2/18/2021 'Challenges, Curiosity, Creativity, & Community' in the Online Science Classroom (Opinion)

POLICY & POLITICS TEACHING & LEARNING TECHNOLOGY OPINION JOBS

MARKET BRIEF

OPINION BLOG

Classroom Q&A
With Larry Ferlazzo

In this EdWeek blog, an experiment in knowledge-gathering, Ferlazzo will address readers’ questions on
classroom management, ELL instruction, lesson planning, and other issues facing teachers. Send your questions
to lferlazzo@epe.org.

T EACHI NG O PI NI O N

‘Challenges, Curiosity, Creativity, &

Community’ in the Online Science Classroom

By Larry Ferlazzo — May 11, 2020 12 min read

Larry Ferlazzo FOLLOW

Opinion Contributor, Education Week

Larry Ferlazzo is an English and social studies teacher at Luther Burbank High School in
Sacramento, Calif.

(This is the last post in a two-part series. You can see Part One here.)

The new question is:

https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/opinion-challenges-curiosity-creativity-community-in-the-online-science-classroom/2020/05 1/7
2/18/2021 'Challenges, Curiosity, Creativity, & Community' in the Online Science Classroom (Opinion)

What does science instruction look like in the age of the coronavirus?

In Part One, Tara C. Dale, Mandi S. White, Justin Lopez-Cardoze, and Ross Cooper share
their experiences.

Today, Camie Walker, Patrick Brown, Margaret (Peggy) Harte, and Dr. Erin Bridges Bird
contribute their thoughts.

The “5C’s” of pandemic science classes

Camie Walker is a veteran elementary science teacher, facilitator for science methods
courses for University of Phoenix, an EiE advocate, and a consultant for strength-based
education society. Camie can be reached at camie.walker@gmail.com or on twitter
@WalkerCamie:

We all know about the 5E’s of instruction. For our pandemic science classes, may I focus
instead on the 5C’s.

Confronting challenges with curiosity, creativity, and community.

The challenge of teaching is minor compared to the struggles many students face learning
from home. Now more than ever, our students need to feel safe. While we can’t control all
elements by focusing on Science and Engineering Practices (SEP) and human impacts, we
CAN create an environment for success.

Curiosity:

Curriculum should be based on student “wonderings.” The first tenet in “science

practices” states students should ASK questions. Find out what your students want to
know, then develop investigations focusing on these wonderings. Padlet is an excellent
forum for asking questions, but the comment section in a Google Classroom can be just
as effective. NEVER turn off comments in Google Streaming. Use this area to model how
to ask questions and help one another to make connections.

Choose a question that most are wondering about. Don’t stray away from the hard
questions. My students wanted to know more about viruses, surprise, surprise!

Creativity:

Creativity creates equity! Allow students choice in how they develop and convey their
information. Focus on student strengths. Do they enjoy drawing, acting, singing, or
writing? Allow multiple choices for how students can share their work.

Create engineering challenges and science investigations that will allow flexibility in
needed supplies. Use “found” objects. A model can be an elaborate 3D rendering or a

https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/opinion-challenges-curiosity-creativity-community-in-the-online-science-classroom/2020/05 2/7
2/18/2021 'Challenges, Curiosity, Creativity, & Community' in the Online Science Classroom (Opinion)

drawing on paper. Never assume a student has specific supplies unless you have
provided them.

Community:

Forming a classroom community is essential. Interact with your students on a daily basis
if possible. Allow time in Google Chat or Zoom where they can talk to one another for a
few minutes after the lesson. Have silly themes such as “Bring a pet to class day,”
(coupled with a lesson on animal traits!) Developing relationships has never been so
critical.

If possible, team with another teacher and “share” students. Then collaborate on ways
you can help meet their needs. Stagger class times to allow both of you a break in
instruction. Self care is a necessary good teaching practice.

Partner with existing museums to help foster learning. For example, in finding ways to
help my students learn about viruses, I modified information from Engineering is
Elementary’s unit “Outbreak Alert, Engineering a Pandemic Response.” Planning
resources were provided on the website EiE.org. We researched “what is a virus,”
creating models to show our understanding. We learned about how scientists and
engineers are working together to develop antibodies. We also met with scientists from
the museum in a webinar to learn more about human impacts.

