In my future classroom, I hope to
maintain a classroom environment where students ask thoughtful questions to
each other and listen to each other’s explanations of their models. Getting students to cooperate in this manner
will allow for me to get all students to succeed and come away from my class
enjoying it more than any other science class. I plan on using computational modeling to
aide in students’ thinking about phenomena that are not easily represented with
a physical model. It would also be
advantageous to use computational modeling as a way for students to manipulate
various factors in complex systems (e.g. Climate Change Modeling). Often times, I would probably ask students to
create a physical model of a phenomena we would be working on and then “go
deeper” with a computational model that they could manipulate. Overall, I thought the testimonies were more
insightful than necessarily helpful.
Question:
With using modeling in your future classroom, would you
treat regular students different from AP students?
Unlike Finkbeiner, I would definitely use modeling in both regular and AP courses. While I may scaffold a little more for regular classes, I think one of the really special things about modeling is that its student driven so students who are at the AP level and have a little more background knowledge may ask a more complex question or have more astute explanation, but the process still works for regular students to engage as deeply as they are able.
ReplyDeleteI would definitely use modeling in both AP and non AP classrooms because the type of student thinking required and the cooperative learning needed should be a goal for all teachers' classrooms, regardless of the type of class. However, like one of the teacher’s testimonies that we read, the AP student’s class would be more demanding and maybe even slightly more fast paced. Furthermore, there is more structure required for AP students and certain material that would need to be covered.
ReplyDeleteI would use modeling with both groups of students, but I think its premature to decide if they need to be treated differently because that depends a lot on the context. For example, an AP student might have no interest in science but want to get into a good college or be valedictorian, while a regular student might be very interested in a related vocational track. While these examples are pretty cliche, I think they just show how you can't design differentiation without knowing the specifics of students.
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