Understanding and Applying Standards

Planning the lessons that you are going to teach is one of the most important parts of the proccess, that's why standards are so important, since they are a guide that help you know what exactly you should teach your students.

The first time I looked the standards, they were a bit complicated and confused for me, but, after unpacking them everything became easier. Usually the standards are long sentences, that can be easily understood if you break them into small parts. It is also very useful to highlight the verbs, that are the actions that the students need to be able to do at the end of the lessons. The nouns help you to know where this actions should be directed. I think that the mission of unpack a standard is to make the teacher understand what is the learning goal for this unit.

Once you know what you have to teach, you need to plan how you will do it. That's when backwards mapping comes into action. You know what is the goal, but now you have to figure out how are you going to teach the standard. It is in this part when you create the objectives, the activities and at the end the assessment to check if your students have learnt all the concepts that you have taught. Using this strategy help me so much to find the way to teach, in my case, homeostasis. This concept could be divided into several lessons, with interesting activities that catch the students' attention, helping them to learn the concepts. There is a lot of information in this unit, and could be overwhelming for students and teachers if you give all the information in a non well organize sequence.

The third part of the process is to create a SMART objective, which indicates us the concepts the students should learnt by the end of the lesson. This objectives have to be specific and measurable. Once you develop the activities you want to do through the unit, it's easier to determinate this objectives, since you know the skills the students will need to use to meet the standard.

In conclusion, this unit help me to feel more confident about the standards and how to implement them in the lessons that I will be teaching very soon.

Standards and Backwards Mapping

I will use backwards mapping on the Standard HS-LS 1-3 for the subject  Biology at High School.

The standard is:

"Plan and conduct an investigation to provide evidence that feedback mechanisms maintain homeostasis." 

This Standard can be founded in Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and it's currently used at AISJ, the school in which I am working.

This standard can be easily broke into a few lessons with several experimental activities which can help the students to develop critical thinking, creativity and group working skills. Students can have fun and learn by observing the results of their hypothesis and experiments.

The proficiencies that the students should have after learn this unit are:

1. Define the concept of homeostasis and positive/negative feedback.
2. Outline the consequences of a disturbance in homeostasis of an organism.
3. Express and perform information using charts or scientific posters.

The assessments proposed to make sure the students will meet the standard after this unit are:

Concept test

All the students have to know the meaning of the different processes that take place for the maintenance of the stability in a body. Without mastering this key concepts students will not be able to perform any of the future activities, since they will have to manage them easily. 

Study cases worksheets

The students, organized by groups, have to predict how the body will react towards some situations explained in a worksheet. This worksheet will be specific of one of the three processes taught in the unit; heart rate, glucose concentration or temperature. The teacher will monitor the groups and listen their hypothesis and how they work as a group.

Final project: design a experiment, do it and present it

Organized by groups, the students will have to develop a project to explain how one of the three processes mentioned above, change and why. They will have to make the experiments they consider and collect the data. At the end they will have to use this data to make a class presentation, which will be evaluated as a final assignment.

The activities or projects that students will do in order to meet the standard could be:

• Create a glossary of the most important concepts for the unit. This concepts should include  the new words such as homeostasis or feedback, as well as other words previously used, like endocrine system, hormone, etc.

• After explaining how work the three different mechanisms of homeostasis for this unit (heart rate, glucose concentration and body temperature) discuss in group some activities in your daily life in which you can observe them. Have a brainstorming for different situations how them work. To conclude with this lesson, divide the classroom in groups and give them a study case that they have to explain as a group (assessment 2).

• Use real research papers and posters as well as graphics to perform a science experiment. After explaining the different steps to develop a science project, organize the students in groups and assign them a homeostatic process; they have to complete all the parts of a research and at the end present it to the rest of the classroom.