Teach Wonder
Teach Wonder
Everything but the Book Study: Ambitious Science Teaching
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In this episode, we're centering our discussion around a favorite resource of Julie's Ambitious Science Teaching. Julie brings several resources to support this deep dive into eliciting student thinking, learning new ideas, and the state of learning.
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Okay, now we're recording. So welcome to teach wonder. Yes. Welcome to teach wonder, a podcast hosted by Ashley O'Neill and Julie Cunningham. Julie
Ashley O'Neil:Welcome back to our next episode of teach wonder. We are in the middle of a series called everything but the book study. Basically, Julie or I bring a piece of content. It might be a video, it might be a podcast, it might be a book or a chapter of a book or an article, and one of us has engaged with it quite a bit, and we bring it to the other person and kind of dissect it, walk through it, talk about it together, and you get to come along and learn along with us. This week, Julie has brought, I don't know, I think, a whole research station with her, but we are going to start our conversation, I believe, with something related to science. Do you want to walk us through it?
Julie Cunningham:Sure. So I went back to one of my favorite sort of resource books for teaching science. And actually, their complimentary website is really nice. It's called ambitious science teaching, and we'll link it in the show notes. But I so it's a book, right? So I wanted to not have said a large text me volume to talk about on the podcast. So I just tried to pick out something that I thought was particularly important. And then, yes, it did lead me kind of down a rabbit hole to pull out some other resources. But I'll just start by reading. So the chapter I'm looking at, and I'm really just looking at a part of the chapter, is eliciting students ideas. And I chose that because it really applies to much more than science, right? It could apply to any subject area, but it also could apply to informal education in the MakerSpace. It could apply to any sort of like hobby or other activity your students are trying to learn from you or a coach or any instructor, right? I mean, it really is sort of like this premise, again, of treating children like they have some value when they come to you, and they have some prior knowledge, and they have some life experience. And if you do that, and you do it, sort of well, right? You're once again telling them that they have value and that potentially they have some, you know, my favorite word again, like agency over their learning. So I'm just going to start where it's just the start of the chapter, and it says people of all ages exert great effort towards sense making about novel stimuli in the world, and they will use anything at their disposal to do this work in classrooms, as well as in everyday life. Students compare what they already know with unfamiliar ideas and test whether new ideas being presented by the teacher or substitute, like Coach, right or mentor, or anything else somehow fit or not with their current mental schemas. Second, even the youngest of learners, I think this might be my favorite part, possess a wide range of existing conceptions, prior experiences and information that they use to make sense of any and all ideas introduced in the classroom. But again, it could be outdoor lab, maker space, this prior knowledge takes the form of partial ideas that accrue from previous instruction, conversations with friends and family, everyday observations around the neighborhood, and stories in the media. I think we focus on this in a science classroom or a classroom that teaches content because we want the students to come out with some other learning that we're going to assess, right with some content knowledge that we're going to assess. So when I say you could take this and substitute out classroom, the reason the book doesn't take that broad stance is because we know this is a good way to teach science, and we know that this is a good way to have students learn science.
Ashley O'Neil:So yeah, that makes sense. I always like you're far more, I think, familiar with ambitious science teaching than I am, but I always like their approach and how they really ground it in sense making and honoring the fact that students come with we talked about this a long time ago, and maybe we even mentioned on another podcast, but talking about instead of saying misconceptions, saying preconceptions, right? Because that idea of misconception means that there's something wrong with their prior thinking, when really it's just a preconception and it comes from somewhere and some sense that they've made prior, and maybe their application to a new context needs some clarification or some more exploration or whatever. But I like that, just that, continually saying you are worth like you have ideas that are worth me listening to and listening to understand versus that like one way channel of from adult to child. And like, learning is from me and to you,
Julie Cunningham:yeah, yeah. I agree. It goes on to say, and I like this statement, because I like to think about what does learning mean, and I think that learning is a form of growth, and that growth can be uncomfortable, like when you're sitting in that space, right? And then how you react to that uncomfortableness, like plays a role in your learning. And again, like, not just classroom learning, but just in general. So I like to, like, sort of be thoughtful about that. So it says learning is a process of actively reconstructing and reorganizing what you know. And I just, I like that. I like that word actively in there. And I like the fact that, like just thinking about any time that we're growing in any way, including learning right, that we have to sit with that tension. In this case, what do I already know? What am I asked, being asked to learn? And how do I sort of marry those two together, right? What is that? That tension there? What is and how do I? How do I? How much am I going to struggle with that before I internalize that change in my thinking? So that always resonates with me.
