Infectious Respiratory Disease

Teaching Strategies

Developing and Using Models

In science teaching and instruction, the development and use of models is a beneficial strategy since it often takes regular, everyday ideas and uses them to explain complex concepts or ideas in a way that is easier to understand and can transcend barriers to education. While this is part of the Next Generation Science Standards “Science and Engineering Practices,” developing and using models is a practice that predates formal education. The use of models in education has ancient roots, dating back to the Greek philosopher Aristotle. This approach begins by introducing familiar concepts to students based on their prior knowledge, and then builds upon these foundations with new ideas.⁶² The strategy of developing and using models fits well with science education as they are a great way to visualize complex concepts in a more simplified way. In the context of this unit, models might include a model of virus antigens interacting with antibodies from the immune system or a computer model that might predict the spread of a disease within a population under certain conditions or parameters. As students become more familiar with models like these, additional information can be incorporated to enhance the model's complexity and relevance to real-world examples. Additionally, developing and using models helps support students struggling with the science-specific vocabulary due to difficulty in understanding the language barrier.

Accountable Talk Framework

Since the Back of the Yards College Preparatory High School sits in a neighborhood that has a high percentage of Spanish-speaking households, the school has a high level of emergent bilingual students who require support in all domains of language, but particularly speaking and writing. To support the language learning of our English learners and all students struggling with the challenges of discipline-specific discourse, we adopted a whole-school strategy that included the Accountable Talk Framework. The framework requires students to read a text, often with a concept or question in mind. Students write, share, record ideas from others, and revise their writing.⁶³ This not only enables students to read, write, listen, and speak, but also reinforces concepts, allowing students to gain a deeper understanding of topics through student-to-student interactions.

Intentional Grouping

Intentional grouping is placing students into small groups based on some form of data to improve learning outcomes for all students. During intentional grouping, students are placed in either homogeneous groups (i.e., students with similar data) or heterogeneous groups (i.e., students with different data). Placing students in homogeneous groups might help differentiate students who need to learn similar concepts or need similar supports. Heterogeneous groups allow for student leaders or peer tutors to facilitate learning within the group. Intentional grouping with a planned activity enables the center of the learning to be with the students. It permits the instructor to support individual or group student challenges as they arise.