Nye
Discussing Science #1 LAP
Content: This lesson will expose students to “real-world” science via news articles. This first lesson is intended to develop basic skills, but ultimately I want students to be able to read an article, identify the author’s argument, identify problematic statements, choose a position, and debate/support that position. Students will see that commonly held beliefs often stem from data that we have access to, and that data might have been interpreted inadequately, or might lend itself to multiple interpretations.
Learning Goals:
Students will be able to identify the main argument of an article, and hopefully begin to see where assumptions are made or statements are poorly supported.
Rationale:
I firmly believe that perhaps the biggest skill I can foster within my students is the ability to examine commonly held beliefs critically. To maximize agency, individuals need to be able to access information, and then analyze it to some degree for supporting evidence and bias. Ultimately, these skills render students better able to make informed decisions regarding personal health and communal sustainability.
Assessment:
My assessment of student skill will be ongoing. As a class, we will revisit scientific articles and literature again and again over the course of the year. My hope is that students will be able to deal with these texts a little bit more independently each time. By the end of the year, my goal is to have students examine articles independently, identify arguments, select a position, and support that position.
Personalization and Equity:The personalization and equity in this lesson lies within the insert method, and the initial modeling of the article. Some of my students could have found the main argument of the article as well as supporting evidence without any assistance from me. However, I wanted to make sure that everyone in the class had access to at least one system through which they could decode the article. The insert method provides such a system, and modeling how it is used at the beginning of class ostensibly increases the accessibility of the system to my students.
Activity Description and Agenda:
(15 minutes). First, I will explain the insert method. Students will use an exclamation point to identify the main argument, underlines to identify facts, circles to identify opinions, and asterisks to identify supporting evidence. I will model how I might use this method to identify each of the four components.
(30). As a class, we will popcorn read the article, pausing whenever someone wishes to utilize the insert method. After we have finished the article, we will compile each of the four components we are searching for upon the SmartBoard.
Mass. Learning Standards:
SIS1. Make observations, raise questions, and formulate hypotheses.
Observe the world from a scientific perspective.
Pose questions and form hypotheses based on personal observations, scientific articles, experiments, and knowledge.
Read, interpret, and examine the credibility and validity of scientific claims in different sources of information, such as scientific articles, advertisements, or media stories.
Reflection:This lesson could have used a few alterations, but overall went fairly well. Every student was able to gain exposure to the decoding of the science article, and each student was able to hone their ability to identify main arguments, facts, opinions, and supporting evidence. In the future I would like to have students use the insert method to read articles overnight, so that some of the class time we used today to break down the article could instead be used to discuss the main ideas of the article. Furthermore, in the future I would like students to work together in small groups, sharing with each other the main argument and supporting evidence that they identified. Once they finish sharing, I will make a few guiding discussion questions that students will respond to individually in writing, and then verbally in small groups. Ultimately, I would like to build up to significant whole-class discussion. I believe that this class was an effective first step toward this goal, honing the skills students will need to have an informed discussion.