Documenting Science Sound Unit 2020-21

 During the 2020-2021 school year, we will document the Sound Science unit.

As a grade 4 team, we will meet throughout the year to work on this document to further develop our science unit: Vertical Team Curriculum Documentation SMART GOALS 2020-2021

Reflection on Team Science Unit Planning meeting on September 23

Our team met to begin working on our UBD Conceptual Planner for the science sound unit and focused on discussing the enduring understandings and essential questions. Hilary was unable to join the team due to other obligations. One of the biggest challenges in planning the unit is that Marcus and Preetika are the only team members who have taught the unit. A sizeable amount of our meeting time was spent with the team trying to determine what the unit entails and what the most important takeaway concepts for students are. Already listed in the planner were six different ideas for enduring understands and nine different essential question ideas that had been added during a previous year by the grade 4 team and/or Hilary. The team agreed that we should try to narrow down the number of enduring understandings and essential questions and we carefully reviewed all of them. Choosing 2-4 for each category proved to be no easy task, however, and there was a great deal of discussion regarding how to proceed. Vanessa felt we should not delete any of the options since she had never taught the unit, she was unsure which ones might be most important. The team then decided to highlight the enduring understandings and essential questions while keeping all of the ones that were listed.

The team did spend some time looking over a mini-unit to glean some of the biggest, most important concepts, but it was a bit too much information to try to process during a meeting. 

I think that working together with Hilary would be helpful for upcoming meetings since she may have a greater awareness of some of the existing NGSS resources that exist that might help the team avoid some of the labor intensive thinking needed to craft a unit. It might also help the team to be able to preview some resources prior to the meeting to be more informed about some of the key concepts and potential learning engagements and assessments. 

Reflection on Team Planning of Science Sound Unit to date January 24

During our last meeting, our team spent time pouring over a variety of resources in an attempt to craft a summative assessment for the unit. Some resources were provided by Marcus which had been used in grade 4 in previous years. Other resources were shared by Hilary. The team spent some time discusses which questions could best assess the standards focused during the unit. We reached an agreement and chose what we felt to be the most relevant questions. After the meeting, I took these questions from the various resources and pieced them together in the following summative assessment. The task proved somewhat challenging since many of the resources were in different formats, making it very difficult to simply copy and paste the questions into one document. Our hope is that the summative assessment linked below will help to guide us in further planning learning engagements for the unit during our forthcoming meetings. 

Sound, Waves and Communication Summative Assessment

Reflection on Team Planning of Sound Unit February 24

Our goal for the meeting was to complete a rubric to assess student learning of the three main standards for our science unit. In a previous meeting, the team had decided the most efficient way to complete the work would be to get into breakout rooms and have each breakout room fill in the rubric for a different standard. However, once the meeting began it was noted that most people on the team had never taught the unit and didn't feel confident in accurately capturing the objectives. The team spent some time looking over the summative assessment, and various other unit materials to process the spirit of the unit and better understand how we might write the rubric descriptors.

After spending the majority of the meeting reading through a mini sound unit that had been a resource in past years, along with Mystery Science materials that had also been a key resource, the team discussed which questions on our summative assessment aligned with which standards and what we might expect for independently achieving student responses. Some of the questions on the summative assessment had been taken from a Mystery Science assessment. I referred to the answer key to get a sense of an ideal response. We only began filling out the rubric near the end of the meeting. 

The process of a team with mostly new members planning a unit that most have never taught has been a slow, challenging, and sometimes frustrating process. During each meeting, we have made progress in thinking through and better understanding the unit. I am optimistic that our team can continue the steady progress and hopefully have the unit ready for next year. 

End of the Year Reflection April 13

Our team hasn't met to work on our science unit since my last reflection. We have just recently begun teaching the unit this year with a sound scavenger hunt that Vanessa planned. Students were asked to find examples of low and high sounds, natural and manmade sounds, as well as near and far sounds. We shared our examples during a small group meeting which was good fun. So far, interest and enthusiasm have been high among the students. 

Planning and refining a science unit with so many new members on the team has been a challenge for sure. Also, when returning team members taught the year last year, the unit was done virtually so it had been modified from previous years. It's been difficult to plan a unit meant to be taught at school while being in the mindset of teaching virtually all year and most likely teaching this unit virtually this year. I think the team has done our best to make as much progress as we could on the unit. A long virtual unit planning meeting at the end of a long day of virtual teaching hasn't been ideal but, I do believe the team has tried our best to use the meetings to be productive and make some incremental progress each time we met. Planning and refining a unit can take years. The work that we've done this year, will give us a good starting place when we teach the unit live, in-person next year.