Developing a Content-Understanding-Environment Framework

Chapter 1

The goal of all instruction should be to develop the student’s conceptual understanding. Effective learning should also provide for an assessment of what the students know as instruction occurs, taking this information and adjusting instructions accordingly. In order to help science students to learn, teachers have to build a conceptual framework that will provide students with the opportunity to learn the content and be clear about the learning goals of all the lessons. A Content-Understanding-Environment framework is designed to improve science teachers’ abilities to deliver effective instruction to diverse student learners (Tweed 32). The framework’s three elements of content, understanding, and environment are each as essential to improving student learning; a weakness in any one will undermine the effectiveness of the other two (Tweed 33). With regard to content, teachers identify insufficient time for students to develop conceptual understanding and too much content to cover to prepare students for statewide assessments as the two chief concerns.

Chapter 2

The content strategy needs to be able to articulate why the lesson content we address is important and how it ties in to the main ideas on the subject. For this strategy to be effective, it should involve determining the important content that students will learn and be clear about the main ideas and key concepts. Additionally, it should unburden the Curriculum by ensuring units focus on a few concepts with each lesson focusing squarely on one concept. Further, engaging students with content by making lessons interesting ensures that they can make sense of the concepts and learn from them. Students have preconceptions and prior knowledge (Tweed 39), therefore it is key that we identify these ideas and confront the conceptions that are contrary to science knowledge. In addition, a comprehensive assessment strategy should be incorporated into the content strategy so that we can gauge how well the content is understood understood (Tweed 83). Finally, a good content strategy should sequence the learning targets into a progression in order for students to be able to correlate ideas.

Works Cited

Tweed, Anne. Designing Effective Science Instruction: What Works In Science Classrooms. Arlington, Virginia: NSTA Press, 2009. Print.