Pre-Assessment and Analysis

Unit Plan Part 2

Overview of the Assignment
In this assignment you will design, enact and interpret conversation(s) with a select group (3 or more) of your students that will
help you understand and use your students prior experiences and cultural/personal resources for learning science to plan your
science unit.

Preparing for the Assignment:

1) Select Students. For this assignment, you will need to talk with 3 or more students. You will gather them for a short
activity and conversation (15-20 minutes). Select your small group of students to represent a range of different cultures,
learning needs, engagement with science, and linguistic, social, physical, and academic needs.
2) Gathering necessary equipment. You will need to audio-record the conversation with your students. (As part of the
assignment, you will need to reference specific examples of students talk as evidence of their resources for learning.)
Therefore, you will need to arrange to have access to an audio cassette recorder, a digital audio recorder (included with
many cell phones and the Apple program Garage Band), or other means of recording students voices. Make sure to test
your recording equipment and set-up prior to the conversation to ensure that you can hear and understand each
students voice. If you have not already done so, ask your Mentor what permission is needed to audiotape
students. Most schools will require that a permission form be sent home to parents. Some mentors may have already
obtained this permission at the beginning of the school year. You will want to check with your MT regarding the
permission status of each student in the classroom so that you can select students who have permission from their
families to be recorded.
3) Planning to talk with students. You will need to carefully-design a discussion that will allow you to understand what
ideas and other resources your students bring to learning about your assigned unit. (Multiple choice questions or
questions asking students to define words are NOT rich opportunities for engaging with student understanding,
experiences and sense-making.) Prepare a brief description of your questions and follow-up probes, including any props
or tasks you plan to use as part of your discussion.
You should plan to obtain two types of information from the students in your small group during the discussion. They are
listed separately here to highlight the need to address both kinds of questions; however, you may find it easier to mix
these questions together in your actual conversation with students.

a) Students content related conceptions, ideas and thinking. For most science topics, much research
has been conducted to explore students ideas about the topics. This research should be considered when
planning both your pre-assessment conversation with students and your unit. Some curriculum materials
include information about typical student ideas. If your materials do not include this, you should seek out

additional resources. (Please note: You will be asked to identify the resources you used to identify typical
student ideas in the assignment template below.)
In this part of the discussion, your goal should be to learn about students ideas and explanations with respect
to the phenomenon you will be addressing in your unit. Some cautions:

You should be finding out about how students are thinking about your topic through exploring a specific
instructionally productive phenomenon (see slides) what theyve noticed about the phenomenon, what
ideas they have about the phenomenon, and most importantly, what explanations theyve developed
for the phenomenon not the vocabulary words or facts that they know. Open-ended questions (i.e.,
those with more than one acceptable answer) work best for this type of discussion. Avoid questions
with specific right or wrong answers.
Start the conversation with an open ended driving question to which all students can respond. (A student
may know a lot about science from her everyday life, but will shut down if she feels that she has
nothing to contribute to the conversation.)
Use props and examples of phenomena - physical objects are a great way to engage students with your
topic and will allow for a more concrete conversation about your topic.
An essential part of this conversation is eliciting what students may have learned about your topic
through their out-of-school experiences. Avoid the trap of asking only about ideas you expect students to
have learned in school.

b) Students prior experiences and cultural/personal resources for science learning. In this part
of the discussion, your goal should be to learn about the kinds of knowledge that your students have because of
their experiences in the world. You will want to ask your students a series of questions that will allow you to
answer the following questions about them:

What sorts of experiences have they had with your topic?

Where and what have they learned about your topic (e.g., past school experiences, museums,
camps, TV shows, books, older relatives)?
Do they or anyone in their family have a job or hobby related to the topic?
Have they traveled or lived anywhere that might have given them experiences or ideas related to
your topic?

Please note: You will need to write questions to probe for specific experiences. For example, you would not ask
students directly if they have any hobbies or interests related to your topic. But, if you were teaching a unit
about animal life cycles, you might find out about students pets or experiences on farms or observing animals
in natural settings. This requires thinking carefully about your topic and how students may learn about it,
particularly out of school.