Ashley O'Neil:I don't know if you know it. You know the author, RF, is it Kwang, who wrote babble, they wrote a lot of, like, high fantasy books, but I was listening to a an interview that they did just recently, and basically the author was like, if, if something comes really easily to me, I know that automatically, that's my first draft, like, my first like, pass at my thinking, because it's probably a collection of, like, cliches or ideas that I've heard, and if it's just like flowing out of me, it's like the first thing that comes to my mind, and it isn't until I kind of, like, circle back and needle it a little bit, or try to think of like a new way or a new perspective, or try to push myself or make myself uncomfortable that I've actually done learning and growth in that way, and I I loved hearing an adult talking about that, just like I love when books talk about kids with the same deference as we talk about adults. I love when adults talk about themselves with the same curiosity as children, because that idea that, like, learning is growing and it's uncomfortable, and we've talked about this a lot before, but just that, like idea that adults get more and more out of practice with the discomfort of learning, and so then we're less connected to that process, but it's often our job to teach it right. Like, if I'm master of my content, I'm maybe really unfamiliar with what it feels like to not know long division, and so it makes me harder to relate to and connect with my students in that same way, yeah?
Julie Cunningham:And I would encourage, I mean, probably all our listeners do this anyway. But like every like, learning something new as an adult is very humbling, like truly learning something new as an adult, right, especially
Ashley O'Neil:publicly, yeah, it's so hard.
Julie Cunningham:Like I've been doing dog agility for I mean, my dog is five this year, right? So I've been doing it probably for four years, and sure I see growth, but not from week to week in practice. I mean, only if I go back and I look at what it was like four years ago, and it is. It's a rewarding experience to learn something new, but also a truly humbling experience, and to put yourself and then right to think about that's how your students feel in your classroom, likely at some point, maybe not every minute of every day, but at
Ashley O'Neil:some point right and then what about your instructor makes you want to come back, and makes you excited about your own growth and your own learning. I think that's really interesting, because as educators, we also don't get a ton of time with other people, right? Like, what does it feel like when it's when this teacher move is used on me and I don't know what I'm talking about, I'm taking a writing class for my birthday, and I just found out that we our homework. We have to bring a thing like two days in advance. We have to send it to everybody in the group, and we spend 10 minutes like publicly discussing, and I'm trying really hard to be like, not publicly shaming, just publicly discussing what each person has done. And there was a big part of me that was like, I just am gonna not go. Maybe I'll just cancel. But I thought, no, like you, how many when I was a teacher, how many times did I have kids share their writing publicly with no warning, with no whatever, and they like the trust that you have to build with your students to get them to be vulnerable like that too, right? Like some of this sense making that we talk about here that can only happen when the alchemy of a classroom is that of like safety and trust, and, you know, I can admit I don't know, and admit what I don't know, and my teacher values what I'm saying, right? And that
Julie Cunningham:that's a really interesting point, because at the same time that you have to build a safe space for this to happen, and students need to know that they can publicly and and it doesn't have to start with students publicly sharing their ideas. They're, they're, you're. Their ideas could be just shared with the teacher, right or small group, or it doesn't have to be shared class wide, although lots of times, a lot of times, the outcome of eliciting student ideas is building some sort of a model based on the new information that they gain in doing the lessons in the classroom. And sometimes those models are shared publicly, but nonetheless, an outcome of eliciting students ideas and activating their prior knowledge in the classroom is that this advances justice, equity and justice in the classroom, because everybody has a voice, right? Everybody? So the teacher has to be really strategic about the phenomenon that they use to elicit student thinking, right? It needs to be something that there's a little bit of a challenge. It can't be too boring. It needs to be relatable, like there's and I do want to talk more about billion phenomena. But when you ask for students to share their ideas, and it's not just two students, or three students in your classroom, or share their ideas, who share their ideas, but all students share their ideas, and they're valued, right, even if you're just sharing them and looking at patterns, that is a way to advance equity and justice in a classroom. So along with asking students to be vulnerable and building a safe space, right? You're also
