Clearly our students are demonstrating awareness of the standards we are tasked to teach. In general, there's a good degree of initial knowledge expressed on both formal and informal measures of knowledge and achievement, yet these same assessments demonstrate a need for us to go deeper with greater detail with regard to the learning path for each standard and topic. For example students explored the creation of water filters, but I believe we didn't go deep enough with the effort in order to gain mastery by most, if not all, students. Deepening this study would include not only an introduction and exploration, but a chance to reiterate their initial designs and then explain and evaluate what they did with content language, process, knowledge, and concept.
Whenever you are reaching for betterment, it's good to have a framework to follow. I believe that the 5 E's framework for deep learning is a good learning path for the unit as a whole to follow since that format brings the learning full circle, and will, I believe, lead to greater independence and mastery.
As I think of the 5 E's approach, I'll initially apply this approach to two upcoming projects, one in science and one in math. In science, I'll apply it to our composting efforts--a project that uses the lens of biomimicry and green chemistry to explore the standards based content area of composting and engineering design. For math, I'll apply this approach to the numerical reasoning and expression standards, standards we focus on at the start of the year in multiple ways. I think this will help us to move students from dependence to independence as well as to support mastery learning.
Further, I'll apply Hammond's culturalIy grounded information processing routines to better the learning experiences within the unit. The chart below outlines that approach. I'm excited about this upcoming improvement to the learning program.
