Considerations for Planning to Facilitate Students' Construction of Big Ideas, Generalizations, Concepts, and Facts

Initial planning

1. Identify a big idea (generalization, concept) that is important for students to know. Not only is it in the standards or curriculum, but is relevant to the students' every day existence.
2. Unpack it (big idea - generalization, concept) by making a concept map. Describe all the information - concepts, facts, properties, and relationships that need to be known to understand it, explain what it means, and how it can be used in real life.
3. Select an initial assessment plan. Think of focus questions, a problem, discrepant event, or activity to diagnose students' initial understandings.
4. Consider the students' developmental levels. The age and previous experiences which will impact how they will be able to understand and conceptualize the ideas, generalizations, concepts and facts.
5. Identify and describe possible misconceptions and their sources.
6. Identify a hierarchy of understanding to use to sequence the order of information that students will need to understand to construct the ideas with depth and breadth according to students development. Review the information derived from unpacking and begin to sequence it by starting with the students' existing conceptualizations, discovered in the initial assessment activity, and build from a lower to a higher degree of scientific understanding for the ideas. Use developmental theories and ideas to identify different levels of understandings.
7. Find a collection of activities that will provide opportunities for students to relate their present understanding of the ideas and as necessary construct new and more scientifically ones.
8. Match activities to the different facts, properties, concepts, and generalizations checking to see if all necessary information needed for students to construct the identified big idea will be available for students to view in the activities.
9. Sequence the activities so that information is available for students in a logical manner for when it is needed as identified in the conceptual mapping process.
10. Identify and describe an instructional procedure for the sequence and activities as needed.
11. If you didn't use a discrepant event in the initial assessment activity, then find one to include and describe how students will experience cognitive dissonance, or cognitive conflict, or disequilibration.
12. If the topics of plan includes multiple ideas, repeat this procedure for each one.

Final reflections

1. Does it provide opportunity for accurate observational data collection of information identified in the conceptual map?
2. Are there sufficient opportunities in the planned activities for the necessary observational evidence students must experience to construct the identified ideas?
3. How will the information students use to construct the conceptualizations be manipulated to resolve cognitive dissonance, cognitive conflict, or to create equilibrium? What bridge can be used to join the observed information with reasoning to construct the conceptualizations (ideas), communicate what it is, analyze it, and work with it to find its limits?
4. Are the outcomes students will communicate to represent their understanding at their development level? Think - observation, connections, connected stories, cause and effect, properties, operational definition, and model.
5. Are the outcomes described as observable?
6. Do the outcomes include different levels to indicate the different possible ways students can understand the ideas?
7. Is there descriptions of how the data can be applied, extended, manipulated, to lead to generalizations and real life use?