Ashley O'Neil:everybody's ideas are worth hearing, and we're going to hear everyone's ideas,
Julie Cunningham:and lots of times, it allows students to share things from their home life or their background or their cultures, right, in a really natural way that's not contrived, like
Ashley O'Neil:tell me about I feel like teachers who do this always, in my experience, not it's on a monolith, but like you hear those teachers often be surprised, like, in a delightful way, by students like I didn't know this, and they shared X, Y and Z, and I think that that's such a cool discovery. When practices like this, everyone gets to learn a little bit more about each other, how they think. And I think it's really fascinating to hear the connections that students make between point A and point B, whatever, even if it like, no matter what it is, it's always super and they're
Julie Cunningham:often grounded in some real reality, right? Especially things that happen in the natural world, like there is something that the student saw some observation or some experience that led them to believe whatever, and that experience and observation are very real and very true, even if the conclusion they drew isn't quite accurate.
Ashley O'Neil:No, absolutely. That makes, that makes
Julie Cunningham:a ton of sense. I think the more that, the more that you do it as a teacher, right? The more or in whatever your classroom looks like, or whatever your space looks like with students, the more patterns that you'll see from year to year, right? Like, there'll still be surprises and you'll still be delighted, but also you'll especially when we say, like common student preconceptions or misconceptions, right? That over time, we sort of know the sense that children at a certain age make of the natural world and so you can come to expect, right? And also then sort of drive the conversation in a certain direction, or ask questions that are relevant to those patterns. So then you're not always surprised. Like, I think that sometimes there's that, are
Ashley O'Neil:we constantly going to have no idea what's
Julie Cunningham:going to come out of your mouth? Right? That balance between like, how do I live in the sort of uncertainty of my classroom, or the chaos when I asked for student thoughts versus, you know, what can I expect?
Ashley O'Neil:And then the new challenge almost becomes to go just because I've heard that pattern 50 times in my career, I have to make that this is the first time this group of students is kind of working through this. And so how can I make it feel new for them while appreciating the familiarity of my own territory
Julie Cunningham:and know that lots of people get through school and hang out, I hang on to those ideas, right? There's plenty of adults who never change their thinking about a certain thing and are very successful adults, like, so, like, it's not even a it's not even a judgment, necessarily. It's just, if you really want students to learn that content, you have to start sort of with them where they are. Yeah, I do want to talk a little bit about the scenarios or the phenomenon, because I think that's the sort of the like, next step, like, that's great that you say, do this, but kind of like, what does that? What does it look like? And so ambitious science teaching, and they have lots of resources online to help with this, suggests that a good phenomenon has to be accessible to students, right? And by accessible. I mean, interesting. So students have to be able to relate to it. If you pick something that students can't relate to, they might humor you as an adult, but they're definitely it's not going to work the way you think it works, right? Has to be understandable. Again, tax is probably not a great topic, and then has to be able to elicit a range of ideas, and that's the equity piece, right? If you're just looking for one right answer that is not a conversation that is worthy of a phenomenon. Like, that's not, that's just you asking for a right answer, right? Like, that's not gonna just because all 24 of your kids know that the answer is 12. Like, that's not that's hard though.
