teaching strategies
As with all complex practices, students develop their capacity to participate in scientific argumentation at different rates and in unique ways. There is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ lesson that invites all students in as participants and has the expectation of complete success for everyone. Through this middle school scientific argumentation project, we have developed a series of short lessons that directly address student needs with argumentation that are revealed through our assessments. The lessons are carefully aligned to the each level of every construct map, and offer specific, direct supports to help students move from one level of a given construct map to the next. Each instructional response can be tailored to work with an entire class or with smaller groups of students, depending upon the assessment results a teacher gathers for her class.
Reteaching Loop Strategy Guide Series
The Reteaching Loop Strategy Guide Series offers teachers a set of five stand-alone guides, based on field-tested instructional sequences, that can supplement their core curricular work with scientific argumentation. After identifying the strengths and weaknesses of students in their classroom, a teacher can turn to the strategy guides to provide a series of supplemental lessons to bolster all or some of their students in an area of particular need with the practice of argumentation. The Reteaching Loops are more comprehensive in nature than the short teacher assessment based instructional strategies described above. The strategy guides are based on larger-scale holes in the understanding of scientific argumentation that a teacher finds their students have. For example, if a teacher finds that many of their students need more practice with the concept of reasoning, they can turn to the strategy guide that is focused on this concept and provide students with several activities focused on unpacking, practicing, and understanding more about scientific reasoning in general. The Reteaching Loop Strategy Guides dove-tail seamlessly with the assessments and other teaching guides provided in this project; as the teacher gains more knowledge of their students through personal interactions and by assessing their work with the construct maps, she can begin to see more general areas — reasoning, quality of evidence, etc — with which students need more practice. The Reteaching Loops provide opportunities for students to gain more practice with these important general components of scientific argumentation; this practice can offer another way to help move students across the levels of each construct map on which the students are assessed.
1. Reading Arguments
2. Identifying Basic Components of Strong Argumentation Writing by Analyzing Student Work
3. Understanding the Role of Relevant Evidence in Supporting a Claim
4. Using the Reasoning Tool to Develop a Strong Written Argument
5. Practicing Oral Discourse Skills
1. Reading Arguments
2. Identifying Basic Components of Strong Argumentation Writing by Analyzing Student Work
3. Understanding the Role of Relevant Evidence in Supporting a Claim
4. Using the Reasoning Tool to Develop a Strong Written Argument
5. Practicing Oral Discourse Skills