Assignment #9: Complete the 4 part assignment format as you read, reflect, and respond to Chapter 9: Generating and Testing Hypotheses.
Remember: Although your course packet asks you to post to blog for parts A, B, C, and D…we are asking that you only post part C and D. We’re trying to make the blog easier to read and more user- friendly. Thanks!
A. Self Assessment of Current Beliefs and Practices: This component asks you to reflect on how and why you currently use the instructional strategies of Generating and Testing Hypotheses in your classroom. The intent of this is to activate your prior knowledge of your strategy use so that you can make comparisons as you read the chapter.
B. Read & Reflect “Research & Theory”: This portion of the assignment asks you to read chapter 9 and reflect briefly on your thinking after reading the “Research and Theory” section of Generating and Testing Hypotheses.
C. Practice: Choose one of the specific “classroom practice” strategies or techniques shared in this chapter to teach to your students (If you are not currently teaching, you may share how you would use this strategy in your classroom) – please post a brief reflection of how this went to the posting labeled Week Nine: Generating and Testing Hypotheses.
D. Final Strategy Reflection: A sequence of questions posted below asks you to reflect on what you’ve learned about both the strategies presented in the chapter and what you’ve learned about yourself as both a teacher and a learner. Please post a brief reflection of how this went to the posting labeled Week Nine: Generating and Testing Hypotheses.
How has the information you read in this chapter on Generating and Testing Hypotheses effected your thinking about teaching and learning? What have you learned about yourself as a teacher and learner? Use the following questions to assist you in writing a brief strategy reflection:
• How might I change how use Generating and Testing Hypotheses in my classroom?
• What is something you now understand better about Generating and Testing Hypotheses?
10 comments:
C.
I was hesitant in my thinking that I could incorporate meaningful instructional strategies from this chapter into my social studies curriculum. After reading the many types of tasks used to generate a hypothesis and testing of the hypothesis, I have decided I could incorporate a few into my lessons in history. I really liked the Systems Analysis Approach. We can look at the systems of government studied within the ancient civilizations covered. I like the idea of changing a part of the system and predict what could have happened differently. We, as learners and teachers of history, know that we can’t really “change” history, but it would be fun and educational to “tweak” it and imagine how it could have ended differently. I also like the Historical Investigation approach. The history we are taught is determined from a certain point of view and perspective. Do we really know what happened thousands of years ago? No, but it would be fun to ask students to investigate and form a hypothesis from different sources and perspectives. My only problem would be how to test the hypothesis. I would expect a good, strong argument in the student’s explanation.
Ok, I am posting one part of the assignment at a time!
D.
The one way I would change how I use Generating and Testing Hypothesis strategies in my classroom would be that I would find more opportunities to use them. I ask a lot of “What if” questions, but I could ask my student to think about the different perspectives in history and for them to use their imagination in their responses and explain with facts. I consider some of my role-plays very similar to the systems analysis approach. After learning about the people during ancient times, students tell what they believe would be the history of a certain person in the society being studied. I have been crunched with time the last couple of years, due to district expectations and various trainings, but I want to encourage students to think about what life would have been like through such role-play projects and add them back into my curriculum. Possibly, by removing or changing one part of an ancient society (through role-play), it could have changed their course and the history we are making (our course). This is what I want to ultimately teach my students; history is created by choices and actions of people. What if the choices and actions of people in history changed? Imagine how ancient cultures could have survived, etc. Would history have changed and been different? This would definitely teach my students that we all have an impact on each other and the direction we are moving in our own history making. What I know now after reading this chapter is that imagination provokes deep thought and I think that is important for all us to engage in as learners and teachers. ☺
C:
One of the lessons I taught this year was about the Arctic and Antarctic. I think that the next time I do this lesson I would use systems analysis to have my students predict what would happen if certain changes were made to the environment (for example the temperature). I also am brainstorming ways to create some lessons using the problem solving strategy to identify and discuss ways to improve issues we have in our school, and then possibly make a connection to their life outside of school as an individual project. I see a lot that I could do with this, but I am not sure how the implementation will turn out.
D:
The information in chapter nine on Generating and Testing Hypotheses has started me thinking about how I could use these strategies in my lessons. My group situation presents a bit of a challenge since I only have students for 25 to 30 minutes a day and teach seven different groups ranging in age from kindergarten through fifth grade. After reading this chapter I began to see many ways I could try to use these strategies with my groups and I am excited to try! I particularly like the idea that was written about having students record their hypotheses and conclusions since my goals are mainly oral based this would be a great way to meld the idea of generating and testing hypotheses with ELD goals.