Completing the Assignment:

4) Talking with students. Talk with your select group of students around explaining a specific phenomenon from your
unit topic to elicit their a) content-related conceptions, ideas, and thinking and b) prior experiences and
cultural/personal resources for science learning. Be sure to audio record your discussion(s).
Some cautions:

Listen carefully to what students are saying.

o It can be easy to assume that students know nothing about a topic because they provide an
incorrect answer to one of your questions. Try to probe further, for example, by asking students to
explain their answers. Students can often tell us a lot about their thinking if we can hear past an
incorrect answer.
o Similarly, if students use science-y words, be sure to probe further. It can be easy to assume that
students fully understand a phenomenon because they can use big words, but often students use
these words without really understanding what they mean. Asking students to explain their
contributions or asking another follow-up question can help you to gain a more accurate picture of
students understanding.
The students should be the center of your conversation. Try to talk only to further explore students ideas.
This is not the time to be correcting students ideas or teaching about the topic.

5) Completing the analysis. Use the evidence of students a) content-related conceptions, ideas, and thinking
and b) prior experiences and cultural/personal resources for science learning elicited during your discussion(s)
to respond to the questions (see below). Based upon what you already know about your students, identify any strengths
or needs that may impact their science learning.
6) Considering implications for unit planning. Based upon your own reflections and discussions with peers, identify
implications of the information in your results chart for unit planning.

Assignment Template. In order to complete this assignment, please fill in the template below. (You can simply save this
document to your computer, remove the directions above, and replace the italicized text below with your own text to complete
each section.)

Name: Brittani Havenaar

Unit Topic:
Grade Level:

Matter
4th

Learning Expectations
GLECS:

 K-7 Standard P.CM: Develop an understanding of changes in the state of matter in terms of heating and
cooling, and in terms of arrangement and relative motion of atoms and molecules. Understand the
differences between physical and chemical changes. Develop an understanding of the conservation of
mass. Develop an understanding of products and reactants in a chemical change.
4-P.CM.E.1 Changes in StateMatter can be changed from one state (liquid, solid, gas) to another and then
back again. Heating and cooling may cause changes in state.
4-P.CM.04.11 Explain how matter can change from one state (liquid, solid, gas) to another by heating and
cooling.
NGSS:
5-PS1-1.Develop a model to describe that matter is made of particles too small to be seen.
Driving Example Phenomenon and Question:

Example Phenomenon: I will have each student hold a spoonful of Ice Cream in his or her hand. Then they
will be asked questions about what is happening to the ice cream as they hold it. I plan to have a time to pause
questions to allow students to wash hands. (Hopefully they will not attempt to eat it.)

QUESTION: Why does ice cream melts when you hold in your hand?
Background Research into Student Thinking:

Please describe what research says students in your age group commonly think about your topic. Be sure to
cite the sources for each of the ideas you describe.

Childrens naive view of matter is based on the "seeing is believing" principle. Particles
cannot be seen, so they do not need to exist in a functioning model to explain the
behavior of matter.
o Kind, V. (2004). Beyond Appearances: Students' misconceptions about basic chemical ideas.
Retrieved January 28, 2015, from http://www.rsc.org/images/Misconceptions_update_tcm18188603.pdf

This research states that the students will often not include the aspects of particles in their explanation of behavior of matter. This
is seen in my discussion as the word particles is not addressed, as I believe this is due to the research stating because it is not
seen, it is not addressed. My students clearly addressed that the physical appearance changed but were unable to go deeper into
the explanation.