Ashley O'Neil:Like, that can be a relearning for a teacher, yes. Like, if there's 24 different answers to a question in your classroom, sometimes, like, there would have been professors I would have had, or things I would have felt, as an early teacher would have that would have felt like, Oh, I did something majorly wrong. But in this phase, it is about kind of gathering intel about your students, and so the more diverse the responses, the better it is. But it is that is a hard
Julie Cunningham:switch, right? Well, there's, there's kind of a cute one on this is an ambitious science teachings website, and it says it was just labeled, choosing authentic, local, puzzling phenomenon, right? So this a teacher who was teaching in a kindergarten class in Washington State, and she was her topic was science unit on habitats and animal survival. And a local incident caught her attention, a bear went into Walmart. So like, Wait, right? It's really fun. Students would find it interesting. It will elicit a lot of different responses, probably in Yakima School District in Washington. I think that's Washington. They'd heard about it, right? They maybe heard about it, or they were a little bit more familiar with bears that wasn't, maybe, right, or they and so, like, what a great way to start talking about I mean, obviously Walmart's not their native habitat, so we don't think so anyway. Like, I don't think it has to be, I guess I'm just saying it doesn't have to be, doesn't
Ashley O'Neil:have to be this, like, really aggressive scientific, yeah, phenomena. And sometimes I think that we can get in the weeds and try to take the phenomena so seriously that then it becomes inaccessible, like, there's a silliness to that bear, right, that probably had everybody laughing. I'm assuming everyone was okay, yes, I should say Right. Like, right, this, this, the story could be a little bit a little bit fun, because the safety was fine, but that does, I think that that does matter, because we know, and we talked about this a lot here, that when kids are feeling playful and kind of silly, they're more creative and they're more divergent in their thinking, right, right? And so having something that leans into a playful side of their personality is a great way to get them to be more curious and more innovative when it comes to their responses, right?
Julie Cunningham:And then, actually, so I should see all the tabs I'm just I know NSCA has a, like, a criteria for evaluating phenomena that might be like useful to somebody out there. So, you know. So if you're asking yourself, Is this a good phenomenon? Now, this is not related to the book I brought. It's just related to phenomena, but it's got us five point checklist of, you know, does this phenomena work for what you want to work for? And it's really easy. It's just yes or no questions. Just a one page.
Ashley O'Neil:Can you like read? Maybe like one of the questions? Just to give us an
Julie Cunningham:idea, the phenomenon is observable, observable to students, either through firsthand experiences or through someone else's experiences. Yes or no. So if it's no, then it says, end of evaluation. Do not use this.
Ashley O'Neil:I mean, that's pretty obvious and clear, so
Julie Cunningham:the phenomena is likely comprehensible to students, and then it gives like three bullet points, yes or no. If it's a no answer, then so it just there's five statements that way.
Ashley O'Neil:But it does make sense, though, because I think that's an important feature that I learned a lot from you and some of our prior science. PD, that we've done, which is, like, the temporal nature of a story, like, if I can auditorily explain something that happened to you, kids can't, like, look at it, turn it around, move it right, like, they can't keep coming back to it, unless I just keep playing that story on loop, which is exhaustive, right? And so that visual component is not to be dismissed or, like, taken for granted, because them being able to look at it over and over and over again, even if it is like a video that you have to watch several times and that they have the opportunity to freeze and take a look at, that is a huge part of them making meaning for things, because they get to have autonomy over what they're paying attention to as. Are looking at it right, versus me picking, how am I telling the story? Which can likely guide right with what the answer is that I'm looking for?
Julie Cunningham:Yeah, and the last, actually, the last one is kind of interesting because it's not something that I'd really thought of. But I love a good like cost benefit analysis, so use of the phenomena is efficient in that the benefits justify any financial costs and time devoted to using the phenomenon with students? Yeah? Like, I think that's a great question, right? Because we always talk about not having enough time or not having enough money. So, like, well, in the classroom, so, like, what's the what's the cost benefit here? And if it's not a good cost benefit, then, right?
