Kim Wise is A former elementary and middle school teacher, she has been involved in science education for fifteen years. Currently a science consultant for Loess Hills AEA 13 in Southwest Iowa, Kim provides professional development in the areas of science curriculum, instruction, and assessment.
Teacher Interviews
Classroom Videos
These videos are taken from real teachers who have been using the Science Writing Heuristic approach. There are a number of critical features that we would you like to focus on:
Type of Questions: Pay attention to the type of questions that each teacher is asking. They are not asking ”guess what is in my head” type questions. The teachers are trying to negotiate with students – they are seeking to find out what is the students know or mean.
No Judgment: Importantly, the teachers are not judging the answers out loud – they are trying to negotiate with the students and thus they are being non-judgmental towards the students. This means that students are more willing to continue to be involved in the dialogue.
Non–talking time: Pay attention to the amount of time the teachers are not talking. Look at the amount of time the teachers are listening. This is a critical element of dialogue – dialogue involves talking and listening. Negotiation is about negotiating and thus time is needed for listening.
Big-idea: Learning is around concepts not content – we store knowledge in the form of ideas. As part of the dialogue listen for how the teachers continually draw the students to the big idea of the topics they are studying.
Student-student interaction: Pay attention to how the students interact. Negotiation is a about ideas and not people. The students understand that they are able to separate the idea from the person, that is, it is okay to disagree with someone’s ideas if they do so in a non-threatening way.
K-4 Classrooms
5-12 Classrooms