Discussion Plan:

Please describe your plan for talking with students. Begin with asking your driving question. What questions
might you ask them during the conversation? How will you probe their responses for further information?
(Remember that this plan is only a general guide you will be probing student thinking and asking them
questions to gain more information as you talk with them. You do not need to make sure that you ask every
question-particularly if during the course of your conversation you discover more information from your
students that you need to follow up on!)
o I plan to ask my two students in a separate classroom down the hall as we have three empty
classrooms on the second floor. I plan to have each student hold ice cream in their hand while
asking the first set of questions. These questions will begin with my driving question. Why does ice
cream melts when you hold in your hand? I will continue by asking specific follow up questions. When they
say because their hand is touching it, I will ask what about the hand causes it to melt? How does the heat
get there? Etc. I will try my best to press and probe based on the answers my students give me. I will ask
clarification questions when need be, and ask situational questions about what if I placed my ice cream in
the sun what would happen etc. I will focus on open ended questions to allow discussion.

Analysis of Student Understanding and Thinking:

STEP 4: Unpack your student(s) thinking by responding to the following questions:

1. Include a transcript of a conversational exchange around 2 students explaining how or why

something happens. (5 or 6 contributions to the conversations.) (Maybe a minute of the
conversation.) (I asked the questions. I placed numbers as identifiers between the three students I had used for
this discussion.)

Why does ice cream melts when you hold in your hand?

1- Our hands are probably warm from your body heat and because of it and this is all-cold.
1- Its going to turn into a liquid.
2-ugh well the body temperature in our blood is really warm. Sometimes if were cold we get warmed by the sun. The sun
feels really good. But no place is dark, I mean its all light and you can feel the goodness in your body and feel the warmth in
your blood.
Okay whats causing it to melt?
1-Its warmness, its coming from within her blood inside of what we are warm. We are warm blooded. Not cold-blooded
snake.

But why is the ice cream changing states?

1-Changing? Because its being warmed up.
Okay I could hold an ice cube and what causes it to melt though?
1- The radiation or something.
2- Fire is more powerful than ice. Water is more powerful than fire unless the water is frozen then it will be ice and then the
fire will melt. That statement makes me feel smart somehow.
What if I set my ice cream out in the sun?
1-It will melt because the heat from the sun is really hot and has a distance of heat. So the radiation from the ray of the heat
from the sun is melting it.
1- The blood in your body is 98F which causes it to heat up your blood and melt the ice cream that is in your hand.
How do you know that when we apply heat something it will melt?
2-It will start to drip and get all over. It starts all strong and frozen solid but as we apply heat it gets weak and all mushy and
go all over the place. It used to be strong frozen solid but itll get all squishy. (Showed with hand motions of tight grips with
strong and open movement with weak.)
What causes it to get all squishy and weak?
2- Heat.
1- I also say heat. We will use heat all of our lives. The heat will melt the ice cream, so it drips and melts and becomes a
liquid. And in one day and night it may continue to become a gas.
So now you have explains how something is a solid, liquid or a gas. What makes these changes? Lets look at a liquid to a gas. What
causes this to happen?
1- Liquid evaporates. The heat causes it.

2. Describe the students explanation for the phenomenon you showed them (It can be correct or
incorrect.)
What do they each say about how or why something happens? (Be careful not to add your own ideas here...
what does each student say?)

Student #1: This student explains that the ice cream melts in our hands because of radiation of the heat
from the sun. He/she also mentions the warmth from within our blood causing our hands to warm up causing
the ice cream to melt from the heat.
Student #2: This student explains that the ice cream melts in our hands because its strong when its frozen
and when we apply heat it gets weak and melts. He/she also explains that the ice cream melts due to heat,
which is given from the sun and makes your body feel warm inside.
3. Given what you know about your student, why do you think they are thinking about this idea in this
way? (Where does this idea come from?)
What other ideas, thoughts or experiences do they use to help them explain their thinking and ideas?