Ashley O'Neil:Like, if it's so agree, just, and I've seen that before right where the setup of something in the classroom is so time consuming and messy or whatever, and there's not enough time to reset in between classes that like that cuts the phenomena short or off a little bit. And then I've seen with you an example that I think you used last summer with teachers, is we did sink or float, but instead of doing, like, small things small containers, you did take the time to fill up big container and big bowling ball because, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but like, the awe factor of big things floating and like big unexpected things and small things behaving in ways that we don't expect, is worth hauling buckets of water to a location, right, and lifting a bunch of stuff in that space. So it's an example that goes both ways, right,
Julie Cunningham:but one of my like, favorite chemistry phenomena is just boiling water, because people do not know what those bubbles are in boiling water, and you go there, stare at that all day, like you stare at that all day. There's measurements you can do, right? You can whatever, but, I mean, it doesn't have to be Now, do I think all students are going to find boiling water interesting? No, it might have to come with some pasta making story or something, but nonetheless,
Ashley O'Neil:add some context. Yeah, right.
Julie Cunningham:But nonetheless, like, that's a super simple phenomena that everybody
Ashley O'Neil:can experience well. And similarly, I've seen a middle school classroom use the phenomena where baking times and boiling information is different in high elevation spaces, right? And so then you are still boiling mac and cheese, right? But there's a there is a narrative element and a contextual reason why we're talking about this that feels unexpected, that would clue students, and especially middle schoolers, who are just starting hopefully, to like, cook their own dinners and like, participate in the kitchen part of things,
Julie Cunningham:yeah, and the last sort of piece that I pulled up was project zero at Harvard has thinking routines, and this is less about making it's about making students thinking visible, but less about making it visible publicly, like many of these students could do, either on their own or in small groups, but it sort of gives them well thinking routine is a set of questions or a brief sequence of steps used to scaffold and support student thinking. So it's developed across a number of research projects, and they help it just helps reveal students thinking so the teacher so trying to look for one, here's one that it might be like, See, Think, Wonder, right? What do you see? What do you think about that? What does it make you wonder? And so I think that point of, and I don't want to misrepresent project zero, but if you use these things regularly, students get better at just doing it, making their thinking visible automatically, right? So sort of like the repetitiveness and the expectation that this is something I'm going to do and I'm going to be asked to do becomes the norm in the classroom. And I think between that, between making something the norm in the classroom by using these and this idea that it's scaffolded for students and that it doesn't necessarily always have to be shared publicly, like perhaps the bear story would be shared with a full classroom group, and you might listen everyone's thinking in that manner. This allows you sort of to do it
Ashley O'Neil:in small groups or privately. Yeah, and it's also just that really important reminder that all of these skills, right observations, discussing things with a group, prioritizing information. All of those things are learned skills, right? And so when you're teaching this science phenomena or using the science phenomena in your classroom, not only are you trying to get them to understand transfer of thermal energy, for example, but you're also helping them understand how to think, how to organize their thoughts, right, how to revisit their ideas. And each one of those disparate pieces is its own skill that takes practice and introduction and kind of time to percolate in them, and that is what makes teaching both so wonderful and awesome. And also so complicated, right?
Julie Cunningham:Exactly. This is a little bit out of order, because we already sort of talked about using eliciting interpreting, or eliciting student thinking teaching works talks about as eliciting and interpreting to advance justice in the classroom, but this is kind of just a nice sentence about that at the heart of eliciting and interpreting student thinking is the fundamental commitment to students and their ideas, to the belief that students are smart, and to the fact that uncovering and supporting their thinking is the goal of teaching, right? And it's just kind of like, there it is, there it is,
Ashley O'Neil:and there's the reminder that I think we all need on the daily. And if we're talking about everyone's brains being elastic in the skill we learn, a huge gift you're giving yourself and your students is if you articulate this internally and externally as much as you can. So that becomes your guiding principle moving forward, right? Yeah, yeah, awesome.
Julie Cunningham:We can link all of those resources. We will link
Ashley O'Neil:all of those resources in the show notes. If you're interested in any of them, you can find them. And as always, you can find us on most major platforms. And thanks for listening. This is teach wonder brought to you by the Center for Excellence in STEM education. Links are in the show notes and transcripts are on our site. You