Students need to become a part of the teaching/learning community:

In our discussion of human impacts, students recognized they have the power to keep safe
by washing hands, wearing masks, and not touching their face. They created public-service
messages on Flipgrid, focusing on ways they could help others who were learning at home. I
have included a link to one student’s message. Notice how the public-service message is not
“scientific” in nature but an honest attempt at helping another student.This is more than an
integration of language arts and science. It is building a foundation of understanding that
they are a part of the global community. Through communication, they can have an impact
for good.

Remember, no video, hyper link, or text can take the place of teacher/student interaction.
Find a way to make connections. Learn with and from them! Allowing students to take the
lead in confronting challenges with curiosity and creativity will help build a global
community of caring, compassionate critical thinkers who will have a desire to work
together to solve the problems of this world. Isn’t that what science is all about?

https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/opinion-challenges-curiosity-creativity-community-in-the-online-science-classroom/2020/05 3/7
2/18/2021 'Challenges, Curiosity, Creativity, & Community' in the Online Science Classroom (Opinion)

Applying the NGSS in Distance Learning Environments

Patrick Brown is the executive director of STEM for the Fort Zumwalt school district in St.
Charles, Mo., and the author of the NSTA bestseller Instructional Sequence Matters:

The current situation that many school districts face about how to best prepare students in
distance learning environments raises many questions for teachers and curriculum
specialists alike. The NGSS (Next Generation Science Standards) focus on three-
dimensional learning—disciplinary content (DCIs), science and engineering practices
(SEPs), and cross-cutting concepts (CCCs). The unique combination of these dimensions
promotes student’s development of conceptual understanding, but how can teachers engage
students in the practices and cross-cutting concepts to learn content in distance learning
environments?

Using an explore-before-explain sequence helps teachers find a focus for curriculum

planning and ensures that students engage in types of experiences advocated by the
NGSS. Explore-before-explain is about using purposeful instructional sequences to develop
a student’s conceptual understanding. The process starts by eliciting student’s ideas about
scientific phenomena. This critical step engages student’s thoughts and sets the context for
learning. Resources and strategies for engaging and obtaining students’ ideas and
experiences are abundant. Teachers can use NSTA resources such as Keeley and colleague’s
formative-assessment probes to assess students’ prior experiences (or they can create their
own). Also, teachers can ask students to make a prediction about demonstrations and
engage students in problem-solving scenarios and brainstorm means to address them.

Next, teachers can think of ways students can have data-based experiences that serve as
evidence for scientific claims. Explorations that produce data at home may seem to be the
biggest challenge. Some hands-on investigations can be creatively designed to use
household items (see Distance Learning in Action Below). For other science topics,
simulations (see PhET link below) and online videos are becoming increasingly abundant.
The exploration step is vital and should come before explaining content for essential
reasons. Student-constructed knowledge from explorations serve as the core of their
conceptual understanding of science and the hook for sophisticated learning throughout the
lesson. From an NGSS perspective, student evidence-based claims require the integration
of SEPs, CCCs, and DCIs, so they generate an evidence-based claim

Finally, teachers can include explaining activities so students develop an understanding of

the scientific principles and underlying reasoning for why the evidence they found supports
their claims. Explanatory experiences can consist of investigations using simulations (for
example, PhET). They can also include readings from the textbook, discussions with the
teacher, and lectures.

Distance-Learning in Action

If you are curious how explore-before-explain teaching plays out in at-home settings, below
is a model lesson for investigating “why temperatures change” to see how assessment

https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/opinion-challenges-curiosity-creativity-community-in-the-online-science-classroom/2020/05 4/7
2/18/2021 'Challenges, Curiosity, Creativity, & Community' in the Online Science Classroom (Opinion)

probes can seamlessly translate into firsthand experiences with data and evidence at home.
Students’ experiences allow them to construct evidence-based claims.

See the model lesson here.

Conclusions

In times where instructional minutes at home are being inspected and pored over, parents
are taking on new roles as teachers, educators benefit from specific guidance on how to
provide the best distance learning possible. Using an explore-before-explain lesson-
planning approach provides guidance for those of us who are not sure where to start and to
find lesson-planning focus. Using tried-and-true curriculum-development models takes out
some of the guesswork for how to design distance learning to maximizing students learning
during their time away from the in-person science classroom.

More to explore:

NSTA

PhET

Doing science

Margaret (Peggy) Harte has been a teacher for over 20 years. She also currently works as
an innovation fellow at the Center for Community and Citizen Science, a research center
at the University of California, Davis.

