This video provides tips for eliciting students’ initial ideas, here in the context of fifth-graders thinking about why a flashlight stops working if left on. Listen for how the teacher revises the guiding question, supports talk, and uses model scaffolds for elicitation and later planning.
Several tips here enhance access for students, such as grounding the unit in a shared observational task (rather than assuming students have had particular kinds of experiences) and scaffolding students’ modeling. Note also how the teacher makes flexible use of a unit plan and devises next steps in response to students’ ideas.
For more on designing a model scaffold to elicit students’ initial ideas, read: Fowler, K., Windschitl, M., & Auning, C. (2020). A layered approach to scientific models: Creating scaffolds that allow all students to show more of what they know. The Science Teacher, 88(1), 24-36.
Using Science Theater as a format for student explanations.
This case study describes how a school district intentionally designed PL to support teachers in integrating translanguaging and multimodal representations when eliciting students’ ideas.
In this resource, we feature three stories about instructional coaching to show a variety of ways educators support the professional learning for ambitious and equitable teaching and learning.
This site is primarily funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) through Award #1907471 and #1315995