C. For the chapter on generating and testing hypotheses, I decided to use the problem solving method that they describe. This strategy fits in perfectly with math, especially multiple step problems. Too often, I have students saying they don’t know what to do after just reading the problem. So, I started having a problem of the day that we complete at the beginning of math each day. Students are asked to show their work and explain how they got their answer. Sometimes they do this alone, sometimes with a buddy, and sometimes in a small group. I like the framework that was provided in the chapter and used this to help guide students through the process of solving the problems. We try to look first at what the problem is asking and then try to see what information it is we still need to know to solve the problem. We brainstormed different ways we could solve different math problems: draw a picture, use manipulatives, use a calculator, etc. Then they need to work it out and double check to make sure it’s correct. Sometimes, students are asked to explain how they solved the problem to a buddy or to the class, other times they are asked to write how they solved it.
D. In thinking about problem solving in math after reading this chapter, I realized that this is a strategy that I need to use more in my classroom. Also, my students need more practice with the process. This will help to strengthen their problem solving skills, and will benefit them when it comes time to taking the OAKS math assessment. Our math program does have at least one “Explain It” question with each lesson, but these are usually just explaining basic understandings of the concept (such as the bigger the denominator, the smaller the pieces) rather than on solving the problem. We used to use CGI (cognitive guided instruction) at all grade levels, but have since stopped. It was a great way to teach problem solving to students. Problem solving is a strategy that I will continue to work on with my students, and would like to expand to other subjects as well. As this chapter said, generating and testing hypotheses does not just have to be for science. I’ll need to think more about other ways to incorporate it further.
Chapter 9, part C.
This chapter mostly made me thing about the scientific inquiry process and how it could be used in other ways in my classroom. As an intervention/enrichment teacher this year, I am working with both the advanced and strategic students that need more practice and teaching. I decided to use the “problem solving” task to guide my first grade advanced math students through a word problem involving addition. For the most part this structure is what we (our school) use to help students organize their thoughts and work in solving math word problems. This was the first I had done with these first graders although I knew their classroom teacher had used this strategy with them many times. Together we completed a math word problem on the overhead where they watched me model my thinking and record my thoughts on a template. I decided to use the word prediction for step three in the problem solving process referred to on page 107 where it discusses “hypothesize which solution is likely to work” however, I did have the word “hypothesize” in parenthesis next to prediction on the template. They seem to follow my steps and discussed easily as I went through the process of trying a solution and explaining whether it was correct or not. I thought this was going to be easy, after all I have the advanced group, right? Wrong, when they were presented with their problem the next day, most of the students looked at the writing (I read it to them several times although they are all fluent readers) and all but one of them asked me “What do I do now?” At first I thought it was just the grade and that I had not modeled, practiced and taught this process enough. But soon I realized that more often than not, we/I spoon feed the students information or chunk it down so far that students are no longer thinking about their work or making predictions and testing them at all. We worked through the situation and we shared our thinking with others and we even tried solving it another way and it seemed to go well. The students were better the second day when presented with a story problem that was wordier than the day before. Some of them got right to work sketching their predictions and testing their solutions/strategies but it is clear that I need to build more time in my lessons for individual thought process and time to reflect on that thinking. First graders were actually better at explaining their work and their thinking than I thought and they were all eager to share their strategy in problem solving and why it worked. The struggle mostly occurred when they were asked to solve a problem without being stepped though it piece by piece. This was a glaring reminder to me that I need to be asking students more open ended questions to solve and prove (with some guidelines such as templates, sentence starters , modeling etc…) on their own.
D. I really liked the way the chapter broke down the different categories (system analysis, problem solving, historical investigation etc…) in teaching different ways to guide students through questioning, predicting and explaining. I now see more ways I could use these strategies other than math and science. I can see myself using the historical investigation with my third graders during our biography unit. This chapter reminded me of a time long ago when our school incorporated CGI or cognitively guided instruction into our math curriculum to help students think about their thinking in math and then use a variety of questioning strategies to lead them to higher level math problems. It makes me think about asking students to think about their work more (metacognition?) and then explain their reasoning or thinking to others.
Kelsey, I also only have kids for 25-35 min. at a time and I like the idea of recording their hypothesis on a chart and then coming back to them the next day. I am trying to not get blocked by time and my schedule in order to try more of these strategies. I need to remember that I do not need to complete everything at once and that we reviewing it and reflecting on concepts the next day is helpful.
