“High-leverage” practices for teachers

 What is it about the topic [earthquakes, optics, inheritance, or acids and bases] that is so important?”  Is it the topic that is important? Or is it something more fundamental and dynamic about the topic that my students should really understand?

 They focus your planning  They focus your planning on important goals  They help you plan for assessment  They help you make all your instructional activities hang together for kids Instructional activities cohering around a BI Activities without a BI

 What did you initially write down as your “big ideas” around fungi or sound?  How did Janet or Brian talk about big ideas in the video?  What are 2 observations and a question you have about the intellectual work (priming) that Janet and Brian are doing to prepare for teaching?

 Curricula/textbooks are rarely about big ideas  In kits? The big ideas get lost in the slew of activities that are presented  In textbooks? Encyclopedic tidal wave of information and vocabulary  You have to construct Big Ideas

 Do a quick survey of the chapter titles, note which seem to be tangible “things”, topics or themes, theories, or processes.

 Now use page 8 in your Big Idea tool to guide you in constructing a big idea out of the topic “The Respiration and Circulatory System” Puzzling phenomena Explanatory model The big idea

 Now use your Big Idea as a lens to make judgments about activities in a curriculum

 Pick one, start thinking about it on the bus ◦ Homeostasis ◦ Newton’s Laws ◦ The Gas Laws ◦ Earthquakes