Scaffolds
Lab Work
Students have relatively little lab experience and the teacher should be wary of simply turning the students loose in the lab. Science teachers budgets are not unlimited and students typically do not have a good sense of how much chemical would be “too much” in the lab. With this in mind, a hard scaffold should in place for all students who choose to perform the Surface Area to Volume activity Reaction Rate lab. Prior to performing their experiment, all groups should be required to check in with the teacher with respect to the suitability of their procedure. The teacher should check it for general feasibility, safety, and material use. If necessary, the teacher can ask questions of the students, such as:
For later lab work, this approach should turn (perhaps gradually, over the course of a few experiments) into a soft scaffold wherein the teacher walks around listening to and observing student work as they generate their procedures. The teacher would only jump in if he or she notices something in the group’s work that necessitates a question or discussion.
Direct Instruction
At certain times, students will need direct instruction to understand certain concepts. The purpose of direct instruction is to help ensure students learn the certain aspects of the content well so they can apply it to as they try to answer the driving question. We anticipate some students will need direct instruction when trying to understand the difference between chemical and physical properties. After direct instruction, we hope the students will be able to gain a deeper understanding of how properties on the nano-scale may be different than those on the macro-scale, allowing them the ability to answer better the driving question.
Other
In general, the teacher will be walking about the room listening to and observing student progress. This provides daily opportunities for soft scaffolding in which the teacher, on hearing a misconception or lack of direction, can jump in with questions to refocus or address the misunderstanding.
Resources
For many teachers, including us, scaffolding seems to be so multi-faceted and integrated with instruction it can be a bit difficult to understand the best way to implement it into a PBL unit. Some peers of ours designed a very helpful website that organize numerous resources available for helping teachers scaffold better.
Reference:
http://scaffoldintopbl.weebly.com/
Students have relatively little lab experience and the teacher should be wary of simply turning the students loose in the lab. Science teachers budgets are not unlimited and students typically do not have a good sense of how much chemical would be “too much” in the lab. With this in mind, a hard scaffold should in place for all students who choose to perform the Surface Area to Volume activity Reaction Rate lab. Prior to performing their experiment, all groups should be required to check in with the teacher with respect to the suitability of their procedure. The teacher should check it for general feasibility, safety, and material use. If necessary, the teacher can ask questions of the students, such as:
- If you use this much of [substance] and I have [amount] in my stockroom, will there be enough left for all of my other classes to also investigate this?
- If you perform this experiment as written, what safety measures will you take?
- Keep the goal of the work in mind. How will your procedure facilitate progression towards a better understanding of surface area-to-volume ratios as they relate to reaction rates?
For later lab work, this approach should turn (perhaps gradually, over the course of a few experiments) into a soft scaffold wherein the teacher walks around listening to and observing student work as they generate their procedures. The teacher would only jump in if he or she notices something in the group’s work that necessitates a question or discussion.
Direct Instruction
At certain times, students will need direct instruction to understand certain concepts. The purpose of direct instruction is to help ensure students learn the certain aspects of the content well so they can apply it to as they try to answer the driving question. We anticipate some students will need direct instruction when trying to understand the difference between chemical and physical properties. After direct instruction, we hope the students will be able to gain a deeper understanding of how properties on the nano-scale may be different than those on the macro-scale, allowing them the ability to answer better the driving question.
Other
In general, the teacher will be walking about the room listening to and observing student progress. This provides daily opportunities for soft scaffolding in which the teacher, on hearing a misconception or lack of direction, can jump in with questions to refocus or address the misunderstanding.
Resources
For many teachers, including us, scaffolding seems to be so multi-faceted and integrated with instruction it can be a bit difficult to understand the best way to implement it into a PBL unit. Some peers of ours designed a very helpful website that organize numerous resources available for helping teachers scaffold better.
Reference:
http://scaffoldintopbl.weebly.com/