Christi,
I agree that I need to remind myself not to get blocked by the schedule. I really would like to so so many things and I need to get better at spreading them out over a few days and focusing on the particular project instead of being so worried about all the things we need to accomplish during the year.
Assignment # 9: Generating and Testing Hypotheses
C. As I was reading through the chapter I kept having “aha” moments that gave me great ideas to pull into lessons—if I was a classroom teacher this year! I then went back over the chapter and made connections to some of the ideas I could incorporate as a reading specialist, but they would be determined by the particular topics/stories the students are working on. My intervention materials tie in to the classroom stories, and often they can be science or social studies based. If this were the case right now I would love to use the Historical Investigation—in particular having students role play (as already mentioned in the blog) or predicting/making a hypothesis for what would happen if the events in history were changed. I would also love to use the Systems Analysis. My first graders recently finished a unit on the seasons/weather, and although we did a lot of learning on what actually happens during the seasons and why, I love the idea of getting them to analyze more and make predictions of what would happen if the seasons didn’t follow the correct pattern. I think they would really get into that for how “out of the norm” it would be, and it would guide them into thinking outside of the box—not the easiest thing for first graders! The other practice idea I loved was Experimental Inquiry. The book gave the example of how different literary devices can influence readers. I recently did a 4th grade writing intervention group, and I think this activity would have really engaged them in the writing process. The group was analytical by nature—which would help—but I think with enough modeling any of them would at least be able to start this process. Over time their attempts would become more effective.
D. Like others have mentioned I was originally a skeptic of how this chapter could really connect with K-5 students. As the book mentioned we often think of generating and testing hypothesis as a “science thing”—I always think of my High School Biology class!—but really it means opening the doors for how our students take in, learn, and digest information. Each of the practices mentioned in the book allows students to go deeper than the literal meaning of things. Like everything else, if something is modeled and practiced enough it will become second nature. If we model deeper level thinking and get our students to practice it, it will become a natural step for them in the learning process. Thinking back over the units I have already covered this year I can make a lot of connections for how to use this chapter’s suggestions. I also have some upcoming units that I think this will tie nicely into as well. I think the numbered steps under each practice in the book can be used, with revisions as needed to create some student friendly templates to fill in. The templates are a nice support system as students get started “hypothesizing,” then you can remove pieces of the template to allow for more independence as they are ready.
C. This chapter represents a very difficult instructional strategy to apply in every classroom. While I feel that it can be incorporated, I also think that it takes a significant amount of time and prep work, and while I would like to believe we teach in an age where those things are limitless, I think we all know better! In health class the most common place I see this fitting in is with decision making. We not only have decision making as a skill required by the state, we also use it almost daily in every other unit. In this way, using the examples from the book I can include a ‘generate, test, revise’ portion of some of our decision making examples that will allow students to try and determine what they think will be the outcome, try it and see if they were correct, and then revise their guess if necessary. I do have to be cautious that students don’t allow their hypothesis to become an over generalization. An example would be that is they are making a decision around using drugs and oversimplify their hypothesis to say “If I use drugs I will die”…well, the first time most people try drugs they do not die, so some middle school students will determine that their hypothesis was wrong and therefore (in the black and white thinking we see in early adolescents,) they would say, “ok, if I use drugs I will NOT die”…which isn’t always the case. I think this would need to be a very structured discussion of how to best develop, test and revise hypotheses.
D. As a teacher and learner I definitely see this strategy, out of the nine discussed, to be my biggest weakness. While the text provided some examples I can’t honestly say that I see way to seamlessly implement it into my everyday practice. I plan to keep it in mind as I go through the remainder of this school year, looking for areas to implement it. I also will discuss with other teachers in my building how they use this idea in courses other than science. I do firmly believe that for content specific classes like middle and high schools use, it is imperative that if teachers are trying to make connections in what the students know that we can reference common language or techniques. The science teacher in our building was able to tell me that in 7th grade they use a sentence frame for hypothesis, I hypothesize that if _____________, then _____________. By using this same sentence frame, not only to improve their internalizing of that science concept, I provide them that scaffolding that enables them to better step out of their comfort zone in health class.
Great reflections everyone. Yes, this chapter has some big tasks that teachers can use to engage students in generating and testing hypotheses. I think that the reason they give so many is that not all of them will work in every situation. Even though we are so pressed for time, no matter what we teach, being aware of giving students more time for processing and reflection are really important points to remember. Additionally, allowing students the opportunities to predict and solve problems and then explain their reasoning are skills that students also do not have enough practice with. As this section has a lot of information in it, you may want to re-read it at a later date and see if some of the suggestions could be useful in your classroom.
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