I just noticed that my last post was back in March!  Where has the time gone???  To be frank, I have been so busy at work that my critical thinking professional development has been put on hold, but I have been applying my new-found knowledge and skills with my PLC teacher leaders.

In my previous blog, I explored the components embedded in critical thinking, four different way that inquiry can be framed, and how to reframe questions to facilitate stronger levels of critical thinking.  Criteria are central to critical thinking.  How can a student make an informed judgment on a concept or topic without having clear criteria to form their judgment around?  In my work with PLC teacher leaders, this has been an enlightening tool to guide and elevate students thinking.

So what is on the docket for this week’s reflections? Well, I would like to first take a look at the cascade planning template and then discuss the development of critical thinking tasks.  Wiggins and McTighe’s Understanding by Design(Ubd) (2004)  learning template has been the unit framework that I have used for over 15 years when designing curriculum. For those not familiar with this approach, an educator extracts the essential learning targets from the curriculum, creates enduring understanding and essential questions, which drives a students’ learning towards a performance task that is demonstrated at the end of the unit.  I have found many strengths with using this framework but as well some significant challenges.  One of the struggles that I have faced is effectively and accurately measuring student’s achievement using enduring understandings.  I understand the purpose of them, but my assessment of them has been less than stellar because they are so global.  My second struggle focuses on having a performance task being measured at the end of the unit.   For students with high conceptual and skill development, addressing a performance task at the end of a unit could be challenging; but from my teaching experience, I have found that this group of students can usually rise to the challenge and are not significantly overwhelmed. Yet for students who possess executive functioning challenges (which I find are growing by leaps and bounds), having a big task at the end of the unit sets them up for failure, EVEN WITH extraordinary scaffolding.  So, I have taken a leap of faith with Garfield Gini-Newman’s guidance, and I have started to use his cascade unit development framework. This framework does have come common parallels to the Ubd process, but I feel it addresses some of the significant challenges that I have struggled with using the UbD template.

 

Diagram above was taken from Garfield Gini-Newman works March 2017@CPRSS.

I am presently using this framework in designing a Gr. 10 Science unit.  With this approach, we established what our essential learning targets.  These are targets that student needs to know for the next 40 months and 40 years. Our outcome-base curricula in Manitoba often has many, many outcomes that are not equal in their depth and breadth.  Therefore as a team, we have identified what we deem as the essential learning targets that all student should “understand” by the end of the semester.  I use the term understanding in a Ubd context.  This process of selection is based on criteria.  So from these targets, we pondered what type of critical thinking task would work best to enable students to show their achievement of the essential learning targets.  Below are the six forms of critical thinking tasks.  I hope over the next year to be able to provide several concrete examples, from different curricula, of what these tasks can look like.

 

Diagram above taken from Garfield Gini-Newman works March 2017@ CPRSS.

We have selected a “Design to Specs” task for our summative assessment for the motion unit.   I think that our clear criteria frames the thinking that student must engage in and as well forces students to consider the formative scaffolding in relation to these criteria.

Task:  

• Design an egg carrier so that it provides the safest ride possible and prepare a scientifically sound pitch for the Manitoba Egg Farmers Marketing Board.
  • Criteria for a safe ride:
    • Passenger is protected from variations in velocity, acceleration, and impact
    • Able to remove passenger from vehicle with relative ease and in a short span of time
    • Proper safety considerations are addressed: restraints etc.
  • Criteria for Scientifically sound pitch
    • Accurate use of data to support claims
    • Accurate and effective use of terminology
    • Articulates the degree of safety carrier provides
    • Clear explanations to support claims made in the presentation of the model re: safety

My lead teacher and I found that we had to create the over-arching critical challenge first before we could develop the over-arching inquiry question.  I don’t think the order of this matters  AS LONG AS the task and the question  guide and support student learning in the same direction and towards the same end result.

Motion Unit–Manitoba Grade 10 Science Curriculum

Our over-arching question: To what degree can the safety of an egg be enhanced by the design of an egg carrier?

• Criteria for a safe ride:
  • Passenger is protected from variations in velocity, acceleration, and impact
  • Able to remove passenger from vehicle with relative ease and in a short span of time
  • Proper safety considerations are addressed: restraints etc.

You might be asking yourself, so how is the cascade unit framework’s over-arching critical challenge differ from a Ubd performance task?  Well, the significant different that I see is that the learning plan is chunked into three to four inquiries where the student completes a portion of the over-arching critical learning challenge during each inquiry phase.  By the time the end of the unit comes, students should have almost all of the assessment completed, AND they just need to make tweaks to the assessment piece versus starting from scratch to retrieve all the learning that has occurred since the beginning of the unit.    I think that this cumulative development of the project during the unit will benefit ALL students and not just the students who face executive processing challenges.   Below is the opening section of the unit that we have designed to date.  I am hoping that you will be able to see how the first inquiry works and as well how it connects back to the over-arching critical thinking challenge.

