ChangED
ChangED is an educator based podcast for Pennsylvania teachers to learn more about the PA STEELS Standards and science in general. It is hosted by Andrew Kuhn, Patrice Semicek and Tony Mirabito.
ChangED
Science Storylines: A New Teaching Approach
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Join us for an engaging discussion unravels the magic of science education through storytelling and phenomenon-based learning. This episode highlights the significance of cultivating curiosity and how integrating real-world events into the curriculum can transform student engagement. Our hosts share practical strategies for creating effective storylines, emphasizing that students' intellectual resources should not only be acknowledged but actively utilized.
As we navigate through the complexities of teaching younger students, we focus on how to create an environment that welcomes exploration rather than rote memorization. With insights from seasoned educators, this episode emphasizes the importance of fostering a supportive space where students feel free to articulate their ideas and wonderings—turning missteps into valuable teaching moments. Join us as we champion a dynamic approach to science education that empowers learners to ask questions and seek answers, ensuring that their experience in the classroom fuels their long-lasting passion for learning. Tune in and be part of the conversation—let's redefine what it means to teach and learn science effectively! Don’t forget to subscribe and share the ChangED podcast!
Want more Ted? Attend one or all of his sessions at the 2025 NSTA Conference in Philly. Use the NSTA app and search for Ted Willard or the session titles below:
Selecting Phenomena to Motivate Student Sense-making
The NSTA Atlas of the Three Dimensions
Unpacking the Crosscutting Concepts with a new NSTA Quick-Reference Guide to the Three Dimensions
NSTA's Trilogy of Guides to the Three Dimensions
ChangED is the official podcast for the NSTA Philly Conference.
Experience more ChangED/NSTA podcasts and learn about the Philly NSTA Conference by visiting nsta.org/podcast.
Want to learn more about ChangED? Check out our website at: learn.mciu.org/changed
You're a wealth of information and wealth of knowledge, but also so easy to talk to too?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Because there's people that know a lot but can't really talk about it but can't verbalize it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so this is Like down to my level.
Speaker 4:Unicorn Ted. The advantage I've had is I've been doing this essentially nonstop for over a decade.
Speaker 2:Right, so that helps.
Speaker 4:I've got some prepared material.
Speaker 2:What song do you want to sing? Ted, We'll do.
Speaker 4:Queen. It's based on we Are the Champions, but you'll see there's some differences. I'm excited.
Speaker 2:Get ready.
Speaker 3:Get ready. Welcome back to Change Ed. Changed. Change Ed your number one podcast in everywhere, everywhere. Is that your number one podcast in everywhere?
Speaker 2:Everywhere.
Speaker 3:Is that a? Thing?
Speaker 2:Yeah, everywhere I think, everywhere is a, thing, yeah, especially in my family.
Speaker 3:yeah, and especially in Discovery Education, we are number one in Discovery Education. Their favorite podcast to tune into.
Speaker 2:Well, they're everywhere, so I guess that works.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's a simpatico relationship.
Speaker 2:Wow, big words.
Speaker 3:I am your host, Andrew Kuhn, education consultant from Montgomery County Intermediate Unit.
Speaker 4:And here with me is Ted Willard from Discovery Education. Yes, we are going to have a TED Talk.
Speaker 2:That's what we're going to have. Oh, TED Talk.
Speaker 3:Glad to have you back in the show, sir. I also have two co-hosts here with me.
Speaker 2:I am Patrice Semecek and I still work at the Montgomery County Intermediate Unit and I have the same job every time.
Speaker 3:All right.
Speaker 2:I want an acronym like Tony has SDF. What is ours?
Speaker 3:EC.
Speaker 2:EC.
Speaker 1:Tony Tony Marabito, CLIU21iu 21 sdf. Lots of letters there.
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, it's just too long, it's too much every episode, oh my gosh we are super fortunate to have back with us for our ted talk today.
Speaker 3:ted willard, welcome back to the show. Super glad to have you. I hear that you have a unique way of connecting I'm going to say different genres into learning and we'd love to hear what that is.
Speaker 4:This is a perfect example of how I am totally willing to humiliate myself for the sake of science education.
Speaker 2:I love it. You are among good company, because we humiliate ourselves daily.
Speaker 4:We've tried to teach time after time, taught lots of lessons that we thought were fine, but we were mistaken. Kids learn nothing new, but with the framework of science education, we now know what to do. But with the framework of science education, we now know what to do, and students will learn on and on and on and on. Teach three dimensions, my friends, and we must integrate them so that they blend. Dun, dun, dun dun. Teach three dimensions. Teach three dimensions. Teach three dimensions, not just core ideas. Teach all three dimensions, so they learn.
