When I learned about the scientific method in middle school, I became a better writer. I know, this doesn’t seem to make sense. What does science learning have to do with writing? As an elementary student I was told that I was a very creative writer, but in my writing assignments I did poorly. Teacher comments included things like: “Where is your evidence?”, “This piece lacks organization”, and “Explain why this is important”. Once I learned the logical steps of the scientific method, it immediately occurred to me that a similar structure could be applied to my writing as well.
I’ve had a similar “aha” moment in this class. Our second discussion prompt this week asked us to “demonstrate how you can help students develop a scientific explanation of their work…” My first reaction to this was, here we go again, focusing only on science. Only after Karen (patiently) replied to my query that my language arts students could simply “develop an explanation of their work” did it occur to me that it was something I already do in my classes. If you were to ask any of my current students what I expect in a response they would be able to tell you: they need to make a claim, support the claim with evidence, and explain how the evidence supports the claim. Sounds pretty much like scientific explanation!
I also came to the realization that I am applying many of the ideas of IBL in my classroom already. When I teach a skill, students need to first understand how to use that skill (showing understanding of fact) and then apply it to a new situation (applying the concept). One concept that I will be adding more to my class is increasing student engagement through shifting non-investigatable questions into investigatable ones when appropriate. This is often a simple shift in the wording of a question, but the results can be dynamic as students take responsibility for discovering an answer.
As I work to more deliberately, apply the concepts of IBL to my teaching, I wonder if there is a suggested ratio for fact:concept and investigatable: non-investigatable questions for a lesson.