The OpenSciEd Instructional Model uses a storyline approach– a logical sequence of lessons that are motivated by students’ questions that arise from students’ interactions with phenomena.
To help teachers and students advance through a unit storyline, the instructional model takes advantage of five routines—activities that play specific roles in advancing the storyline with structures to help students achieve the objectives of those activities. The routines typically follow a pattern as students kick off a unit of study, investigate different questions they have, put the pieces together from those investigations, and then problematize the next set of questions to investigate.
The document and page below provide a general path through an OpenSciEd unit using the routines.
Purpose
This routine is used to kick off a unit and drive student motivation throughout the unit. It provides a common experience with a phenomenon that is engaging and puzzling, eliciting student questions and a drive to figure things out. As part of the routine, students make connections between the classroom experience and their own life experiences and resources. This routine provides the excitement and curiosity that drives the rest of the unit as the students and the teacher have a shared mission to figure out the phenomena or solve the
design problems.
Routine in Action
This montage shows two different classrooms developing their Driving
Question Boards as part of the Anchoring Phenomenon Routine.
The Navigation Routine enables students to link learning across lessons and activities and see how it is connected to their original questions about the phenomena.
Positions students as problem-solvers and partners in figuring out how the world works.
Routine in Action
In this classroom video, the teacher is leading a whole group navigation discussion of what they should investigate next.
The Investigation Routine is used to gather additional information the class needs to help answer the questions on the Driving Question Board. Rather than following lab procedures dictated by the teacher, students develop plans for the investigations and data collection and then make sense of what the data means.
Routine in Action
This video shows students determining what investigations they are going to do to answer their questions about the movement of Mt. Everest.
This routine reveals potential problems with the current model, explanation, or design solution. The problems and disagreements elicited are useful in motivating students to extend or revise their thinking.
Routine in Action
Students are working in small groups determining what investigations they could do next. The teacher discusses the students’ ideas, helping them to problematize their current thinking.
In this routine, students take the pieces of ideas they have developed across multiple lessons and figure out how they can be connected to account for the phenomenon the class is working on.
This helps students take stock of their learning and engage with the class to develop a consensus model.
Routine in Action
A class is engaged in a consensus discussion as they work to revise their initial model to answer how the magnet and wire work together in a speaker.
Portions of the OpenSciEd Instructional Model were adapted from tools and processes developed by NextGen Science Storylines at Northwestern University NextGen Science Storylines at Northwestern University and from the Next Generation Science Exemplar System Project (NGSX) at Clark University and Tidemark.
Reiser, B. J., Novak, M., & McGill, T. A. W. (2017). Coherence from the students’ perspective: Why the vision of the framework for K-12 science requires more than simply “combining” three dimensions of science learning. Paper commissioned for the Board on Science Education workshop “Instructional materials for the Next Generation Science Standards”. Retrieved from http://sites.