Episode 042: Leveraging Students’ Prior Conceptions in NGSS with Ty Scaletta

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Summary:

Ty Scaletta, a 6th grade NGSS teacher, shares with us how to plan and teach in response to students prior conceptions and the importance of leveraging those prior conceptions when thinking about equity and engagement in NGSS storylines. He begins by explaining his shift from using the word “misconceptions” to prior conceptions. And ends with talking about his work with OpenSciEd. Lots of NGSS goodies here!

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Show Highlights

• 01:30 - 05:30    Prior conceptions vs misconceptions
• 05:30 - 09:00    Leveraging prior conceptions
• 09:30 - 13:00    Planning for prior conceptions
• 13:30 - 24:00    How leveraging prior conceptions leads to more equity and engagement in the classroom
• 27:00 - 32:00    Ty's work with OpenSciEd

 Show Quotes 

"One of the big ways you can leverage prior conceptions is by being intentional about eliciting students' initial ideas about something before making that next step. If we're using a phenomenon, how do we give kids a chance to talk, write, and draw about what they think is happening?"  [6:55-7:15] Ty Scaletta

"I would say prior conceptions is one of the places where you see the greatest difference across identifiers, because kids' experiences are so different and kids' prior science class experiences are so different." [11:55-12:10] Ty Scaletta

"The class doesn't move until the class moves it. We don't move along as a class until the class is ready to move along." [15:30-15:45] Ty Scaletta

"One of the great things about eliciting prior conceptions and activating them is we all develop a common vocabulary together and we're keeping our observations and explanations in student language." [21:00-21:25] Ty Scaletta

Links

Ty on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mr__scaletta 

Next Gen Storylines: http://www.nextgenstorylines.org/

OpenSciEd: https://www.openscied.org/openscied/?

PAGES: https://impact.education.illinois.edu/projects/pages

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