Teaching Strategies
Instruction will incorporate the following eight Science and Engineering Practices. Students will obtain, evaluate, and communicate information as they use multimedia to build background knowledge and answer the question of what makes popcorn pop. They will use mathematics and computational thinking as they conduct an investigation looking at water content and popcorn volume, kernel size, and percentage of popped kernels. They will develop and use models to show the molecular structure of water and its polarity. They will create density models to show change of phase and use technology as they collect and graph temperature/time data. Defining problems and designing solutions will be used as students strive to create insulators for ice cubes with the goal of keeping them from melting the longest. Lastly, they will plan and carry out an investigation of their own choosing in some way connected to popcorn, analyzing and interpreting their data before engaging in argument with evidence. Specific strategies chosen to best meet the needs of this age group and diverse population include flexible grouping depending on the nature of the activity, rotating roles and responsibilities, encouraging participation and building vocabulary and content knowledge through think, talk, write, pair, share, modify writing. The emphasis will be on formative assessment using focus questions and providing multiple pathways to demonstrate knowledge for summative assessments. The three strands of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) will be the basis of creating assessments that incorporate the cross cutting concepts and science and engineering practices along with the disciplinary core ideas on matter and its interactions.
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