Student #1: I believe that this student is referencing our most current science unit when making his assumptions
about how heat from the sun is involved in the melting of the ice cream. In our unit Sun, Moon and Earth we discussed how
heat is involved in determining the seasons of earth as well as how its involved in the temperature of the moon. The
temperature of the Moon has also bee discussed in great detail as we just wrapped up a Project Based Learning project
involving building a colony on the moon. Our students had to work to make a colony on the moon, through guided
discussions on what would be needed, including natural resources such as water and how to get oxygen to the moon. They
had to also consider how to support the temperature needed to sustain life as the moon is only half in light and half in dark,
causing dramatic differences in the temperature. I believe this is also another reason why student #2 references the sun as
a way to create warmth to the body, which is in term warming the ice cream.
Student #2 references the words strong and weak causing differences in states. I believe this is in reference to a
recent visit from Impression 5 museum. Our school has impression 5 come every other month to each a lesson in our
classroom to our students. The most recent one, had to do with Dry Ice. Our students learned about sublimation as well as
how the particles move. They demonstrated this through having the students stand close together (strong) to form a solid
and them move according to the other states within a designated area of our classroom. I believe this is what influenced
student number 2s ideas as to how the particles change the states of matter as the instructor mentioned how the heat is
what caused movement.

4. How does each of the students ideas in their explanation from #2 above help them to understand
how or why something happens?
a. Both of the students understand that the changes in matter come from something to do with heat, in this
case the addition of heat. They know that the body temperature has something to do with it but they also
knew of another source of heat, in this case the sun. Student number 2 even knew a basic idea about strong
and weak, as I interpreted to mean strong hold vs. more loose movement. This allowed the students to

understand how the changes in states are attributed to heat, which causes the change in particle
movements. This student even demonstrated this movement through the use of her hands. Student #2
displayed a tight grip to show strong or tight particle movement and more open hands clapping to show a
weak particle movement.
5. How does each of the students ideas in their explanation interfere or cause difficulty for the
students understanding about how or why something happens?
a. The students mainly focused on the addition of heat and I fear that confusion will arise when we
talk about the absence of heat. They understand that heat from the sun or their bodies causes
changes to occur, but then how does something freeze even in the presence of the sun. When I
asked about placing the ice cream outside in the sun in my conversation, my students stated
that the sun would cause the ice cream to melt. I would love to see how they interpret now,
placing the ice cream outside when it is below 32 degrees and see what happens. I fear that
they will still believe that the suns rays of heat will cause it to melt. I hope to help them to
understand that the addition of heat comes in a multitude of forms as well as the addition of
cool air. The confusion I foresee is how there can be an absence of heat in the presence of the
sun.
6. As the teacher, how do you want your student to be thinking about this specific concept or idea they
talked about during the discussion? (Remember to keep your expectations grade-level appropriate.)

How are you hoping they would explain the phenomena you showed them? (If your student(s) ideas were already
mostly correct, what would you want them to be able to add on to their ideas in order to think in a more sophisticated
way about the ideas they are discussing? What experiences or ideas would you want them to draw on while thinking
about these ideas?)

Its changing from a solid to a liquid. My hand applying heat to my chunk of cold hard ice cream causes this
change. My ice creams particles are speeding up. They were tightly packed with very little vibrations and
movements between them. When the heat is added it causes my ice cream to change states. The change in state
happens when my particles speed up so that they are no longer with little movement but fast movement. The
liquid state is when the particles move apart from each other more than in a solid, but less than in a gas. If I
continue to add heat to my ice cream, it would begin to melt and even evaporate from the particles speeding up
so much that they become a gas.
7. Share two instructional experiences you could provide in a science unit to support the student(s) in
moving towards thinking about things in a more accurate or more sophisticated way.
Experiences where students see the ice cream in the sun outside yet the ice cream wont melt due to it
being below freezing outside. This will allow the students to see how the sun is not applying enough

heat to cause changes in state and how more heat would be needed to see a change. Once it is above
freezing I would like to try this again to show how in that case the suns rays were string enough to
cause melting to occur.
Experiences where students see how heat can be added in an array of ways and not just through
hands (also through air (breath) and a burner. This also applies to how the cool air changes a state of
matter (Specifically through the formation of ice cream in a bag.)