Speaker 1:Yay.
Speaker 3:That was fantastic.
Speaker 1:Fantastic.
Speaker 3:I felt like I was like in my head. I'm hearing Friday Mercury like belting it out.
Speaker 2:It was great that was amazing.
Speaker 3:Fantastic. I felt like I was like in my head.
Speaker 1:I'm hearing Freddie Mercury like belting it out.
Speaker 2:It was great. That was awesome From now on.
Speaker 1:Andrew might have to lead every podcast with that song. I think That'd be great.
Speaker 3:We'd lose all of our listeners if that were to happen.
Speaker 2:We can isolate that audio so we can keep his song and honestly, Ted you and Freddie Mercury very similar appearance.
Speaker 3:It's hard to tell any difference.
Speaker 1:That's right. Yeah, it was great Never seen him in the same place at the same time. Oh, Tony, not a conspiracy theory.
Speaker 2:Come on yeah.
Speaker 3:Ted, I love how you actually recapped our last podcast with you Seriously In this song. I was like oh, we talked about that. We talked about that, we talked about that and how you kind of encapsulated it. And one of the things I love about that as well is that for me, so many songs can tell a story and there's a story that goes along with that. See what I did there.
Speaker 2:I'm borderline impressed by what's happening right now.
Speaker 3:And I feel borderline. I appreciate that Almost a compliment. You know, you know you're building up and then you kind of get to that spot where you're like, oh that, as we talked about last time, that aha moment where it kind of shifts your perspective and what you're seeing, and then, and then the story kind of kind of goes down and I'm wondering what connection there might be there with storylines, because we talk a lot about storylines when it comes to NGSS and specifically Steeles and the power of storylines. So I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about that.
Speaker 4:Students really have tremendous intellectual resources that we as teachers frequently don't pay attention to or underestimate is maybe the way I would sort of say that to or underestimate is maybe the way I would we'd sort of say that and what we can frequently do when in traditionally in instruction, what things we've done in some cases sometimes we try to simplify and simplify and simplify and make it easier and easier and easier, and we're we dumb down or water down the curriculum, and which doesn't really sort of help much.
Speaker 4:Another thing that we sometimes do is we spend a lot of time on saying well, to use a food analogy, if you eat your kind of soggy vegetables, we'll give you a nice piece of chocolate cake, or maybe we'll, maybe we'll give you a little, a little treat. You know, some really nice hors d'oeuvres at the beginning, something fun to do, and then we'll do something really nice at the end, but we're still just kind of giving you this mush in the middle of the thing.
Speaker 3:You sound like an experienced parent there, Ted.
Speaker 4:I might have some experiences in that. What the idea of a storyline is is the idea of let's make the main course really delicious, let's make the vegetables extremely tasty, let's give students a reason to do the things we want them to do. So again, this idea of students have the intellectual abilities. If you think about as a parent, if you have done this, or you can probably as a teacher, you've probably had this with your students Think about when your students have tried to persuade you to do something, how powerful their ability to engage in argumentation is. You know, we think sometimes kids can't remember what they did yesterday in class. But let's face it, if you said back in September that on the last day of the semester before this winter break you would do such and such thing, they will remember that Three months later and tell you that Sure will, and remind you Okay. So the point about this is that we need to find a way to have kids actually care about what they are learning, and so how can we do that? And the idea of a storyline is really focused on that. The storyline starts with some initial event, some phenomena that you show students that they are, and I think I said that some of this last time. But this idea of that I'm curious about that. I care about understanding that. I know what's happening there, but I don't know why it's happening. But I want to know why. And so taking that and then bringing that forward in terms of, well, now I want to understand that I have questions about that, and so we can list out questions that students have that students care about, and then our whole instruction is about answering those questions.
Speaker 4:Well, how do you answer questions in science? You gather evidence. How do you go about gathering evidence? Well, one way to do it is that you go and you carry out an investigation, and we have to go through that process. Another way you can get evidence is actually to obtain and evaluate information, and in either of those things then you're ultimately analyzing data in some fashion or another and you're ultimately then trying to construct an explanation or develop a model of that phenomenon that you have engaged with. So that's the basics of this.
