As part of our professional development we worked with the Center for Math and Science Teaching (CMAST) out of Loyola Marymount University.  CMAST is dedicated to strengthening science, technology, engineering, and mathematics by creating rigorous, active, connected, and continuously student-directed classroom where risk taking and mathematical and scientific thinking flourish.

The CMAST Professional Development

The CMAST professional development consisted of monthly two hour sessions where we worked  to implement three CMAST teaching strategies in our classroom throughout the school year.  They were investigation before explanation, active practice and high level (common core) problem solving.

Our team meets weekly to make sure we are implementing the CMAST teaching strategies with fidelity between all of our classes.

Investigation Before Explanation

Investigation Before Explanation (IBE) is used to introduce students to new content through inquiry and exploration.  The students are given a challenging problem and/or scientific dilemma.  They work individually, pairs and in small groups attempting to solve the problem and/or understand the scientific phenomenon with little teacher input. The IBE builds the students’ problem solving skills, leads to a deeper understanding of the content area and we found that throughout the school  year our students’ problem solving stamina developed to a point where we were able to keep or students engaged, working collaboratively, to solve a novel problem for a fifty minute class period without giving up.

Ninth grade physics student working on one of the first investigations before explanations trying to determine/describe the rate at which objects move prior to any direct instruction on speed and velocity.

Active Practice

Active practice requires students to work in collaborative pairs or groups working towards mastery of the content.  The theory behind active practice is that in order to master any skill from piano to skateboarding, (or in our case solving scientific problems) students must repeatedly be actively engaged practicing the activity.  We created methods of incorporating active practice in our classrooms during our CMAST professional development sessions. 

One example is a student/teacher activity,   in this active practice activity students work in pairs acting as the teacher (explaining how to solve the problem) and the student working to understand the problem.  We found that routinely incorporating this active practice activity in our classrooms lead to gains on our quarterly benchmark exams. 

A ninth grade physics student engaged in student-teacher active practice.

Shift to Common Core

One of the greatest impacts of the CMAST professional development on the science instruction at Animo Pat Brown has been the the shift towards the common core standards. The common core standards integrate reading and writing with science content.  As our science team progressed through the year, our coach Kathy Clemmer introduced us to the common core standards and exemplar questions.

Common core questions require a greater in-depth understanding of content than the current csts.  In addition the students are required to explain their reasoning in writing.  After spending some time with examples of common core questions our team began to increase our level of questioning in our classrooms and required students to explain their reasoning as they solve a problem.

One example was our physics final exam (image below - click for pdf).  The exam was only one question; however in order to solve the problem students required an in-depth understanding or motion, forces and energy.  In addition, as students solve the question we asked them to explain their reasoning in writing.

Below is a sample student response to the common core physics final exam (click to enlarge). You can see that the student solves the problem integrating her understanding of potential and kinetic energy, two dimensional motion, and Newton’s laws of physics.