On the opening day of the unit, students will be presented with the critical thinking summative challenge.  They will be asked to consider the criteria for what constitutes a safe ride, and then will be given a thought book to begin sketching out what they think their initial design might look like and brainstorm out the considerations that they need to think about for their design.  On a regular  basis, students will be required to return to their thought books to make adjustments to their original design, based on what they have learned over the past few days or during the week.  This will allow the students to re-think and reconceptualise their design.

Inquiry #1-Learning Experience #1

Our first inquiry focuses student learning on understanding key concepts and the connections that exist between these concepts: distance, displacement, time, speed velocity, acceleration and graphing.  For this inquiry, we are using a “Decode the Puzzle” strategy for examining data and uncovering the relationships that exist between distance, displacement time, speed, velocity, and acceleration.  The first learning experience will require students to gather data from a specific walking route.   They will record their data on large chart paper.

 

Person #1	Steps	Time
Walking slowing result
Walking quickly result
Walking consistently

Person #2	Steps	Time
Walking slowing result
Walking quickly result
Walking consistently

Students are then asked the following questions:

• What do you see in person #1 results
• What do you see in person #2 results
• Are there any links or connections you can see between person #1 & person #2
• What are you wondering about?  I wonder. . . . . . .

These questions are taken from Harvard University’s Visible Thinking project routine:  See-Think-Wonder

We are wanting the student to see if they can uncover any of the concepts or patterns that may arise from the data VERSUS having a teacher tell them what they should see from the data.  The teacher records the team results from this investigation on the inquiry one bulletin board.  Students will be coming back to these finding upon completion of the third learning experience.

Inquiry #1-Learning experience #2

The second learning experience involves students examining two graphs that have been drawn on large sheets of graph chart paper. I will post pictures once we have them created.  One side will be a strong graph and the other half will model a weak graph.  Students will be given the same questions to respond to

• What do you see in graph #1
• What do you see in graph #2
• Are there any links or connections you can see between graph #1 & graph #2
• What are you wondering about?  I wonder. . . . . . .

The teacher then debriefs to see to what degree students have been able to decode the puzzle to acquire criteria on what makes a good graph.  We are wanting students’ to see if they can uncover any of the patterns that may arise from examining the graph VERSUS having a teacher tell them what makes a good graph.  The ultimate outcome will be for the class to develop clear criteria of what comprises a good graph  and how to read a graph.  This criterion will be posted in the room for future reference.

Inquiry #1-Learning experience #3

The teacher will provide students with data and through the use of joint construction, the class will create a team graph.  They will then compare the graph to the criteria developed in the previous lesson, and they will walk through how to read the information on the graph.

The students will then be required to graph out the slow, fast and constant pace data that they gathered in learning experience one.  Upon completion of the graph, the student will participate in a carousel walk to examine others’ graphs to ensure they are meeting the graphical criteria and provide feedback on how to improve the graph if it isn’t meeting the criteria.  Upon completion of this feedback/reflective process, students will be asked to take out their raw data and compare it to the pictorial representation.

They will be asked the following questions:

• Are there connections between table one data and graph #1?  If so what are they?  What do they represent?
• Are there connections between table two data and graph #2?  If so what are they?  What do they represent?
• Are there connections between table three data and graph #3?  If so what are they?  What do they represent?

From this final examination, students should be able to extract the concepts of distance, displacement time, speed, velocity, and acceleration.  The teacher will clarify any misunderstandings and record these key concept on inquiry one bulletin board.  Students will be required to take these concepts back to their thought books and look at revising their design based on the information they have learned.  At the end of this learning inquiry, students will be required to apply their initial understanding of these concepts to their final project design.  We hypothesize that as the students understanding deepens, their design will reflect their revised conceptualization.

The types of learning activities used in this inquiry are focused on critically uncovering the concepts versus a teacher using a Smartboard notebook to tell students what the concepts are. I will update you as to how this inquiry went, and provide the design of subsequent inquires for this unit.

If you look at the cascade template, each inquiry has its own inquiry question.  In our planning, we didn’t create an inquiry one question, which we need to.  We just wanted to try and get the sequencing down that embedded different types of critical tasks, and then will look at inquiry questions for each section.  We felt that we were up to our eyeballs in change so we wanted to go a mile deep and an inch wide vs. a mile wide and an inch deep.

Would appreciate any feedback from readers.  Must run.  Wishing you a wonderful week!

Best wishes,

Ingrid