Dr. Erin Bridges Bird is a former high school science teacher and is currently a science
education researcher at the University of California, Davis:

In the age of coronavirus, teachers and parents may find themselves grateful for, or
completely overwhelmed by, an abundance of resources available for remote science
instruction. For instance, the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) is now offering
free membership to access hands-on science activities and has made its eBook collection
available to all. Within all these resources, whether at home or in the classroom, and
whether accessing hands-on or virtual activities, learning science requires deep engagement
and inquiry—but what does this look like during a pandemic and distance learning?

As roles of teachers, parents, and students shift, it is clear that what science instruction
looks like will largely be determined by the kind of support teachers give to at-home
https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/opinion-challenges-curiosity-creativity-community-in-the-online-science-classroom/2020/05 5/7
2/18/2021 'Challenges, Curiosity, Creativity, & Community' in the Online Science Classroom (Opinion)

learning. By conversing with teachers and parents alike, we have learned that certain
science instructional tools and approaches are more successful than others for distance
learning. However, we also identified discernable gaps in support systems for all students to
productively engage in science learning during shelter in place.

Distance learning requires that students’ ideas and interests are incorporated into lessons
in ways that may not have been as imperative in the classroom. Students’ distance learning
experience may not include the support of parents and guardians, requiring students to
motivate and monitor their own learning. Therefore, many teachers are focusing on
phenomena-based instruction, in which an observable natural event—within or near the
home—is used to provoke student inquiry. Accordingly, students’ firsthand observations
and questions become core to their scientific process.

There are multiple ways teachers can introduce students to phenomena and account for
resource gaps. Investigations can include outdoor observations (e.g., conducting citizen-
science activities with iNaturalist from the California Academy of Science’s curriculum),
hands-on mini-experiments (e.g., conducting small physics, chemistry, or biology activities
available through NSTA), or online videos, including accessing webcams, depending on
students’ available resources. Teachers can use student questions as a driving instructional
force by making their uncertainties the “connection-points” to subsequent lessons including
readings, follow-up experiments, or videos. In this way, teachers can move beyond “one off”
lessons that keep students busy but rarely provide in-depth science learning.

Similarly, scientific notebooks are an important way for students to keep track of their
learning, write down their discoveries, and draw iterative models of sense making. If
images from their notebook are then shared with their teachers, they could be used to
provide feedback and modify subsequent lessons. In addition to creating a resource for
students to reference previous lessons, scientific notebooks can also help students build
routine into their learning day. Many available lesson sequences, such as the Cornell
Science and Nature Activity for Cooped up Kids and their citizen-science project eBird,
encourages the use of scientific notebooks. Other platforms such as the California Academy
of Sciences’ Science Notebook Corner provide instruction on how to set up a new notebook
(important as many students likely left their science notebooks behind in their classrooms).

Phenomena-based units focused on a phenomenon that can be observed in or near home,

and science notebooks can provide the basis for these deep ways of learning science;
however, engaging students in discourse remains a challenge. Teachers can try giving
parents sentence frames and background science information that will bolster their own
understanding. Then, in this way, parents can use the frames to drive their students’
inquiry, avoid directly answering their students’ questions, and leave open a space for their
students’ own discoveries. However, we need to think creatively about how to promote
student scientific discourse in safe and productive ways beyond their home space and with
their classmates, because, ultimately, to learn science is to do it, read it, write it, draw it,
and talk about it.

https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/opinion-challenges-curiosity-creativity-community-in-the-online-science-classroom/2020/05 6/7
2/18/2021 'Challenges, Curiosity, Creativity, & Community' in the Online Science Classroom (Opinion)

Thanks to Camie, Patrick, Margaret, and Erin for their contributions!

Please feel free to leave a comment with your reactions to the topic or directly to anything
that has been said in this post.

Consider contributing a question to be answered in a future post. You can send one to me
at lferlazzo@epe.org. When you send it in, let me know if I can use your real name if it’s
selected or if you’d prefer remaining anonymous and have a pseudonym in mind.

You can also contact me on Twitter at @Larryferlazzo.

Education Week has published a collection of posts from this blog, along with new material,
in an e-book form. It’s titled Classroom Management Q&As: Expert Strategies for Teaching.

Just a reminder, you can subscribe and receive updates from this blog via email or RSS
Reader. And if you missed any of the highlights from the first eight years of this blog, you
can see a categorized list below. The list doesn’t include ones from this current year, but
you can find those by clicking on the “answers” category found in the sidebar.

This Year’s Most Popular Q&A Posts

https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/opinion-challenges-curiosity-creativity-community-in-the-online-science-classroom/2020/05 7/7