CBCI for the Thinking Classroom

September 30, 2023 Anya Nikolaenko Concept-Based Curriculum and Instruction 0

Written by: Anya Nikolaenko

Hello readers,

This semester, I am taking a graduate course, TCE623,  at Miami University and finishing up my degree in Transformative Education. This course “introduces learners to pedagogies that are learner-driven and centered on justice and equity strategies. The focus is on frameworks to promote and champion diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice within the learners’ classrooms, schools, and communities.” I will be creating blog posts sharing my learning experiences throughout this course and hopefully inspire some of your fellow educators to try out some of these strategies in your own classroom! I look forward to hearing your feedback in the coming weeks via the comment section! 

We are reading the book, Concept-Based Curriculum and Instruction, written by H. Lynn Erickson. Lois A. Lanning, and Rachel French and published in 2017. This book has completely shifted my mindset around the kind of educator that I want to be and made me realize how little complexity my current science lessons have. Concept-based curriculum and instruction is a pedagogy that creates a three-dimensional way of gaining knowledge including knowing (factually), understanding (conceptually), and doing (skillfully). In modern-day public education, we often see a lot of scripted curricula focused on students acquiring knowledge with skills and facts and then regurgitating those facts for assessments and standardized tests. What this book has taught me so far is that children desperately need to be immersed in CBCI classrooms where they are intellectually stimulated and forced to think not only at a lower level (skills) but also higher-order thinking (conceptual understanding). Don’t get me wrong, facts and skills are still super important. The problem is that educators often end there. With CBCI, educators develop unit plans that not only include foundational skills and critical content knowledge but also take it a step further with “key concepts and conceptual ideas becoming the ‘drivers’ for learning” (Erickson et al., 2017, p. 11). Creating CBCI unit plans in the classroom prepares students with 21st-century foundational skills: creative thinking, critical thinking, and reflective (metacognitive) thinking. The future of our society depends on the kinds of minds that we are shaping so I believe this is critical work!

My Unit of Study: 3rd Grade Science

I will be developing a concept-based unit plan around the Earth and Space Science science strand from Ohio’s Science Standards (2018). The standard which I will be focusing on is 3.ESS.3: Some of Earth’s resources are limited- Some of Earth’s resources become limited due to overuse and/or contamination. Reducing resource use, decreasing waste and/or pollution, recycling, and reusing can help conserve these resources. 

  • I will be using the macro concept of interdependence. 
  • Conceptual question: How are humans interdependent with Earth’s natural resources?
  • Critical content- What students must know (factually)
    • Different types of earth’s resources 
    • How they are used and how they can be conserved
    • Effectiveness of different methods of conservation
  • What students must understand (conceptually)
    • Human overuse, pollution, and waste have impacts on our local and global environment.
    • Earth’s resources impacts our daily lives and this impact has changed over time.
    • There are short-term and long-term repercussions to neglecting the Earth’s recources. 
  • What students must be able to do (skilfully)
    • Students will be able to interpret and communicate science concepts
      • Students can choose a marketing strategy (e.g. video commercial, podcast, pamphlet, poster, song, newspaper article) about ways to reduce, reuse, and recycle a certain limited resource of their choosing. 
  • I believe that a major challenge for me will be the limited time I have to teach science with the number of math standards that I have to cover in the second semester of the school year and preparing my 3rd grade students for their first ever Ohio State Test in Mathematics.  I will have to get creative with my minutes to ensure that my students get a thorough understanding of this unit and create a quality product to share with the school and community!

CBCI fosters two TCE threshold concepts in the following ways: 

  1. Both teachers and students have empowerment/agency: How does the subject matter taught in schools reflect and impact 1) the lives of your (future) students and 2) larger social issues?
    1. CBCI empowers teachers to create unit studies around conceptual understandings of large concepts that relate to the unit of study. For my unit plan, I will be using the CBCI macroconcept of interdependence to help students conceptualize how humans are interdependent with Earth’s natural resources. This connects to TCE thresholds as students will learn how natural resources affect their daily lives and how overuse, pollution, and waste is a larger societal issue and relates to global warming. We will connect this to our school by looking at what structures our Elementary School has in place to reduce, reuse, and recycle our limited resources and take a look at how human impact on the environment has impacted our local community through connecting with the Environmental Health Division of the Butler Counry General Health District. 
  1. Curriculum is more than standards, textbooks, or courses of study: How does the subject matter taught in schools reflect and impact 1) the lives of your(future) students and 2) larger social issues?
    1. CBCI emphasized the importance of students using both lower and higher order processing centers of their brain through synergistic thinking. This connects to the TCE threshold because students are engaged in creative, critical, and reflective thinking rather than just studying vocabulary words and facts and then being assessed on these basic understaindings. For my unit of study in environmental science, students will think beyond the standards to interpret and create their own campaign about ways to reduce, reuse, and recycle a certain limited resource of their choosing. This will connect to both my school and community as we will share our projects with the school and invite classrooms in. I hope to be able to connect with the Environmental Health Division of the Butler County General Health District and have someone come into my classroom and talk about what the county is doing to protect Earth’s natural resources.

Here are two awesome blogs to learn more about Concept-Based Curriculum and Instruction:

  1. https://professionallearninginternational.com/why-moving-to-a-concept-based-inquiry-approach-just-makes-sense/
  2. https://www.edutopia.org/article/3-ways-boost-students-conceptual-thinking/