top of page

This site was designed with the

website builder. Create your website today.Start Now

OUSD School Transformation Collaborative:

Spring 2017 Cohort

Personalized Science Prototype

Objectives:

Review a small group lesson example.
Analyse your data.
Pair students up for that week’s learning menu and then create teacher small groups.
Select articles in NewsELA or another differentiated resource to use with small groups.
Work with 2-3 pairs at a time for a targeted teacher small group, practicing the science literacy strategy.

Suggested Timeline: 1 week

Stage 4:

Provide Targeted Data Driven Small Group Instruction

Objective 1: Review a small group lesson example.

Step 1: Review an activity where students are asked to select a leveled version of a science article and identify the CERs (claims, evidence and reasoning).
- If you are not familiar with the CER framework, read more here.

Step 2: See this learning menu and lesson with 3 versions of the same article from the NewsELA site. (You will need to create a free account to view the NewsELA articles.)
- In this lesson, the teacher meets with a small group and helps them to select an article at the appropriate reading level.
- Then the group reads the article together and the teacher scaffolds their process of identifying the claim, evidence and reasoning in the article.

Objective 2: Analyse Your data.

Step 1: Using the data from the assessment created in stage 3, analyze student scores.
- Often low scores on science content indicate that students were unable to fully access the content due to a lack of comprehension.
- In this stage, you will find content at different reading lexiles to accommodate your learners.

Congratulations! You've completed Stage 4.

Move on to the final Stage 5: Empower students to be self-directed learners.

Step 1: Pair students up with a learning partner (similar to a literacy partner) who had a similar score on the post-test and are at about the same reading level.

Step 2: For the next learning menu, have partners work together to support each other and select resources that meet their needs.
- This means that you can have 2 students to every device.

Step 3: Knowing your students’ needs, combine 2 or 3 sets of learning partners to create teacher small groups for targeted teacher instruction.
- In the next objective, the teacher will work on guided reading activities with these small groups during laptop time.

Objective 3: Pair students up for that week’s learning menu and then create teacher small groups.

Objective 4: Select articles in NewsELA or another differentiated resource to use with small groups.

Step 1: Identify a science literacy standard and strategy for your small groups from the Common Core State Standards. Strategies might include close reading, cornell notes, graphic organizers and identifying CERs (author claims, evidence and reasoning).

Step 2: Find articles on your weekly topic at different reading levels to use with your students and work on science content strategies. Use NewsELA or another resource from the list below, to find articles to use for differentiated small group time.

Newsela (grades 2-8)

Science News for Students (grades 5-8)

Tween Tribune (grades K-12)

Wonderopolis (grades K-5)

The 5 Stages of PL Prototype Implementation

Objective 5: Work with 2-3 pairs at a time for a targeted small group lesson, practicing the literacy strategy.

Step 1: During laptop time, pull a group together (2-3 pairs) for about 15 minutes and work through the targeted reading strategy with articles connected to the current unit of study. Note that some groups may need little teacher support but would benefit from an enrichment opportunity.

Step 2: Assess student understanding by using the NewsELA accompanying questions or have them retake the post-test they took previously.

Step 3: Continue to plan targeted lessons for your students on the upcoming topics.

bottom of page