ATTIG- Anchoring Event Response

           Both of these articles discussed the idea of choosing anchoring events and having students create explanatory models that connect many different ideas from the particular unit being covered. The articles argue that these anchoring events help students narrow down why they are studying science, create overarching meaning, and connect a number of scientific theory, principles, and ideas.

            If I am being completely honest, I don’t love this idea. I felt that a lot of the examples presented in the book could be searched on Google and found relatively easily, especially with the format that these articles suggest using. I know that personally, my kids hate being wrong and they love their iPads. If I presented a question like this and asked to create an explanation, their knee jerk reaction would be to ask if this particular assignment is being graded on accuracy. And as soon as you tell a student that it is for participation grade, often I feel that the rigor and the cognitive awareness decreases significantly.  Their second question would be “can we use our iPads?” because creating an explanation for something you know little to nothing about can be very daunting and overwhelming.

            I also feel like there is a lot of guesswork and unknowns for students, especially at the beginning. Is there a way to take this uncertainty away from students and provide a little bit more support? I like the explanatory model and I agree that it is something that we as scientists do often. However, we typically make explanatory models when we have more information and have done relatively vast amounts of research. We hardly ever observe something and make a full blown explanation. Would this still be beneficial to do in the middle of the unit once students have a little bit more information or would that put the cognitive load on teachers instead of students?

            I would love to see what a rubric for assignments like these look like as well as discuss how to keep motivation high.  Currently I feel like if I did this with my kids I would just be throwing them in the deep end with little support. I think this could work I just feel like the way these articles describe it, students are given little support past a few ambiguous guiding questions and guidelines concerning how students will set up their drawings.

            I also didn’t love how the article knocked students replicating models of “things.” As someone who teaches chemistry and deals with concepts that students can’t see and if they do not build models they flat out will not understand. You cannot present the atom to kids without having them build a model. They don’t know what these things look like and the best way for them to get an idea is to see it, touch it, and build it.

            While I agree that students should be given assignments that are relevant and purposeful and connect many different ideas, I think that there could be other, better ways to do it. I think that this could work however, if students had more support and possibly a rubric detailing what students are supposed to do.