FCS A B Int

Best Practices in CTE

Practice

What Teacher Does

What Students Do

Combat Misconceptions Teachers activate prior knowledge to determine misconceptions prior to teaching new content.

Students will compare their beginning knowledge of a topic to their new knowledge and will be able to discuss/write how their knowledge of the subject changed over time. Students should ask questions of each other about what is being presented and the conclusions they draw from their models or projects. Students will create, evaluate and refne models. Models can include diagrams, physical replicas, mathematical representations, analogies, and computer simulations. Students should engage in investigations that range from those structured by the teacher to those that emerge from student questions. Levels of exploration range from teacher-led structured inquiry to student-directed open inquiry. Students should organize and interpret raw data through strategic analysis. Such analysis can bring out the meaning of data and relevance, so that they may be used as evidence when drawing conclusions. Students will construct solutions to the presented problems and present their fndings to both the teacher and fellow students. Students will use academic language and evidence from class experiences to explain the present content.

Defne Problems and Ask Questions

Teachers will engage students by presenting content in various ways and allowing students to brainstorm hypotheses and propose new questions. Teachers will provide and explicitly teach some models to students and allow students to create models. Through purposeful feedback, teachers will help students refne their models. Teachers will provide students with hands-on opportunities to solve problems. This can be guided by the teacher or left open-ended for students to test their own ideas.

Develop Models

Plan and Carry Out Investigations

Teachers will explicitly teach students how to organize content-specifc data and justify conclusions based on the data.

Analyze and Interpret Data

Teachers will facilitate opportunities where students are encouraged to state/solve a problem and develop a solution to the problem. Teachers should develop and use both formative and summative assessments which make student

Problem-Solving

Use Authentic Assessment