Speaker 4:The thing that's really amazing and sort of a paradox in the idea of storylines is everything I just described there sounds, and is meant to be, very student-centered. That we said the students have asked the questions, the students get to decide how they go about answering those questions, what activities they do. Throughout this process, they are leading it. However, in a really well-designed curriculum, I, as the teacher, I as the curriculum designer, have stacked the deck in such a way that I know what questions the students are going to ask and so I know what I'm going to have the students do throughout that whole learning process. I've sequenced things in such a way that, oh, at the end of this particular investigation, they've figured these certain things out, but oh, they have some other questions.
Speaker 4:Well, guess what? That's what we're going to work on tomorrow, and I have actually a planned sequence for this. It's not just kids going all over the place wherever they want to, it's that things have been sequenced in such a way that every day's activities lead students along the way. The term I like to use around this is that I have, as a teacher, set up breadcrumbs for the student to guide them through the forest, and I bring this up as the same point I said. So I bring up for a physics teacher and teaching Newton's laws.
Speaker 4:Newton apparently took about a decade to come together with his laws and, from what I understand, he was a pretty smart guy.
Speaker 4:I had some good students, but I don't know if I had any Isaac Newtons in my classroom, and we don't have 10 years to figure out Newton's three laws. So I need to set things up in such a way that takes them through the process of where I want them to go in some ways here. Let me give you a little example about that and try to play out. Let's imagine for a second I have a glass of water sitting on the table around all of us, and we noticed a glass of water sitting on the table with around all of us and we noticed there are some water droplets on the outside of that. And those water droplets I want to know where did those water droplets come from? What do the three of you think would be a common answer for my students about where those water droplets came from At a high school level, at any grade level? What do you think if I asked a waiter in a restaurant where did those droplets come from?
Speaker 1:Condensation, evaporation, something along those lines.
Speaker 4:I think Tony is way more scientifically focused than any of you.
Speaker 2:All those years of being a waiter.
Speaker 4:That I don't know if I know about right now, I'm just, you know, I'm just.
Speaker 2:I was going to say it's the water on the outside. It has a different temperature than the water on the inside, and so it's forming. I don't know.
Speaker 3:So let me, let me sweating. It's hot, it's sweating, yeah it's andrew.
Speaker 4:You are the.
Speaker 2:You are the you're the typical high school student whoa wait, wait. I was about typical I'm over here trying to celebrate, but I got it right.
Speaker 4:No, I want to. No, I really want to play with this. A lot of people will say this water came from inside the glass. Okay, and I want to stop for a moment and have you think about how good that answer is. A student that tells me that the water on the outside of the glass came from the inside of the glass knows that it had to come from someplace, so they need a source of water. There's water sitting right there in the glass, and so I can say we have that water that could be the source of it. That is an entirely reasonable model, given the evidence, that is, is it scientifically accurate? No, it is not. That is not the ultimate explanation, but that is an extremely reasonable model. Now, andrew is my chosen student here, and because I think you've just got exactly the right type of personality for me to use this a second.
Speaker 4:I wanted to play out two different scenarios for me as a teacher to deal with Andrew's what I just described as his reasonable explanations.
Speaker 2:I can't wait for this acting.
Speaker 4:Okay, andrew, where did the water come from? He just told you inside, inside example, one that's wrong that's wrong water. Actually that's wrong. It's air around the glass and it and the glass is cool, so the water that's in the air condenses on it. So let me point out for you, okay, in what I've learned here. The research and science education says that that is not the best way to deal with a student who provides that explanation I can imagine I'd feel very shut down I wouldn't.
Speaker 1:I feel that way. Just give you the right answer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but they think they're helping I think they think they're helping by saying nope, that's not it, this is it.
Speaker 3:This is the answer yep, ted, you shut me down on my own podcast. How dare dare you this is a terrible TED.
Speaker 4:Talk. I know it was dangerous for me because I can see that your partners on your podcast treat you with such reverence and respect that it's risky for me to do so Remember when I said I want to have you back.
Speaker 3:I'm taking all that back.
Speaker 2:No, but it's two to one. Ted, You're coming back because Tony and I like you.
Speaker 4:So let's go to a different approach to that now. Okay, andrew, you've told me now that the water came from inside the glass. That is a very interesting model that you have for explaining this phenomenon. But let's test that model out for a second. Here I happen to have a block of steel that I had in the refrigerator for a while. Here I happen to have a block of steel that I had in the refrigerator for a while. Is there any water inside a block of steel? No, so according to your model of how things work, if I put this block down next to the glass, should we get any water droplets on the outside of the block?
Speaker 3:Well, I guess, if there's no water inside the steel, then no, we should not get water outside the block.
Speaker 4:So we go and we watch and, lo and behold, we get droplets of water on the outside of the block. Andrew, what do we do in science when we have new evidence that doesn't match up with our model?
Speaker 3:Well, we'd have to update our reasoning and maybe our explanation.
Speaker 4:Gotcha, and so this is how I think of as phenomena, as the little breadcrumbs that we can provide students to move them from one understanding to another, and how storylines in many ways work out, that we are trying to not tell students that they're right or wrong. We're giving students phenomena and evidence for them to make decisions about their models and to move more towards the scientifically accurate understandings.
Speaker 1:I love all of that and I've been thinking about this since we had you on last. I've had this question for you. You've mentioned creating an argument, carrying out investigations, analyzing data, gathering evidence. All I agree with you. I love it all. What advice would you have for teachers that are teaching these belittles? My K, my one, my twos? How in the world do I get five-year-olds that can barely sit in their chairs to think in this way, because I feel like that can sometimes be daunting if us meaning me, andrew Patrice people that are trying to help teachers learn this new style of teaching, what can we do to help them and what advice would you give to teachers just starting out?
Speaker 4:I'll start with the aspect of those. K-2 students are, in some ways, some of the best students in this whole process. They are the ones who are always looking around the world and asking questions and wondering really we want to get into it. I'll say as a former high school teacher try to get 10th graders willing to just kind of throw out guesses. Our middle school students try to throw out a guess that they could be wrong about. That's a sort of a different challenge here, or that I'm not going to automatically tell a student you're right or wrong.
Speaker 4:I guarantee you teachers out there, as you try to make this shift, some of your students the students you think of as your best students are going to push back at you. Your best students are very good at playing the game of school, as I've talked about last time. Yes, they are. This new way of instruction will upset them to begin with. So the young kids are very interested in learning about this, trying to get a sense of these things. What teachers need to learn to do is not just here's the answer. Young teachers are also big on vocabulary. Okay.
Speaker 1:Let me imagine for a second Young teachers are also big on vocabulary.
Speaker 4:Okay, let me imagine for a second. I have a ball in my hand. Actually, I have a ball in my hand and I dropped that ball and students ask why does that fall? I could say gravity, okay, and then students know to say gravity. I could just as easily say magic.
Speaker 4:I've not given students anything that's helpful, other than they feel like they have an answer now but they don't really know anything. Yeah, they just know what to say in that time and they don't know what the word gravity means, other than it's what you say when you're asked whether something will fall. What if? Instead of I said that, I said why does it fall? Well, actually the neat thing is that the earth pulls on it, and when I hold it, I'm pushing up a little bit to keep the earth from pulling down on it.
Speaker 4:Or when they sit on a table, it's doing that, but if it rolls off the table, it falls, and the earth is always pulling on it and we talk about that for a couple of days and then we finally get to hey, I found out that there's a term for this pull of the earth on things. It's called gravity, and teachers are very used to front loading vocabulary, and I'm not an ELA instructor. I'm not saying anything negative about that but in science you can't give kids a term if they don't have a concept to hang it on to first, and so it's really important to give kids the concept before you give them the term. Thank you.
Speaker 1:I've heard this before, but you just put it so succinctly. That was a really, really great way to put it, and now I have a great way to put it for my training on Monday, thank you. Thank you, ted, appreciate it Fantastic.
Speaker 2:All right, andrew, do we get to let Ted have the final thought?
Speaker 1:I would love to let Ted do that, but Andrew's definitely not.
Speaker 3:No, Ted embarrassed me. How dare he on my show.
Speaker 4:I enjoyed every minute of it, so you have two new students that are heavily focused on what you're saying. I'll throw this last point here. I talked about the students who are had some difficulties, or what students are going to react to. I want to honor teachers in where they're going to have a difficulty.
Speaker 4:Okay, I'm a former physics teacher. Teachers have, I guarantee you, been praised at different points in their professional experiences for how good they are at explaining things to students and they take pride in that and I understand that pride. What they need to understand is that the research sort of shows that that only really works well with a small percentage of their students. Some students are able to take that explanation and really incorporate it into their mind. What teachers need to do is to get their students to be good at making explanations, and teachers can still make use of that ability to explain because they know what goes into a good explanation, so they can help students build that ability themselves. So I don't want to discredit teachers about that, but it's the aspect that they need to change the way they do things to better benefit their students, and that's, I know, a hard shift to make, and I don't want to ignore the fact that that's a hard shift to make.
Speaker 2:Well, and we teach the way we were taught. We've said this before a number of times on the podcast, and when we know better, we do better. So hopefully that's part of what we're doing here is helping people to know better. So I have complete faith in all of my colleagues. The other thing, too, is they're doing the best they can in the moments that they are. So I hear you. I think that if we can even just make one small shift to let kids notice and wonder and be curious for a little bit, I think starting there for me is helpful and then taking that learning to transfer it into their explanations and their writing would be great. But if we can just even let kids be curious to start off with would be great. But if we can just even let kids be curious to start off with would be great.
Speaker 4:This is not a shift that you're going to figure out over one summer between school years. This takes years. The best teachers I've seen across the country, when you talk about how great they are, say, oh, I've only just begun to figure this all out. There's so much more I can do and so much better I can do for my students.
Speaker 1:I'm glad you said that. I think that's going to be a relief to a lot of years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree, yeah, thank you.
Speaker 3:And that's the spot that I actually want to lean into, and you segwayed into my final thought for me.
Speaker 4:Thank you very much.
Speaker 3:Just like we communicated. Ted good job seen the most about this work and about the podcasts that we're on and the questions that we ask. There's so much more. I have more questions because of this podcast than I did even before I started, so it's opening up and expanding and saying wow, in an exciting way. I'm not done learning, we're not done knowing the information that we know and there's more out there that we can take in and we can know.
Speaker 3:The one thing that really stood out to me as we talked is that you know, stories can have different chapters and what I love about that, when I think about it, is compared to phenomenon, that within phenomenon we have our anchoring but then we have our supporting phenomenon, which is like those different chapters. So they could either be standalone or they could be in support of this larger story that we're learning or that we're being a part of, and as a way to connect these students into something bigger. But then also give them kind of those small victories as you're going along within this story where like, oh, okay, that's how that works, so it comes together and you start to see where it's going or how it's all coming together. The one other thing that I want to mention, that I thought was really powerful and I appreciate you sharing this, ted was that, as educators, we can say no without actually having to say no, and it was the I love your bright cup analogy that we can actually show them a different way.
Speaker 2:Guide them.
Speaker 3:And what I meant with show was like you physically like brought something out and be like okay now tell me. Yeah, so not show as in, like we're the ones that have the information.
Speaker 2:Sorry, I take back my interjection. That's okay. That's okay.
Speaker 3:Overruled. Is that right? I guess, yeah, but we can actually show them through science, not through us being the ones that are disseminating the information. And that can actually be a way of telling them no, but allowing for going back to other podcasts, that aha moment to be like oh right. So then I've opened the window for this new possibility without directly telling you no and shutting it down. Instead you're like oh my gosh. And now it's a solid learning and solid experience.
Speaker 4:And that's the way science is. Scientists can't publish a paper and then go to the back of the book and see if their answer was right. They depend upon. Do my explanations match the universe?
Speaker 3:I think it's really valuable for students to understand that in how the world works, Ted, we always have a competition on this podcast of who's going to get the last word. It's very hard with you, sir. You're so knowledgeable and so good at this.
Speaker 2:But you still can't let him do it.
Speaker 3:I know I can't. I can't, it's a compulsion I'm going to hit. Stop recording right now.
Speaker 2:It's a compulsion no Ted.
Speaker 3:No, why don't you sing us out, ted? So thank you, that was awesome, by the way. Yeah, thank you for coming on the show. Thank you for making yourself vulnerable and bettering us as educators and as good food for my brain?
Speaker 2:Yeah, very much.
Speaker 1:And showing up Andrew, yeah, thanks.
Speaker 2:I was always a win.
Speaker 4:Thank you, I love this stuff, so I love talking about it and I am going to do it again. I'm sorry, none of the work that my colleagues at NST here, my colleagues at Discovery Education, does matters without the work that your listeners are doing in their classroom with their students, and so I really want to thank you all for making my work matter.
Speaker 3:Ted Talk.
Speaker 4:No, yes, I get it.
Speaker 3:Don't forget to like and subscribe. I'm going to stop. Ted Talk.
Speaker 2:Stop.
Speaker 3:Thanks for I get it. Don't forget to like and subscribe. I'm going to stop Ted talk.
Speaker 4:Stop. Thanks for coming, Ted. Thank you Thank you Ted.
Speaker 3:That was so awesome.