Examining Curriculum Materials: Food For Plants

Examining Curriculum Materials: VB: Guiding Interpretation & Reasoning

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 B: Guiding student interpretation and reasoning Does the material include tasks and/or question sequences to guide student interpretation and reasoning about experiences with phenomena, representations, and ideas?	1. The material includes specific and relevant tasks and/or questions for the experience or reading.		Student Book p. 37-41 What is the reading and what are the relevant tasks?
	2. The questions or tasks have helpful characteristics such as framing important issues helping students to relate their experiences with phenomena or representations to presented scientific ideas helping students to make connections between their own ideas and the phenomena or representations observed helping students to make connections between their own ideas and the presented scientific ideas anticipating common student misconceptions focusing on contrasts between student misconceptions and scientific alternatives.		SB p. 37 what is the important issue that frames the tasks? Teachers Guide p. 41 and Student Book p. 39. How does the material relate the experience to scientific ideas? Student Book p. 40 How does the material help students make a connection between their own ideas and the phenomena? Teacher's Guide p. 42 How does the material anticipate student misconceptions? Teacher's Guide p. 42-43 How are teachers instructed to help students understand the scientific alternatives?
	3. There are scaffolded sequences of questions or tasks (as opposed to separate questions or tasks).		How does the material scaffold the tasks/questions?