3.5 Implementation Connections

3.5 Implementation Connections: The instructional strategies and activities used in this lesson clearly connected to students’ prior knowledge and experience.

This indicator captures the degree to which the classroom instruction takes into consideration the students’ prior knowledge of mathematics or science concepts or students’ experiences with mathematics or science in their everyday lives. The teacher may begin a lesson by explicitly connecting concepts the students have already learned to concepts the class will be exploring that day. Alternatively, the teacher may wait until a particular point during the course of a lesson where it becomes important—i.e., there is a “need to know”—to remind students of how a concept they’re learning relates to prior content, in that class or other classes.

The teacher might purposely solicit students’ prior knowledge or their experiences with science or math concepts that appear in everyday life to launch a lesson on science or mathematics. To score highly on this indicator, the teacher must not only make efforts to elicit students’ prior knowledge and experience, but he or she also must use this prior knowledge to reach the objectives or enrich the students’ interest and understanding of the concepts being taught.

General Rubric

1. This item should be rated a 1 if there was no evidence of the teacher making any attempt at connecting instruction to students’ prior knowledge and experiences.
   
    
2. This item should be rated a 2 if the teacher made a small or passing reference to a previously learned mathematics/science concept and/or students’ everyday experiences with science or mathematics.
   
    
3. This item should be rated a 3 if the teacher made at least one explicit attempt to draw upon students’ prior knowledge of previously learned mathematics/science concept and students’ everyday experiences with science or mathematics, seeking and getting input from students in the class.
   
    
4. This item should be rated a 4 if the teacher made several attempts throughout the class period to draw upon students’ prior knowledge of previously learned mathematics/science concepts and students’ everyday experiences with science or mathematics, getting input from a majority of students in the class.
   
    
5. This item should be rated a 5 if the lesson is built purposefully and explicitly from the perspective of the students’ prior knowledge of the concepts being covered. This included both their prior school knowledge of related mathematics or science concepts, and their prior knowledge of using or experiencing the concepts in everyday life. In addition, the teacher made a significant effort to get input from all students related to their experiences and prior knowledge with the mathematics and science content and concepts explored in the lesson. This item should also be rated a 5 if the teacher engaged the class in an extended discussion relating to their prior knowledge and experience, making it a focus of instruction.

Specific Examples of Supporting Evidence

1. In this lesson, the biology teacher put a transparency detailing the biomolecules of the Krebs cycle on the overhead and instructed the students to copy the figure into their notebooks. No attempt was made to place the information in a larger context or connect to previous lessons on metabolic pathways.
   
    
2. In this biology lesson about energy production from the chemical interactions of biomolecules in the Krebs cycle, the instructor simply stated that the purpose of this metabolic pathway was “to produce ATP.” When a student asked why an organism needed ATP, the instructor stated emphatically, “I know you know this! I’m sure it was covered in eighth grade!”
   
    
3. In a lesson about biomolecules, the instructor attempted to understand students’ prior knowledge about the role of metabolic pathways in energy production by starting the class with a discussion about what the students ate for breakfast, the number of calories consumed, and which portions of their meal were composed of proteins, lipids, and carbohydrates. Although this discussion was a fair effort to identify student prior knowledge and establish a context for learning about the biochemical processes in glycolysis and the Krebs cycle, it was not developed further, even though there were multiple instances where the continuation of this discussion would be appropriate.
   
    
4. In the lesson about energy production from biochemical pathways of glycolysis and Krebs cycle described above, the teacher repeatedly came back to the “What did you have for breakfast?” scenario to help students understand how these pathways not only produced energy needed for life but also many basic carbon molecules that formed precursors to the proteins, carbohydrates, and lipids used to construct important components of cells and tissues. The teacher told the students that they could use a chart in the appendix of their text to determine the calories produced from the food they ate.
   
    
5. In the lesson about energy production from biochemical pathways of glycolysis and Kreb’s cycle described above, the instructor used the “What did you have for breakfast?” scenario to keep students’ attention focused on how each step in these pathways not only produced energy needed for life but also many basic carbon molecules that formed precursors to the proteins, carbohydrates and lipids used to construct important components of cells and tissues as well as the foods they consumed. After asking each student to calculate the calories produced by the food they ate that morning, she then connected the kind of biomolecule to the calories produced upon digestion through interaction with different points on these metabolic pathways.