Phenomena is ust that simple.
Stop.
Ask the kids what they think and get them interested
in what you're trying to teach.
Me being a teacher, I totally understand
that you have so many things on your plate...needing to call home,
grading and taking care of yourself and your own family.
Teaching is very difficult.
So I think my biggest
piece of advice would be to when you are thinking
about trying to teach students about any sort of topic,
is there a question that you could ask the students
that is interesting, that would get them thinking
and force them to present multiple
different ideas and possible answers?
The Iowa science phenomenon can get kids excited
about what's going on. And they can start
asking questions on their own,
and that can help open up to other things
that maybe you want to talk about.
This can be kind of scary as a teacher
because you're not really sure
what they're going to bring up, or you're
just not as comfortable with the phenomena itself.
But allowing students to drive that can actually
give the teacher energy
about what the students want to learn about, and then
the teacher can model learning right alongside the students.
As you can see
on these two white boards...It may look like chaos right now.
But I think what you're really seeing
is a deep, thorough investigation
and understanding of a phenomena, which is
why did the African buffalo population decrease from 400,000
all the way down
to ten to 25,000 in a very short period of time?
And I just started off with this question
up on the border here.
What changed the African buffalo population over time?
A driving question board would be what questions could you ask
to help us figure out, is hunting
and poaching the main reason why the population decreased?
Well, some questions that you'd hope
the students would generate would be
how many people live in the Serengeti?
What are the laws that they have in the Serengeti
about hunting and poaching?
And over here, I put their
ideas that we investigated upon this board,
and we had students share what they found out.
Some things we realized are not a reason
why the buffalo population changed.
Other things, other reasons,
other things we found out
are really important reasons why they change.
So, you know, just starting off with a simple question
about why is the African buffalo population decreasing?
We can
then start to explore student ideas, student misconceptions
and come to a deep understanding about population
change impacts. And we did.
The hardest part about using this
method is the unknown,
the unknown in terms of what are my students
going to ask and
not shooting their ideas down, but accepting them
and exploring them. I think that's a really difficult part.
I found myself having to say that is a great idea.
Let's add it to the board.
I'm going to have to look into this
a little bit more later because I don't really know
if that is how, how this works or not.
And I think just saying that also helps students
realize that I'm a human being too. The process of learning
is not just saying making stuff up and lying to people,
but it's about saying, I don't know this.
I'm going to figure it out and let you know.
And yeah,
when teachers are high on this pedestal
and they know everything, and I think it's really good
for the kids to know that, no, we really don't know everything.
I'm a teacher, but that doesn't mean
I know how to answer every single question.
And so when I tell them, you know what?
I really don't know right now, but I'm going to find out
and we'll talk about it tomorrow.
And I think that's what all teachers need to know
is it's OK to say, you don't know
I teach eighth graders.
And when you think about using a driving question board,
they have a lot of questions and they are
not afraid to ask them yet.
They also look at the teacher
still for the most part,
as somebody
who knows a lot of stuff and wants to share with them
when you have that good relationship with the students.
So when you can encourage these questions,
whether it's, you know, in the middle of a
unit, or the beginning of a unit. Just depending on
whatever it is you're talking about.
They are able to ask these
questions and then there's impact in them
knowing that you're still using those questions
when teaching them along the way.
I like to partner share.
So if like I don't understand something,
maybe my partner does.
And so I can learn
and he's learning, I can share something with him.
And then we can use our knowledge
all together and go, put it up on the board.
I showed him the lesson and use that to learn and
study for the test.
Hey, you're ready for another one?