Dear Dana and Center for AIW extended community,
I'm excited to pass along this reflection on an Individual Career Development Plan from a teacher just starting her thrid year in AIW. She wrote this last spring and I believe it's worthy of sharing.
"The heredity unit in 7th grade science changed drastically as a result of [AIW]. The focus on construction of knowledge [COK] caused me to change the order of the unit. I [began] by focusing on inquiry and presented students with a question: How are traits passed from parents to offspring? Students explored this question through the use of a virtual simulation that required data collection. Students constructed their own knowledge about how parents pass on genetic material and the role of dominant and recessive alleles.
As we progressed through the unit, we were able to relate new content to this lab [that required Construction of Knowledge]--especially as we studied Punnett Squares and predicted the probability of offspring having certain traits as a result of parent genotypes."
Not surprisingly, students "performed well on the summative assessment associated with this unit, particularly on questions related to patterns of inheritance and dominant and recessive alleles."
Chris Billings
Middle School Principal
Gilbert Community School