Teaching Approaches to Support Student Learning with CoMPASS

Contents

• Overview
• Introducing the Challenge and Brainstorming
• Concept Mapping
• Hypertext Supported Inquiry
• Collaborative Group Work
• Classroom Dialogue
• Modeling
• Student Workbook

In addition to being grounded in helping students develop Partnership for the 21st Century Learning Skills, CoMPASS is based on the Science Inquiry Process shown in the figure below. The process involves individual, small group and whole group learning activities orchestrated by the teacher. Students are presented with a design challenge and ask to pursue scientific questions by making science predictions and designing experiments to test their predictions and solve the challenge. Students also use the CoMPASS hypertext system and concept maps several times throughout the challenge to gather information, determine the appropriateness of their predictions and design, examine the match between their findings and the science concepts on CoMPASS, and to justify their predictions and science learning outcomes. The overall goal is to deepen students’ understandings of science concepts and principles through use of the Inquiry Process.

Purpose
Introducing each CoMPASS challenge with a brainstorming activity is intended to:

• engage students actively in thinking about the challenge task and the key concepts that will be the overarching learning target for this inquiry,
• launch the inquiry with a "safe" opportunity for students to openly share their current ideas about the topic that is going to be studied, and
• provide an opportunity for the teacher to learn what students’ current ideas are about the subject of inquiry because this will be important information for guiding instruction.

Overview of the CoMPASS approach for introducing the challenge
Introducing the challenge and brainstorming begins each CoMPASS inquiry cycle. Conducted as a whole class discussion, introducing the challenge ensures that students understand the nature and requirements of the challenge before they begin to brainstorm what they already know and will need to learn in order to solve the challenge.

Brainstorming may take many forms. Whatever strategy is used to encourage students’ sharing of ideas, the key is that students must feel comfortable sharing their notions, even if they are incorrect. The brainstorming discussion is especially important for providing teachers with insights into students’ prior knowledge, to help identify common misconceptions or less informed understandings.

Rather than correct students’ thinking during the introduction to the challenge and brainstorming phase of a CoMPASS inquiry, the teacher listens and takes mental notes. The information the teacher gathers at this phase is important for tailoring and differentiating instruction to the needs of the students. Misconceptions that are revealed will be addressed as students research on CoMPASS, conduct their investigations to complete the challenge, and during the final whole class sharing of challenge results highlighting important science ideas and relationships.

Purpose
CoMPASS uses concept maps for navigation through the online text. Students also make concept maps to demonstrate their understanding. The use of concept maps is intended to:

Example Concept Map from CoMPASS website

• provide an opportunity for the teacher to learn what students’ current ideas are about the subject of inquiry (and see how students make connections among those ideas),
• give students an opportunity to visualize for themselves what they know and their growing understanding,
• provide teachers and students with a learning strategy––the process of building a concept map can be a valuable learning experience, and
• help students focus on the relationships between the concepts in the domain of physics.

Overview of the CoMPASS approach to concept maps Concept maps are graphic organizers that show relationships and/or connections between concepts. A concept map is made up of “nodes” or boxes that contain a concept or topic, and all nodes are connected to make a web diagram. The links between nodes are labeled to explain the relationship between them.

Because students will navigate the CoMPASS text resources through concept maps, it is important that they know how concept maps represent ideas and that they show how ideas are interconnected. Concept maps are also used in some CoMPASS lessons as a way for students to demonstrate their understanding.

If students are already familiar with how to construct and read concept maps from prior experiences, then an introductory lesson on concept maps may not be necessary. However, if the CoMPASS lessons are students’ first or an early experience with concept mapping, planning at least one class period to teach concept mapping skills is recommended.

A thorough discussion of concept maps and how to construct them is available online from the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition at http://cmap.ihmc.us, and a search for mind mapping on www.youtube.com will generate a number of explanations and examples for Tony Buzan’s approach to concept mapping that you may find helpful.

Purpose
Hypertext is digital text that contains links to connect informational resources. Hypertext supported inquiry in CoMPASS is intended to:

• enable students to explore scientifically accurate and grade level appropriate concept maps and text to learn science concepts, and
• promote student-guided exploration of text that encourages students to navigate through materials to learn relationships between key ideas, rather than to seek the "right" answer.

Overview of the CoMPASS approach to hypertext supported inquiry
CoMPASS is a hypertext system that uses two representations — concept maps and text — to enable multiple passes through the same material and to support inquiry and learning. Each page in CoMPASS represents a science concept, such as force or acceleration. A concept map, of the science concept and other related concepts, takes up the left half of the CoMPASS screen and a text passage that provides information about the science concept takes up the right half. The CoMPASS hypertext is used to help students generate ideas and learn about science concepts that will help them to solve their design challenges.

