Planning hard to teach easy in STEM in primary schools
Guest post, written by Dr. Jane Hunter
The phrase planning hard to teach easy was an expression I first heard my doctoral supervisors use in their classroom research in schools more than a decade ago.
The more I understand teaching practice and deep thoughtful learning planning hard to teach easy is necessary.
So, what does it mean?
If you do the hard thinking up front about what it is, you want the students to learn as a classroom teacher – carefully structure that – make it student centered – while still allowing for curiosity and self-direction – classroom learning unfolds in more deep and engaging ways for primary school students.
At least this was the approach common to planning in the classrooms of teams of teachers in 14 NSW K-6 schools in research documented in the book High Possibility STEM Classrooms: Integrated STEM Learning in Research and Practice (Hunter, 2021).
In a new study in a primary school on the central coast in NSW planning hard to teach easy is one of the guiding principles teaching teams are using for Integrated STEM in learning sequences for next term.
This research is designed to build teachers’ professional capacity in STEM and is being supported through release time for professional learning, collaborative drafting and team conversations, and action learning cycles (where teachers question, analyze, model solutions, try out their learning plans in the classroom, reflect on practice within their team and then consolidate the data they collect).
The teachers are using an inquiry template as it allows for an explicit scaffold to support the planning processes using conceptions and themes in the framework of High Possibility Classrooms, outcomes from multiple syllabus documents including the general capabilities in the Australian Curriculum.
Of note in initial discussions in professional learning sessions with the teaching teams at the school are the ways parents might be involved in their child’s STEM learning. Parents often want to be involved in school life in the early years of education so this is an ideal time to capitalize on their enthusiasm and availability.
For example, a guest speaker drawn from the parent community is one way to nurture STEM conversations about energy and electricity transfer when perhaps the local female electrician or a mechanical engineer (parent of a child in the Stage 3 class) is willing to share their expertise. Always useful to check the parent is comfortable explaining what they do in a bite-sized chunk or even asking the child to record the parent at home on their iPhone in a short video that could be played later in the classroom (also gets around the need t for Child Protection clearance and Covid concerns). At another primary school in an earlier study discussed in detail in Chapter 4 Disadvantage is no barrier to Integrated STEM in the Hunter (2021) book parents of children in a special needs support unit noticed changes in learning when the students had opportunities to record their STEM learning using digital technologies, making short films with a peer to explain various concepts. While often preferring to work alone the teacher of the students remarked: “Their inquiry skills have really developed … the aspect of being more independent learners and working collaboratively with peers when required has really shone through”.
The professional work of teachers in primary schools in STEM is tied to deep understanding of curriculum, syllabus outcomes, and developing contextually relevant learning designs be they meaningful sequences, units of work or problem-solving tasks and real-world challenges. Not a worksheet is seen anywhere … and so as one school term closes, and another is not that far away, teachers will be planning hard to teach easy.
Author Bio
Dr. Jane Hunter is an Associate Professor in teacher education at the University of Technology Sydney, Australia. She has worked in education for more than 30 years, as a classroom teacher, head teacher, senior policy officer and consultant in the government and non-government sectors, and more recently as a university-based teacher educator and researcher.
Learn more by visiting her website: High Possibility Classrooms
Connect on Twitter: https://twitter.com/janehunter01
University profile page: https://profiles.uts.edu.au/jane.hunter
Image credit
Photo by Arthur Krijgsman from Pexels