INSTRUCTIONAL
DESIGNER
CURTIS WANG
Sample Science Lesson
Olympiads School
Virtually all of my teaching materials are produced with one question in mind:
What are the enduring understandings that my students should walk away with when the details are forgotten?
Summer 2013
HIGH SCHOOL SCIENCE TEACHER AND BACKWARD CURRICULUM DESIGNER
A central pedagogical principle in lesson planning at the Olympiads School is a 3-stage process of Backward Design that is especially appropriate for a "cram" course:
1) Establish learning goals and enduring understandings.
2) Determine acceptable evidence for goal attainment.
3) Plan learning experiences and instruction.
This sample lesson on Introduction to Atomic Theory succeeds because of a heavily scaffolded approach that builds on core understandings. Although it is true that students tend to benefit more from a top-down approach to learning in most subject areas (even in math, where problem-based learning can serve as a useful springboard for the derivation of core concepts or formulas), chemistry struggles because the knowledge is more removed from our daily lives and meaning-making that it may likely seem arbitrary. Thus it is even more crucial that students are taken through the learning process with a clear end goal in sight, hence the need for backward planning. Furthermore, backward design permits pedagogical flexibility, adapting to students' preferences for open discussion or frequent formative assessments.
GRAPHIC DESIGNER
I also frequently create visual material for my lessons, customizing them according to my specific teaching needs. This typically involves filtering out extraneous information so as to reduce students' visual "noise" and cognitive load. This is especially beneficial in science classes when the subject area is typically new to students, and thus would reduce the likelihood of estrangement and focus on progressive scaffolding. For example, when introducing students to periodic trends, I provide a simplified version of the Periodic Table so that students can focus on developing a conceptual understanding of how those trends are causally linked to increasing atomic number and number of electron orbits.