Example page from CoMPASS hypertext system

The concept maps in CoMPASS are designed to emphasize connections among concepts, giving students alternative paths to pursue in their search, so that they can see how different phenomena are related to each other. While working with you child on CoMPASS you can encourage him or her to think about the challenge they are currently working on and how the concepts they are reading about might relate to that challenge

Purpose
Collaborative group work in CoMPASS is intended to:

• engage students actively in thinking about their work and how best to accomplish the learning tasks as a group,
• provide opportunities for small student groups to learn through the processes of communicating and figuring things out together, and
• establish working relationships among students that encourage all learners to actively participate in discussions and decision-making.

Overview of the CoMPASS approach for collaborative group work
Collaborative group work in CoMPASS is intended to be student-centered. When student groups of three or four work together, the teacher acts as a mentor or coach by circulating among all the groups. The teacher monitors students’ progress by observing and asking questions, ensuring that the students are headed in the right direction.

Unlike cooperative learning groups in which students are assigned specific jobs, CoMPASS designers intend that groups self-assign roles so that each working group develops and owns its own strategies for working together. Learning research indicates that allowing students to problem solve and determine their own course of action for accomplishing a learning task can strengthen the learning for all group members.

Purpose
Classroom dialogue during student-centered, whole class discussions throughout the CoMPASS unit is intended to:

• provide an opportunity for students’ thinking to become “visible,”
• require students to explain their thinking to others and learn from doing so, and
• help students understand that analytical thinking during discussions can result in significantly more productive communication and learning.

Overview of the CoMPASS approach to classroom dialogue
Throughout the CoMPASS science inquiry process, classroom dialogue is used to support students in gathering and focusing their ideas about topics relevant to the learning goals. A significant difference between students-centered vs. teacher-centered classroom dialogue is that the goal of student-focused discussion is to maximize student participation and interactions.

Rather than teacher being the primary speaker and students responding in simple phrases to teacher-posed questions, CoMPASS classroom dialogue encourages students to communicate both what they are thinking and why they are thinking it. Additionally, classroom dialogue is conducted with the expectation that students will listen to each other thoughtfully and ask clarifying questions in student-to-student interactions.

Because students typically have more experience being passive listeners during whole class interactions, it is helpful to explicitly teach classroom dialogue skills and use strategies to encourage active participation. It may be necessary to remind students to, “talk to their classmates” rather than turning to the teacher.

Purpose
Models in CoMPASS:

• represent an explanation for how something in science works, and
• can focus on manipulating concrete objects, simulations, or mental representations of ideas to attempt to explain how something in science works.

Overview of the CoMPASS approach to modeling
Scientists use models to investigate and explain their observations. For them, models are essential tools for understanding and creating scientific knowledge. In CoMPASS, models are used by students in ways similar to how scientists use models.

A scientific model is an idea or group of ideas that explains something in nature. It is a representation that helps scientists understand and predict events that are difficult to observe directly. In CoMPASS, students use evidence gathered from both experiments and research to design and test their physical and conceptual models.

In CoMPASS, physical models, such as experiments, are used to provide students with opportunities to observe instances of and gather evidence about the scientific concepts being learned. For example, experiments with simple machines are used to give students concrete experiences with mechanical advantage and the factors that influence the amount of applied force needed to do work. CoMPASS also includes computer simulation models that allow students additional opportunities to explore relationships among the factors that affect simple machines, or forces and motion, that they are not able to explore in the real world.

Another kind of scientific model is called a conceptual model. A conceptual model is a set of ideas that explain how something in science functions. A conceptual model focuses on thoughts and reasoning. Whether it is a physical or conceptual model, all scientific models are based on scientific evidence. Scientific evidence is the information that is directly observed about natural events, natural objects, or organisms. Scientists use evidence to design and test their models. Students engage with models in a similar way as they participate in the inquiry process during the CoMPASS unit.

Purpose
Each student receives his or her own workbook, which can be thought of a scientist’s notebook. It is used by students to record their individual work, small group work, and whole class discussions. The student workbook provides:

• teachers with record of each student’s progress and allows them to communicate individually with students about the work accomplished.
• students with a resource for recording and reflecting upon the growth and changes in their thinking as they progress through the entire CoMPASS unit.

Overview of the Student Workbook
At the start of the unit, students draw individual concept maps, which represent their initial ideas about physics, such as work, energy, and simple machines. After making their first concept map, students are introduced to and come up with ideas for solving the overarching design challenge. Students propose their final ideas for the design challenge at the end of the curriculum. In order to learn about work and energy or forces and motion physics concepts, students also participate in mini-design challenges throughout the curriculum.

During each mini-challenge students use the workbooks to write down their initial predictions, develop questions to help them to design their experiments, record information they learned when conducting research using CoMPASS, and design experiments. The student workbooks are also a place for each student to record the data collected when conducting the design experiments that their small group decides to investigate. Labeled data tables are provided for recording observations. Additionally, there are places to record explanations of reasoning about their experimental results. Students can refer back to their workbooks to share their data during whole group discussions to compare data collected from various groups in the classroom.

At the end of the unit, students again draw a concept map to record what they know about the physics concepts they have learned. They can reflect back to the initial concept maps in their workbook to see how their understanding of physics concepts and simple machines has grown and changed.