Sense-Making with the Uncovering Student Ideas Probes
Sense-making, an integral part of teaching and learning in science, has become somewhat of a “buzzword” lately with every type, shape, and form of instructional materials claiming to engage students in sense-making. It has forced me to think about what is sense making and how does it apply to using the Uncovering Student Ideas in Science probes (USI)? Lately I have been giving a lot of thought to how teachers can use the probes to support sense-making. The USI probes engage students in either figuring out phenomena or building an understanding of a concept. The probes in the USI series fall into 2 major groups- phenomenon-based probes or concept-based probes. For example, “Wet Jeans” presents students with an everyday phenomenon they have to figure out and explain; whereas, “Is It Living?” presents students with a concept they have to think through and build understanding so that they can use the concept when faced with figuring out phenomena.
Engaging Students in Thinking About Concepts and Phenomena
One of the major shifts in today’s vision of science teaching and learning is that learning involves “figuring it out” and using science rather than just knowing science facts, ideas, and vocabulary. “Figuring it out” also involves using concepts. One of the challenges we face in teaching science is that students, starting at a very young age, begin to develop their own ideas about concepts and phenomena which are sometimes in conflict with the scientific way of thinking. These alternative ideas about concepts and phenomena develop from students’ everyday interactions in their environment, from cultural beliefs and contexts, from conversations with family and friends, and things they pick up from books and the media. Be careful when you start with phenomena. Don’t overlook concepts. Sometimes we have to probe for and build understanding of a concept first so that students can use it to figure out phenomena.
Guiding Questions for Using the Probes
There are 5 guiding questions to consider when starting with and ending with a probe in a lesson or instructional sequence:
1)What are we trying to figure out and understand? This might be an everyday or puzzling phenomenon or it may be a concept we use in science.
2)What are the different ideas we have? How do we keep track of which ones to keep, which ones to discard? This involves eliciting students’ ideas and making a class list of ideas to consider which are revisited and reconsidered as new evidence and information is gathered and discussed.
3)How can we figure this out and build understanding?- Students plan investigations, engage in productive talk and argument, develop models, obtain and evaluate information, and more…; in essence, they are using the scientific practices to “figure it out” and build conceptual understanding.
4)What did we figure out and how can we explain it?- Students reach consensus on their ideas and work together to construct and refine a scientific explanation for the phenomenon or a way of scientifically explaining the concept.
5)How does this help us understand how our natural world works?- Students extend the concepts and scientific ideas developed through use of the probe to other phenomena, contexts, or examples; explain the usefulness of these ideas.
Sense-Making Suggestions
So how do the USI probes fit into sense-making? How does a cycle and environment of sense-making unfold in the classroom when using the USI probes? I offer these 6 suggestions when I work with teachers on how to effectively use a probe:
1. Start with eliciting students’ ideas about the phenomenon or concept. What answer choices do students select and how do they explain their thinking?
2. Build a class set of ideas. Honor and respect all students’ ideas. Change your language to the “best” answer rather than the “right” or “correct” answer. Build a culture of respect for everyone’s ideas. Share the list of students’ ideas so that everyone knows that we come to our learning with different ideas and we have to work together to figure it out.
3. Engage students in sense making activities. These activities help students understand one’s own thinking and the thinking of others’, test ideas, consider evidence, and discard ideas that no longer work. “Activity” implies active learning which does not always have to be “hands-on”. In addition to planning and carrying out investigations, rich, productive classroom discussions and gathering information from text or other resources are also examples of active learning in science when they are used to “figure out” phenomena and explain concepts. “Activities” are sense-making activities when students are using their intellectual resources to build science ideas.
4. Work collaboratively to “figure out” the phenomenon or best way to explain the concept. This involves sharing ideas, evaluating the ideas of others’, gathering evidence and information, giving and receiving peer feedback, and coming to a class consensus. It involves a variety of configurations- pair, small group, whole class where ideas are socially constructed.
5. Provide an opportunity to revisit the phenomenon or concept elicited by the probe and revise initial ideas. By using evidence and applying their conceptual understanding of concepts and principles developed through their sense-making work in class , students can now show evidence of using science ideas to explain phenomena or concepts.
6.Reflect on how and why thinking has changed. Encourage students to think about how their thinking changed and what led them to change their ideas. Have students consider how they can use the science ideas they developed to explain other phenomena or include other examples of the concept, not just the one(s) presented in the probe.
My final thought as I write this blog is to encourage USI users to go beyond the title of this powerful book series. Don’t just “uncover” your students’ ideas when using the probes. Use the probes to build science ideas through sense-making!