Ashley Blackwelder's Post

Over the past two weeks, I've had the opportunity to dive back into the 5th grade classroom (which I love) and lead those students and teachers through a unit I've designed on forces and motion (which don't typically love, but have really enjoyed as a result of this re-vamped unit). I've felt a little like I have bitten off more than I can chew with this whole thing, as I've just finished helping 5th grade with their STEAM program and am now getting to work with 2nd grade on theirs.  There's usually not enough time in the day to make all of these things happen...but it's been a great experience for our kids so far, and something I was dying to try out after we explored the elephant text set in class and began working on our own. Although I am our STEM teacher (or STEM Lab Lady or The Scientist, depending on which kid you ask), my "first love" in teaching has always been reading--and I was instantly excited about the idea of seeking out really great, high-interest texts to jump-start a unit that our teachers typically dread and students struggle to understand. We started the unit with my text set  and moved into two days of exploration with force-and-motion-themed Goldiblox building sets. From there, we've moved on to pendulum painting and art critique, graphing motion with the help of some 4th grade runners, and we'll finish up with a guest speaker this week, who is on the Canadian curling team. As the students have completed each activity, the only writing requirements I gave them were to take notes on 3 things: 1) any important/new terms they encountered that would be good to remember 2) any questions they had about something they read or experienced and 3) any reflections (visualizations, connections, etc.) that they wanted to add. We've been assessing their understanding and participation through rubrics based mostly on conversations with peers and teachers; we have yet to assign a "quiz" on the material, but have had plenty of opportunities to get an authentic measure of what they currently know and what they need. All of this is leading up to the final week of our unit, during which our students will reflect on what they've learned and found most interesting, and then design an experiment to test out some aspect of force and motion.

Although I started trying to be more "STEM-focused" during my last couple of years in the classroom, this unit is vastly different from anything I attempted with my own students. I feel that I have grown a great deal myself in really understanding the value of questioning and exploration as learning experiences, and it's the first time I ever started off a unit without any real direct instruction. It's really been interesting--and eye-opening--to see how well they're doing when they're constructing that knowledge through their experiences and wonderings.The big difference is that from the start, they've been reading and writing LIKE SCIENTISTS. There is no 5-paragraph format, no need to assess their grammar, punctuation, etc. at this point.  They are simply reading, thinking, and writing what matters to them about what they are doing. I am hoping that their culminating projects will show that this whole endeavor has been worthwhile--that they will be able to investigate something that matters to them and present it in a way that shows a deeper understanding and purpose than they would have through textbook learning and direct instruction. Based on what I've seen so far, I suspect that they will.  Check out what they're doing, and hopefully I'll have more good things to report in the next few weeks!