Negotiating Ideas and Evidence Through Tasks

The goal of the third stage is to support on-going changes in students’ thinking by providing learning experiences that help coordinate their own ideas with powerful ideas in science to build a scientific explanation of the anchoring phenomenon. This involves designing or adapting a number of purposeful tasks, coordinated with the important science ideas identified earlier, and the construction and use of public records such as a Summary Table to help keep track of ideas over time. Important in this stage is the revision and testing of the students' models. This stage makes up the majority of the unit as the class works to develop their explanations of the phenomenon through engagement in the practices of science.

Part A. Develop a Unit Task Outline

The Unit Task Outline connects tasks with Disciplinary Core Ideas (DCIs), Science and Engineering Practices (SEPs), and Crosscutting Concepts (CCCs) that will guide student sensemaking in that task.

Provide the outline of each purposeful task that includes the introduction or highlighting of science ideas to reason with, the task launch, the procedures for the main task, and how the summary table will be updated. Each task may take one or more days. For each task, identify target Disciplinary Core Ideas (DCIs), Science and Engineering Practices (SEPs), and Crosscutting Concepts (CCCs) that will guide student sensemaking in that task. Also include an outline of how you will facilitate the mid-unit model revision. The followings are examples:

High School (Grades 9-12)

Middle School (Grades 6-8)

Elementary School (Grades 3-5)

Part B. Draft Summary Table

The draft Summary Table maps out the intended understandings from each task and connects these tasks to developing an explanation for the anchoring phenomenon.

Construct a draft Summary Table that includes each task, the intended understandings from the task, and how the task helps develop an explanation for the anchoring phenomenon. We suggest that responses are written as full sentences and no more than two sentences are included in each box. Adapt the table based on the number of tasks in the unit. While the goal is for students to come to consensus statements to be included on the table, having already thought through possible responses will make facilitating the discussion easier. The following are examples: