Scaffolding
Throughout this unit students are expected to struggle or have misconceptions, or need more skill development, on the following areas. One purpose these activities serve is to expose students to additional tools they have available to them. Another purpose these activities are available is to provide an additional opportunity to provide Socrative questions and illuminate some misconceptions students may be carrying. By allowing the students to identify where these misconceptions are and where new information cannot be assimilated with their current models of understanding, students will develop a sense of "need to know" and ultimately investigate a more correct model. Included are the plans and materials needed to address these concepts. Also a recommendation of when these "skill sessions" should be scheduled is included on the timeline. Depending on the needs of the students and the class dynamics, the schedule of these activities is flexible. This allows for scaffolds to be removed when students are approaching the project with a more thorough understanding of project dynamics and tools. These scaffolds can be removed as students develop a higher self-efficacy with the resources available to them. As similar skill sessions are introduced throughout the course of a semester, students will not be allowed to participate in the same session multiple times.
These skill sessions are hard scaffolds and are intended as stand-alone scaffolding tools, and should be used as students need. While monitoring these activities, take note if additional help is required, and this can be provided on an individual basis.
Through out the unit the teacher will participate with the class in soft scaffolding. Every day the teacher will monitor the room for student misconceptions and students being off task while working in groups. The teacher will implement a variety of soft scaffolds to help the students who need them. This includes "just in time" teaching points, teacher probing questions to help students develop their thought process, and teacher redirection if students are being off task. These soft scaffolds will be a crucial technique to help support all students successfully complete the PBL. These soft scaffolds will be removed as students take more ownership with their technology design.
- Team Roles and Collaboration - Common misconception: Students often feel that their specific skill set implies they can not contribute to a group
- Project Planning - Common misconception: Students often feel it's beneficial to just "jump into" a large project without appropriate planning
- Presentation Tools - Difficulty: Students often have a lack of knowledge of the tools available to them, perhaps besides PowerPoint
- Significance of Surface Area to Volume Ratio - Difficulty: Students will struggle seeing the importance of the surface area to volume ratio
- Nano-Applications - Common misconception: Students often think that nanotechnology is only used in research labs and science
- Computing Surface Area and Volume - Difficulty: Students often don't think about the actual meaning of surface area and volume, and simply just look for any readily known formula
- Unit Conversions - Difficulty: Students will often struggle with visualizing the magnitude of numbers at the nano-scale when making conversions
These skill sessions are hard scaffolds and are intended as stand-alone scaffolding tools, and should be used as students need. While monitoring these activities, take note if additional help is required, and this can be provided on an individual basis.
Through out the unit the teacher will participate with the class in soft scaffolding. Every day the teacher will monitor the room for student misconceptions and students being off task while working in groups. The teacher will implement a variety of soft scaffolds to help the students who need them. This includes "just in time" teaching points, teacher probing questions to help students develop their thought process, and teacher redirection if students are being off task. These soft scaffolds will be a crucial technique to help support all students successfully complete the PBL. These soft scaffolds will be removed as students take more ownership with their technology design.