Using Your Anchor

We will get more into using phenomena to drive instruction in the next class on Creating Storylines but just remember – anchoring phenomena are meant to be USED during instruction.

You should:

• tie it to all following learning experiences.
• use it to generate questions that students will investigate to develop their explanations.

You should not: 

• provide the “right” explanations. Don’t validate “right” thinking at this point. 
• ignore the “wrong” explanations. Don’t ignore “wrong” thinking at this point. All explanations must remain on the table. Our goal is for students to correct their own explanations as they participate in learning experiences that challenge their current conceptions.  Let the science do the convincing because you probably won’t really change their minds anyway.
• assign vocabulary terms to student explanations prematurely. Vocabulary can be provided when it is necessary, but oftentimes, students can reason through and explain their ideas without the appropriate terminology.