Steps for
Planning to Facilitate Students' Construction of Concepts and Generalizations
1. Identify and describe the concept and/ or generalization (What the students should know)
2. Unpack the concept and/ or generalization (describe all the information ( facts, concepts, generalizations, science principles, laws, theories that need to be known to understand the concept or generalization indicated above.)
3. Initial Assessment Activity (select and describe a diagnostic activity, discrepant event, or pretest)
4. Learning and Developmental Theory Ideas (identify and describe any developmental information that would be helpful to know related to students' understanding of the concept or generalization and related information.)
5. Possible misconceptions and sources (identify and describe misconceptions and possible sources that have been identified or anticipated) 6
6. Hierarchy of understanding and possible sequence of understandings (identify and describe a possible sequence for students to construct or review the necessary related information, that was unpacked, and how they might connect that information to their existing conceptualizations and construct a higher degree of scientific understanding of the selected concept or generalization.)
7. Instructional procedure (identify and describe the activity descriptions, sequence, and other information that will be need)
8. Discrepant event (If a discrepant event wasn't used in the initial assessment activity select and describe how students will experience cognitive dissonance, or cognitive conflict, or disequillibration.)
9. Opportunity for accurate observational data collection of results (Identify and describe the specific observational evidence students will collect from the planned activities and how it can be used to construct the identified concepts or generalizations.
10. Bridge activities for data manipulation to resolve cognitive dissonance, cognitive conflict, or to create equilibrium through scientific reasoning to construct scientific understanding through reasoning, communication, construction of understanding from direct observational data. (Describe ways the data can be manipulated, described, observed.... that will lead to a scientific conclusion (the identified concept or generalization).
11. Describe the outcome(s) the students will communicate that will represent their scientific understanding at their development level. (Think observation, operational definition, or model depending on the students development.)
12. Describe Observable outcomes at different levels to indicate the level of student understanding within a range of scientific understanding.
Robert Sweetland's Notes ©
Spring 2005