8. Implications for Unit Planning:

Once the above is completed jot some notes and general impressions below for each category detailing the information you have
gathered about your students has for your teaching. This information will not be graded, but will be used during your unit planning.
1. Commonly Held Ideas. List your students commonly held ideas relevant to your learning goals. What implications
might these ideas have for your unit and unit planning?
i. The suns rays are what cause the heat to your body to warm up the ice cream.
1. I will need to address other ways in which heat can be added.
ii. The suns rays are enough to melt the ice cream.
1. I will need to address that sometimes the amount of heat being added changes based on the
solid that is changing form. Address that depending on the current temperature of the object;
you may need to add more heat. Such as frozen chocolate vs. room temp. Chocolate.
iii. The solids are strong but when heat is added the solid turns to a liquid that is weak.
1. I will need to address how the particles change based on the change in state. I will need to be
specific on vocabulary here, as to focus on the types of movement rather than the bonds while
also addressing the vibrations.

2. Cultural and Personal Resources for Learning: What knowledge and experiences from the students out-ofschool lives are relevant to your unit? How can these resources be drawn upon in your unit and unit planning?

i. Cooking I plan to have the students use every day sources to see the changes in states, such as
chocolate, butter, ice cream and water to see the changes. This will allow the students to make
connection with every day experiences that they may already be seeing at home.
ii. Snow/ (Other water resources such as rivers and lakes that freeze)- I will use the snow as an
example of when heat is added it changes state to water but then heat is taken away it changes to ice.
They are the same amount but look different when changing from one state to another based on the
containers shape they are in. (snow ball in beaker, then change to water then freeze into ice. When frozen
they see how it changes into the shape of the beaker rather than the snow ball it was originally in.)
3. Linguistic, social and academic challenges, resources and supports: What specific student challenges and
resources might be taken into account in your unit? What linguistic, social or academic supports can be provided in your
unit and unit planning to address these challenges?

i. I have a student who has dyslexia. I will make sure to speak individually with this student to make
sure he/she understand the task at hand and the questions being asked in the lab reports.
ii. I have an ELL student who reads English at a very low level. I will make sure to also speak with
this student individually to help him/her to understand the questions. I also plan on addressing key
vocabulary in the booklets I will be making, and having images when possible to help him/her understand
what it is I am talking about.

Grading Criteria:
Desired Features

Points

Includes a transcript of two students entire conversational exchanges (everything each student said, other
students interjected, and the teacher asked/followed up on their ideas) in which a student is explaining their
understanding of how or why something happens.

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Several commonly-held student ideas relative to the topic are described in the background research for student
thinking. References/sources are included for each idea.
The plan is detailed and specific. It is clear that the conversation with students was thought through in
advance.
The plan includes thoughtful ways of eliciting important information about students resources for learning
(including means of eliciting both ideas/thinking and experiences).
The plan focuses on eliciting students explanation of how or why something happens.
Content-related ideas and thinking are recorded.
Both strengths and weaknesses in student understanding are identified.
Description of the task and setting used for the pre-assessment is detailed and specific.
Prompts/questions are open ended, grade level appropriate and effective at eliciting information about
students prior knowledge, prior experiences and resources for learning (emphasis on prior experiences
and resources for learning rather than just knowledge base).
Follow up prompts/questions are designed to effectively reveal students procedures and strategies for making
sense of natural phenomena and science concepts.
Findings are consistently well-supported with specific evidence (for example, direct quotations from the
conversation with students, description of student interactions with the props, etc.).
Findings include examples of student prior experiences (or lack of experiences) and resources for learning
outside of the classroom.
Findings include a focus on strategies and procedures students are using to make sense of natural phenomena
and science concepts and include analysis of incorrect as well as correct student responses.
Implications for teaching focus on specific ways to support students in developing and extending their scientific
content understandings and scientific sense making thinking skills during the unit.
Implications for teaching include how the unit will be differentiated to meet individual student needs and
effective ways to include and connect prior knowledge, prior experiences, and resources for learning to the
unit.

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