reflection on and acknowledgment of your beliefs, values, and actions is critical for moving your practice forward.

What Is Truly Important?

The next level of actions and values to consider, perhaps the 10,000-foot view, describes what core ideas (major concepts) students should know and be able to do when they complete your class. Core ideas are defined in a myriad of ways, but here they refer to the essential ideas or the 8 to 10 things that you want your students to know or be able to do by the end of the year. These core ideas are guided by district, state, or national standards and essentially compose the foundation of your curriculum, instruction, assessment, and classroom discourse, but they can be useful in other ways. You can provide core ideas to parents, students, and administrators as they seek to better understand the major instructional goals of your class, which when concisely stated in layman's terms allows all stakeholders to better support you and your program.

Interestingly, award-winning teachers view standards differently from most experienced mathematics and science teachers (Hudson, McMahon, & Overstreet, 2002; Marshall, 2008). Specifically, award-winning teachers tend to view national standards (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics [NCTM], 2000; National Research Council, 1996) as a framework to guide their classroom instruction, whereas other math and science teachers with 10 years of experience or more tend to view the standards as an obstacle that needs to be overcome or a collection of items that need to be "covered." With the 2013 Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and the 2010 Common Core State Standards in Mathematics (CCSSM), this tendency will continue—exemplary teachers will see standards as a guide for instruction whereas other will see standards as obstacles—unless something changes.

In science, a core idea for a chemistry class might include "Students will understand the trends and interactions found on the Periodic Table of Elements." This core idea requires that students demonstrate understanding of things such as periodic trends, reactivity of elements and relative strengths, and the way chemical formulas are written based on characteristics of various elements. In mathematics, core ideas may include "Algebra I students will develop an understanding of statistical variability for 6th-grade students" and "Students will represent and solve equations and inequalities graphically."

TIP Core Ideas

What are the 8 to 10 core ideas that you want your students to really understand by the end of the school year? Why are these the most critical ideas? What are the least essential topics, ideas, or lessons that you currently teach? How can you trim or minimize the time that these lower-priority items consume in your class, and how will you use this additional time better?

When Have Your Students Been Successful?

For many teachers, teaching is about planning a lesson, implementing that lesson, and then checking to see how well students understand the material. On the surface, this approach sounds fine, but it typically leads to surface-level, fact-based learning that emphasizes memorization over thinking and recall over active engagement. So, at this 1,000-foot view, let's look a little deeper into the cycle that we commonly use (plan, implement, and assess).

First, the typical teacher realizes that there are standards that must be taught, so she seeks a lesson or activity from the resource guide or Internet that covers the topic mentioned in the standard. Then, if lucky, the teacher finds a quiz or assessment that goes along with the activity to measure student knowledge. The grade, for this one of the five (you fill in the number) required quizzes for the quarter, implies how well each student knows and understands that particular standard.

Let's contrast this approach with another one. First, the teacher clearly identifies and acknowledges what core idea frames the learning. Within that core idea, she articulates the major concepts that students will master by the end of the unit. Next, she determines how she will know when students have been successful and to what degree. Notice that determining how student mastery will be assessed precedes and guides the instruction to be developed—not the other way around. Then the teacher develops an instructional sequence that helps lead students toward mastery.

In the first approach, the teacher assumes that the assessment found with the lesson or activity is purposeful and appropriate for measuring student achievement relative to a given standard. That may be the case, but this approach still leaves the assessment in someone else's hands to determine what is valued and whether the learning measured will be lower-level, higher-level, or somewhere in between. The second approach uses the core idea to frame the learning, and the assessment is crafted to measure the degree of mastery of the concepts surrounding that big idea. Keep in mind that assessments created by other sources are not always inappropriate. Rather, it simply means that when we use assessments from other sources, we need to be intentional about what we use and why we are using all or part of it. We can quantify anything in order to create a grade to post, but the grade needs to be more than a number or letter. It needs to reflect student knowledge and/or degree of mastery relative to the concepts being studied or at least as close as possible.

