Activating Students' Ideas: Linking Formative Assessment Probes to Instructional Sequence

Science teachers face an incredible challenging task of combining research on how students learn best, the three-dimensions of the Science Education Frameworks that in themselves are complicated to understand, and instructional sequences that lead to deeper learning. Activating Students’ Ideas Matter: Linking Formative Assessment Probes to Instructional Sequence is the type of book that stimulates teacher thinking and cultivates teachers’ skills and abilities necessary to take students to higher levels of learning. The beginning chapter of the book, provides teacher candidates, experienced teachers, teacher educators, and professional developers with a framework for developing lessons that promote higher levels of science literacy. The framework that is used throughout the book is an explore-before-explain sequence of instruction using the 5E instructional model. Once teachers have a solid understanding of an explore-before-explain framework, we guide them through planning activities so they can use emerging bodies of research and the Science Education Frameworks to plan their own explore-before-explain lessons. Educators will have many opportunities to think about explore-before-explain teaching and can explore examples of K-5 science lessons. Each chapter addresses the three dimensions of the Frameworks.

Patrick Brown is executive director of STEAM for the Fort Zumwalt School District in O’Fallon, Missouri, and author of the best-selling NSTA book series Instructional Sequence Matters. His science teaching ideas have appeared in Science and Children, Science Scope, The Science Teacher, and Science Activities. In addition, his research in science education has been published in Science Education, the Journal of Science Teacher Education, and the International Journal of Science Education.

Page Keeley is the senior science program director at the Maine Mathematics and Science Alliance (MMSA). She directs projects in the areas of leadership, professional development, standards and research on learning, formative assessment, and mentoring and coaching, and consults with school districts and organizations nationally. She has been the principal investigator on three NSF-funded projects: the Northern New England Co-Mentoring Network, a school-based mentoring program that supported science and mathematics professional learning communities for middle and high school mentors and new teachers; Curriculum Topic Study- A Systematic Approach to Utilizing National Standards and Cognitive Research; and PRISMS- Phenomena and Representations for Instruction of Science in Middle School, a National Digital Library collection of Web resources aligned to standards and reviewed for instructional quality. In addition she is a co-PI on two statewide projects: Science Content, Conceptual Change, and Collaboration (SC4), a state MSP focused on conceptual change teaching in the physical sciences for K–8 teachers and a National SemiConductor Foundation grant on Linking Science, Inquiry, and Language Literacy (L-SILL). Keeley is the author of ten nationally published books, including four books in the Curriculum Topic Study series (Corwin Press), four volumes in the Uncovering Student Ideas in Science: 25 Formative Assessment Probes series (NSTA Press), Science Formative Assessment: 75 Practical Strategies for Linking Assessment, Instruction, and Learning (Corwin and NSTA Press), and Mathematics Formative Assessment: 50 Practical Strategies for Linking Assessment, Instruction, and Learning (in press). Keeley taught middle and high school science for 15 years. At that time she was an active teacher leader at the state and national level. She received the Presidential Award for excellence in Secondary Science Teaching in 1992 and the Milken National Educator Award in 1993. She has served as an adjunct instructor at the University of Maine, is a Cohort 1 Fellow in the National Academy for Science and Mathematics Education Leadership, served as a science literacy leader for the AAAS/Project 2061 Professional Development Program, and has served on several national advisory boards. She is a frequent speaker at national conferences and served as the 63rd President of the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) for the 2008-09 term.