Examining Curriculum Materials: Food For Plants

Examining Curriculum Materials: VA: Encouraging Students to Explain Their Ideas

Learning Goal: Benchmark 5E6-8: Food provides the fuel and the building material for all organisms. Plants use the energy from light to make sugars from carbon dioxide and water. This food can be used immediately or stored for later use.

Name of Material: Food for Plants by Kathy Roth

Major Criterion	Indicators - What must a material do to meet the criterion?	Yes or No	How does Food for Plants meet this indicator?
Category V: Promoting Student Thinking about Phenomena, Experiences, and Knowledge Criterion A. Encouraging students to explain their ideas Does the material routinely include suggestions for having each student express, clarify, justify, and represent his or her ideas? Are suggestions made for when and how students will get feedback from peers and the teacher?	1. Material routinely encourages students to express their ideas.	Yes	Students discuss in small groups how a seed grows into a huge tree. TG p. 7.
	2. Material encourages students not only to express but also to clarify, justify, and represent their ideas (a material is not expected to encourage students to clarify, justify, and represent ideas each time they are asked to express their ideas; however, in the course of teaching a particular key idea the material should provide students with opportunities to clarify, justify, and represent ideas).	Yes	Student write about how a seed grows into a tree ( express ideas), Students draw a sketch that shows how they think this happens (represent ideas) Students write about how their idea is different from someone else's ideas (clarify ideas) Student pages 6 & 7.
	3. Material provides opportunities for each student (rather than just some students) to express ideas.	Yes	Each student writes and draws the above tasks. Student pages 6 & 7.
	4. Material includes specific suggestions on how to help the teacher provide explicit feedback to students or includes text that directly provides students with feedback.	Yes	TG p. 8 lists common student responses and suggestions for teacher actions. For example, "Some students will have difficulty getting beyond, "the seed grows". The text encourages the teacher to have students "use your scientific imagination."
	5. Material includes suggestions on how to diagnose student errors, explanations about how these errors may be corrected, and recommendations for how students' ideas may be further developed.	Yes	TG p. 8 has advice for how students can develop their ideas further. For example, "The teacher can ask questions like: Clearly there is a lot more stuff (matter) in the log than in the seed. So where did all that stuff come from?"