To further illustrate the point, let's consider student performance in two different science classrooms. Teacher A gives a 10-question multiple-choice quiz that contains only recall or vocabulary-related items, and Teacher B gives a 10-question quiz that contains 4 recall-type questions, 4 application questions, and 2 higher-order questions. After they grade the quizzes, Teacher A and Teacher B both have the same class average—84 percent. When the grades go home, students in both classes seem to be performing equally well as a whole, when in fact the knowledge assessed in Teacher B's class is much deeper. Teacher A measured student success in defining vocabulary, whereas Teacher B measured student success in understanding, applying, and possibly doing science. The point is the same whether in science or in mathematics: we need to make sure that we are rigorously measuring and guiding student success relative to scientific and mathematical thinking. Measuring the success of instruction and learning will be central to Chapter 6.

How Are Students Involved?

We have progressed from what you value (educational philosophy statement) to the major concepts that students must know and be able to do (the core ideas), to how we know when students have been successful. Now we zoom in to consider the actions or strategies that you use to guide learning. Notice this sequence may seem backward—curriculum and instruction work often begins with a topic (the next section in your textbook) or activity (something that looks fun and engaging to students) and then progresses to finding the standard that it addresses.

Instead, this book will help you become intentional about the strategies you use to maximize learning. Although no two days will be exactly alike in terms of instruction, think about what your students typically experience. Begin by drawing two pie charts. The first chart should be titled General Classroom Organization and requires you to determine the percentage of time students typically spend doing (1) individual work, (2) small-group work, and (3) whole-group work. Divide and label the pie chart into appropriate portions. The second pie chart is for determining the Learning Environment. Divide it into appropriate portions of time typically spent on (1) teacher presentation; (2) class discussion; (3) group projects, labs, and explorations; and (4) individual work. To aid in making distinctions between the first two portions, teacher presentation becomes a classroom discussion when more than 50 percent of the interactions are from the students; anything less can be categorized as teacher presentation.

TIP The Learning Environment

Construct both a General Classroom Organization Chart and a Learning Environment Chart. What do these charts tell you about your teaching and learning environment? Do your charts represent your ideal environment, or do they accurately represent your instruction?

These two charts provide an overview of your classroom learning environment. Specifically, are students typically hearing and seeing content and skills, are students actively interacting with both the teacher and other students, are students involved in doing the science or mathematics, and are they individually making sense out of concepts? Most classes involve all these components to some degree, but the degree to which each is emphasized does vary by classroom. And it's this degree of emphasis that is central to the discussions in this book.

With an understanding of what you value and how your classroom environment is configured, let's turn to the strategies (actions) that influence learning. What instructional strategies do you typically use to teach your major concepts?

TIP Teaching Approaches

Since major concepts are not addressed on every day of instruction, think back to the last major concept or core idea that was studied as you respond to the following statements. Rate each statement based on how frequently something occurs when teaching a major concept in your classroom, using the following scale: 1, never; 2, rarely; 3, often; 4, most of the time; 5, always.

1. I teach using lecture. _____
2. My students solve open-ended problems that may have multiple correct solutions. _____
3. I teach using direct instruction. _____
4. I teach using inquiry or problem-solving strategies. _____
5. I teach concepts/skills using demonstrations or modeling. _____
6. I teach using guided practice. _____
7. My students must attempt (individually or in groups) to solve mathematical problems/scientific questions before I provide possible solution(s). _____
8. I give students the notes and information before they explore the concept. _____
9. When I teach, students are often placed in situations that require them to think critically or solve problems before the central concept is explicitly taught. _____

The statements in the TIP (above) provide a vast spectrum of teaching approaches. Some statements lean toward the teacher telling or showing information, with students memorizing or confirming information through exercises and activities (1, 3, 8). Other statements lean toward an active student role where the teacher's role becomes more of a facilitator (2, 4, 9). The remaining statements (5, 6, 7) can fall to either end of the spectrum depending on where in the lesson they occur and what precedes the activity. We may jump to conclusions or quickly try to defend one approach over the other, but the "right" answer depends on the purpose, goals, and standards that you are targeting.

For most of us, our primary experience as a K–16 student involved the teacher giving us information (often delivered by lecture and/or notes) followed by us confirming what was modeled. In mathematics, a problem set of like problems typically followed what the teacher had demonstrated on the board; and in science, an activity or confirmatory lab was provided where all the questions were asked for the student, thus minimizing critical or creative...