The Debrief is the Target

At our school the learning objective for a class is called the learning target. One year our instructional guide printed little stickers that said “The Debrief is the Target.” At our school every lesson is supposed to have a debrief.

The debrief is a 5-10 minute wrap-up of the lesson. Whatever I hoped students learned that day, I need to refocus attention on the objective. There are many strategies to make this happen. I might just have a ticket to leave so I can what progress each student made with the learning target. I could ask students to hold up 1, 2, or 3 fingers to indicate their self-assessed proficiency. I might ask a student to teach the class using their work as an example. I might cold call to reemphasize key points from class. I could ask students to discuss a few questions with one another and then randomly select a few students to report out.

The important thing about debriefs is that the debrief is the target. Class should end in an orderly way by revisiting the main points of the class so that students have a chance to synthesize what happened in class.

The Importance of Math in Science

One of my students’ early critiques of my class is “This is not a math class.” My reply is that you cannot do science without doing math. Math, I note, is the language of science. After a few weeks students start to accept that we will be doing math in the science classroom. Of course, unlike some math classes, the math is always contextualized and embedded in a practical application. In this lesson, going from a color to being able to describe the underlying physical measurements of the light is that context. The challenge of teaching math in the science class is that sometimes students are not prepared with the basic underlying math skills that I would assume 11th graders would possess. What this means is that some students quickly master what I am teaching while others languish and begin to get frustrated.

How I respond to this is very important. Here is what I have found works. First, make sure that I fully understand the places where students are likely to get stuck. I then need to make sure I have a way to articulate the student challenge and a solution to that challenge. Once I am firmly rooted in how to teach the content, I teach it, and I look for allies. Who can help the class move forward by being a tutor? Those students who have shown mastery can walk around and answer questions as well as or not better than I can. The one thing I always emphasize is that math is like any skill—it requires some patience and practice to master, and going through this process is one way that my students will end the year smarter than they began it.

Telling Stories in Science

A few years ago I attended a summer PD at Smith College. The purpose of the workshop was to give us teachers tools to get students more interested engineering and science. One of those tools was to ground the work of the student in a story.

This fall was the first time I have tried that approach to this extent. I actually sat down and wrote a mini-mystery that I carefully weaved chemical and physical properties into.  I have been very impressed with the outcome.  I observed students having fun and engaging in the material, and the student writing that has come out of this project has been of a higher quality.

I also noticed that there was equal buy-in amongst both genders. In the article To Attract More Girls to STEM, Bring More Storytelling to Science, the author notes that the Next Generation Science Standards “asks teachers to show students how insights from many disciplines fit together into a coherent picture of the world.” In the past, I would teach chemical and physical properties, but with very little grounding in why they matter.

By writing a story and relating them to the story, I believe that I was able to increase the enjoyment, and thus the learning, for many students. Of course, there are plenty of nonfiction stories that are much more mesmerizing. One example would be the current thinking about how elements are formed. In the words of Carl Sagan, we are all stardust. Going forward, I am recommitting to the idea that stories are vitally important in science education. They enrich, they stimulate different parts of the brain, and the research shows that they increase learning and interest in STEM fields.