Making Thinking Visible
Elevating the writing and drawing opportunities for student sensemaking embedded in OpenSciEd’s materials
Session Overview
This two-day professional development session focuses on the overarching question – How do we support all students in writing and drawing for sensemaking? It assumes the prerequisite completion of the Launch Professional Learning and previous experience teaching an OpenSciEd unit. Included in this session are opportunities for teachers to:
- Reflect on their own students’ writing/drawing and potential barriers.
- Analyze lessons to understand the focus, role, and varied opportunities of writing and drawing for sensemaking in OpenSciEd.
- Analyze examples from OpenSciEd lessons that show the student resources and progression of student ideas and practices over time as demonstrated through their writing and drawing
- Consider how to use instructional strategies to support students for writing and drawing for sensemaking.
- Engage in the actual lessons of the unit as a student.
Session Resources
Session Agenda
Day 1: What does writing and drawing for sensemaking look like?
Guiding Question:
What does writing and drawing for sensemaking look like?
Participants will understand:
- The focus, role, and varied opportunities for writing and drawing for sensemaking in OpenSciEd
- The resources students bring to their sensemaking through writing and drawing.
- The ways that OpenSciEd curricula support the development of student understanding through writing and drawing.
- The ways in which writing and drawing can show the progression of student ideas and practices over time.
- The anchoring phenomenon routine and storyline for a focal unit.
Length:
- 1 hours – Introduction: Introduce shifts in writing and drawing for sensemaking.
- 5 hours – Unit Specific: Experience the Anchoring Phenomena routine
- 1 hour – Closing: Discussion and reflection
Day 2: What instructional strategies support students in writing and drawing for sensemaking?
Guiding Question:
What instructional strategies support students in writing and drawing for sensemaking?
Participants will understand:
- Instructional strategies to support writing and drawing for sensemaking.
- How to use the instructional strategies flexibly to support their own students.
- How the instructional strategies can support students’ development of science ideas and practices.
- How to set up and facilitate students in the key student investigations and discussions from the unit.
Length:
- 1 hours – Introduction: Analyze lessons for instructional strategies to support writing and drawing for sensemaking.
- 5 hours – Unit Specific: Experience key lessons and identify instructional strategies.
- 1 hour – Closing: Discussion and reflection
