When it comes to students exploring their own curiosity, I have found that it comes much easier to the younger generations. They’re still brimming with curiosity and are very open about asking questions. As students get older, it is generally harder for them to find questions that they find worth truly investigating. Most of what they don’t know they think they can google, or they aren’t sure what they don’t know, or they just don’t care enough to pursue it.

Truthfully, though, all students need help investigate their own questions. This is where scaffolding comes in.  Instructors might start students […]

According to Understanding by Design (Wiggins & McTighe, 1998), a “big idea” is a “concise statement, principle, or generalization that promotes in-depth understanding, and emphasizes the common characteristics of a unifying concept”. I like to think of it as the idea that lies at the core of a subject and guides my thinking about it.

For my innovative unit, I will be kicking off the first few weeks of ecology. I believe that the big idea for this unit is “Living things in an environment are all connected and depend on each other to create a balanced system”. Ecology is the study […]

Hello good people! This week is Sydney and I’s turn to write the class blog. This past week we met once more with the group of Master Teachers and discussed student autonomy and how to bring more of it into the classroom. They provided us with a ton of resources that they’ve used in our own classroom (thanks if you’re reading this). We (the cohort) were also tasked with further investigating the footholds of Ambitious Science Teaching. Check out the rest of the cohort’s blogs to find out more. What is the most exciting, however, is that we will […]