--Originally published at nodes
Now it’s down to the What of your unit. Standards have been identified and selected, themes established, and your main mechanism for assessment has been designed to check what students know and can do at the conclusion of the unit.
The center of the Golden Circle isn’t the most important. It’s the component that fits within each of the larger rings. The What of your lessons should drive students toward successful completion of the assessment mechanism which, in turn, shows you what the students have learned of the identified standards.
The What is hard to specify, because the variety of activity in a flipped environment depends on individual student needs. Using the 5E structure helped me plan meaningful and varied activities all within the large scope of the unit.
If you’re not familiar with 5E, here’s a breakdown:
- Engage
- Explore
- Explain
- Elaborate
- Evaluate
I bolded Engage and Explain because it’s where I focused much of my effort in early unit planning.
Engage
It’s easy for me to stand up front and teach a topic. I can communicate ideas clearly and succinctly and ask students to demonstrate understanding with a variety of mechanisms. But, that sucks the joy out of learning something new (not that all students will love chemistry, but you get the idea). Ramsey Musallam and Dan Meyer are two really smart people I found early in this transition who helped frame my view of the engage portion.
Ramsey’s Explore-Flip-Apply structure fit well with my goals. Science is the practice of observation and I wasn’t great at getting students to observe phenomena. Use EFA at times, I was able to both engage the students in an interesting question and push them to draw conclusions based on lab experience.
Dan has pioneered 3 Act Math approach, which works to drive student inquisitiveness as a carrier for math instruction. I took his advice about practicing capturing perplexing things and started trying to photograph or film things that would be useful for engaging my students. (The previous link is a video about halfway through Dan’s 2014 CUE keynote. I recommend watching the entire presentation if you can find the time.)
This is hard to do, mainly because what I find engaging might not be engaging to students at all. Expect to swing for the fences and miss with some. As you hone your units, your engage activities will improve.
Explain
After exploring an idea, there will inevitably be misconceptions which need to be corrected. This is the Flip in Ramsey’s Explore-Flip-Apply. I can assess and gather information about student understanding as they explore and then I can use the power of a camera and a short video to instruct where students need the intervention.
If you’ve been flipping for a while, you know where students struggle. You probably already have a library of support videos you can filter into the unit. This also helps you identify gaps in your own instruction! Pay attention to what material students need additional help with and continue to build those resources out. Structuring your unit (not just a lesson) this way will also help you target which lessons are the most important, and that’s what students do. You don’t have to assign everything every year because the goals of the unit stay the same while student understanding changes year to year or class to class.
More on 5E
Each step in the 5E structure were not prepared for every single day of every single unit. Some components were easier to run across several days (or even weeks) because of low overhead (no prep, etc). Others were limited to specific dates and times. This is particularly important in a science classroom because of lab availability and safety considerations. Giving students choice in how they tackle a particular activity does not mean carte blanche. Specific constructs and limitations are acceptable.
Without repeating the linked 5E article above, Elaboration focuses on connecting to other ideas rather than staying within the immediate context. This is a great place to spiral back to previous units or to build anticipation for future units. It forces you to continue to consider the connections at the standards level rather than looking 24 hours in the future. Not only are your units more powerful, but your course as a whole takes on a larger internal support structure.
Final Thoughts
Much of this is written from secondary math/science perspective because that’s my experience. If you’re not in the same context, pay attention to the support structures rather than the individual examples. How are your standards mapped out? Have you mapped them out? Start large and work down to the day to day. This ensures students have a consistent experience and that the unit has internal fidelity to specific ideas. Looking day to day narrows the scope and makes it too easy to dictate the entire path of the course.
This is a skill that develops over time. There are strong communities of teachers on here the FLN website and Slack channel. Get connected with others to solicit feedback and suggestions from people working on the same ideas. As you continue to zoom your lens out and work down to individual lessons your skill will build and your students will benefit.
Thanks for reading the series. If you have questions, leave a comment or head over to my website and drop me a line.
Featured image by Danielle MacInnes on Unsplash.
