Ambitious Science Teaching (AST) Session #4 AST Practice 3 - Supporting on-going changes in thinking [Half-day PM]

Ambitious Science Teaching (AST) Session #4 AST Practice 3 - Supporting on-going changes in thinking [Half-day PM]

Instructor(s): Peney E. Wright 
Tier #2 Professional Learning. See prerequisites below. 

Description of Activity: Supporting on-going changes in thinking 

Throughout any unit of instruction, students are frequently engaged in different types of activity. For example, students might do hands-on work with materials, use computer simulations, conduct observations of phenomena, design experiments, or collect and analyze different types of data. The purpose of this set of practices is to help students develop new ideas to use in revising explanations and models for the anchoring phenomena.

We want to make clear that this set of practices should be repeated multiple times throughout a unit. Multiple activities and multiple rounds of sense making are required to build towards a deep understanding of an explanatory model. A single activity is not enough to accomplish this.

Ambitious Science Teaching Practice #3 involves supporting ongoing changes in students’ thinking about scientific concepts. This practice recognizes that science learning is an iterative process that requires students to continuously revisit and revise their prior understandings and beliefs as they encounter new information and evidence.

In Session #4 we will delve deeply into meeting the Three Core Practices which support ongoing changes in thinking within an immersive experience:

• Introducing new ideas 
•  Engaging students in activity and sense making 
•  Collective thinking 

Highly Recommended:  Visit https://ambitiousscienceteaching.org/ to preview the website (Getting Started) and watch the Supporting on-going changes in thinking video ,21:52. Also read Ambitious Science Teaching: Chapters 8 - 11, Appendices D-E 

Ambitious Science Teaching (AST) Book Study – Virtual Sessions begin September 29 th , 2024 and with Session #2 on October 16 th , 2024. 

Prerequisites include: 

•  At least one Tier #1 PL 
•  AST Sessions #1 - #3 

Note: Selected sessions will be recorded and made available for an asynchronous option. Asynchronous work to include pre-reading of the website and/or AST paperback, viewing AST videos, posted reflections regarding the readings and videos, and applying what is learned to participants’ contexts. Participants may join in-person, work completely asynchronously or attend as a hybrid mix. Please contact Peney at pwright@tiu11.org for complete details.