Expected, Inspected, & Respected.
"We do not learn from experience … we learn from reflecting on experience."
-John Dewey |
"We do not learn from experience … we learn from reflecting on experience."
-John Dewey |
According to Specific Learning Objective 5-2-13 in the Manitoba science curriculum for Grade 5, students should, "evaluate household chemical products using the design process." This process requires students to develop criteria, make a plan to test those criteria, and write their recommendations of which product is best based on the results. The assignment I gave them looked like this: It sounds fairly straightforward, but I knew it would be a challenge. I've struggled at times, especially early on, with making sure my instructions are crystal clear and devoid of ambiguity. (See how I said the same thing twice using different words to make sure you get the gist?) I've found the greatest successes in activities where I laid out the instructions in a very methodical, step-by-step manner. The assignment they had done before attempting this product evaluation was a to create a poster advertising a household product that solved a currently unsolved problem. My favourite was called, "Soapy: a super usable soap that can clean anything that can easily be take anything in your face like crimson. (No allergic reaction available, corrosive and poisonous.)" I'm not sure what unsolved problem it solved, but it sure made me laugh. On the back of the poster assignment, I provided them with a rubric not only to show them how I would be judging their posters, but as an example for how they might construct a table with criteria for judging household cleaners during their next assignment. I also showed them how the real pros evaluate products at consumerreports.org, letting them know that their Winnipeg Public Library card grants them access to all their ratings chart. Finally, I presented this video to demonstrate how a person might test a cleaning product. However, when I set them to their first task of coming up with the criteria for testing the desk cleaners, they had no idea what to do, even though the criteria were in bold! My cooperating teacher, Kim, knew immediately that they needed more guidance about what criteria means and inconspicuously informed me as soon as they started working on it. I told her I wanted to see if they could figure it out for a bit first. Kim was right and could have done this: I thought that since Kim often uses the TIC (Task, Intent, Criteria) method of delivering assignments that the students understood the word criteria. However, the sign at the front of the class says, This might have been the source of some of the confusion. They only knew criteria in the context of classroom assignments where the criteria consist of a checklist of things to include in projects and assignments, and not specific standards by which something may be judged.
I also wonder if this task was difficult for them because they don't do very much of it. They are used to filling in blanks or going through checklists that have been developed for them and don't get much practice developing their own checklists or making their own decisions in more open-ended assignments. If I were to do this activity again, I would first walk them step-by-step through the process of evaluating a product that they had chosen. Together, we would come up with criteria, decide how to test those criteria, make a rubric, and write a report based. Only after this collaborative demonstration would I ask them to try it on their own.
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David Wiebe
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