CBCI Main points
As teachers, we want our students to reach that higher level of thinking because it will encourage them to think more about what they are learning. That is what Concept-Based Curriculum and Instruction (CBCI) is about. CBCI has shifted my viewpoint on what a classroom should look and sound like. In the world of “traditional” teaching, there are a lot of lectures from the teacher that the students must get the facts and memorize them because of the standardized that students must remember how to do things from memorization. This puts a lot of pressure on the teachers to ensure they teach every standard, and this means typically less authentic learning happens, less critical thinking, and a less diverse learning experience overall. Concept-based curriculum and instruction shift the “traditional” way of teaching to thinking about what is happening with the knowledge that’s gained. CBCI creates a three-dimensional way of acquiring knowledge. The three-dimensional model includes knowing (factually), understanding (conceptually), and doing (skillfully). The concepts being taught are at the center of the unit plan, where these concepts encourage students to really think about what they are learning; they are exploring, asking questions, and seeing those patterns across different subjects. The skills and facts are important but should not be the purpose of the unit; it should be the balance between the lower level (skills) and the higher level (conceptual understanding). I want my students to gain that balance of understanding, use their prior knowledge, and relate it to their connections with their new knowledge.
Want to learn more? Here’s a video on conceptual understanding and the transfer.
What is CBCI?
Concept-Based Curriculum and Instruction (CBCI) focuses on the concepts that direct a unit rather than the memorization of facts and standards. CBCI aims to foster higher-level critical thinking and create pathways that allow content and information to transfer from one context to another. Students will do better when they can understand the importance and relevance of what they are learning, and as a result, the learning becomes more meaningful, and they are more motivated to learn. When students have a meaningful understanding, they can transfer the content to other contexts that allow them to apply it to the real world. CBCI is a three-dimensional approach that focuses on what the students know prior to the unit, understand the unit, and what they can do after a lesson. The three-dimensional approach includes knowing (factually), understanding (conceptually), and doing (skillfully). With CBCI, fewer topics will be brought up in each lesson to ensure students ask the right questions and are discussing the topics in more depth.
Unit of Study: 3rd Grade Science
Unit Overview: I will develop a concept-based unit plan around a life science strand from Ohio’s Third Grade Science Standards for my unit of study. My students will explore how the stage of an organism’s life cycle depends on its environment. They will explore the life cycle of a frog through observational notes, quantitative and qualitative data, drawings, and other hands-on activities that will give them an authentic firsthand experience of an organism’s life cycle. Students will be expected to understand that during a frog’s life cycle, there is a relationship between the environment and the traits they develop.
Unit Title: Flog Life Cycle
Concepts: metamorphosis and adaptation
Process: Scientific method
Topic: Behavior, Growth, and Changes
Standards: 3.LS.3: Plants and animals have life cycles that are part of their adaptations for survival in their natural environments. 3.MD.3 Create scaled picture graphs to represent a data set with several categories. Create scaled bar graphs to represent a data set with several categories. W.3.10 Write routinely over extended time frames (time for research, reflection, and revision) and shorter time frames (a single sitting or a day or two) for a range of discipline-specific tasks, purposes, and audiences.
Challenges that I anticipate
I anticipate encountering several challenges as this will be my first time teaching this unit as a third-grade teacher. I anticipate that timing will be challenging due to the many math standards I’m supposed to prepare my students with for the third-grade standardized test and the fact that science typically gets the afterthought. The majority of my students have little prior knowledge of life cycles or science. I have looped with this group of students and know what was taught last year in second grade. Therefore, we will need to start very slowly with the unit and spend some time learning about the scientific method before we work on observing the frogs and learning about their life cycle. Another possible challenge will be having an actual frog in the classroom. My principal has already approved this, but we will need to discuss with the students what it means to be responsible for another organism’s life.
TCE Thresholds
#1 Both teachers and students have empowerment.
CBCI encourages students to take risks and know it’s okay to be wrong. This empowers teachers’ unit plans around conceptual understandings of concepts that relate to the unit instead of just focusing on the standards the state states we must teach. Students can then be more critical of what is being taught in the classroom and question why they are learning what they are. Teachers need to be genuine and meaningful when they provide specific feedback to students to deepen their thinking and understanding of the concepts to be learned, and not just do a good job; they need to know what they did correctly or what they did wrong. CBCI wanted students to become more engaged in the classroom by speaking up because they have the autonomy to express themselves and talk about their learning. After all, it is a safe place to do so. In my classroom, I always ask my students what they want to learn (in science) at the beginning of the year. I do this to let them know their voice matters to me, and I will try to teach them that. This also helps my students become more engaged in the units and want to learn not because they have to but because they are interested in the topic.
#2 Curriculum is more than standards, textbooks, or courses of study
CBCI moves from the traditional approach that many teachers have been using, where the goal is to teach all of the standards and memorize the facts and knowledge being taught. CBCI does consider the standards and does not revolve around the standards or textbook. However, CBCI focuses more on finding ways to teach students so that they can access and apply that knowledge. This is not just for teachers to check off the students’ standards or objects but to create authentic, meaningful connections with their learning. This is all centered around creating that sought-after level, critical thinking goal. At Hamilton, we strive for students to engage in the critical thinking level that CBCI encourages students to achieve, where they will deepen their thinking. We are also focused on explicit instruction in the classroom. CBCI is just that, and we are explicitly talking about the concept and how it plays into everyday life. This is not solely done by reading the text corally but by working together to define concepts and how they can affect us every day and how we can apply it to the complex world we live in.
Great work! I agree that sometimes it can be tough to give a substantial amount of time and effort into science when there is so much pressure on the standardized testing subjects. However combining it with math standards I think minimizes this problem a little bit! I think integrating children’s literature on life cycles, across different genres, could allow you to expand this unit to ELA standards. For instance, students could write diary entries from the perspective of a tadpole maturing into a frog.
Thank you for your comment. I did forget to mention that I would be timing this unit lesson at the same time the students will be doing their frog unit with my ELA partner. They will then get different genres through my partner.
I love the frog life cycle for your unit plan! I understand your worry about fitting the all of the math standards in the unit, but I think its important to remember what the text tells us. CBCI might require us to cut back on the number of standards and content to “cover”. If you had to choose which standards would be most important to this unit plans which ones would you choose to keep?
Thank you for your comment. I would say the most important to my unit lesson would be the science and The math standards for graphing and interpreting data.
Hello,
I like your unit plan! Maybe bring the students into the environment. This will help them understand the life cycle. You could also use the trip to practice making observations so the students feel more comfortable.
Your unit plan looks great, I want you to continue to incorporating more CBCI that helps you go above just state standards.
I would love to do this! Thank you for the idea. I think this would be something for the following year. I would definitely have to talk with my principal to figure out how we could do the trip.
Hi there! I like the idea you have going, but I think it can reach more than just the life cycle itself. If you are looking for students to understand life being dependent on environment, it may be a good chance to talk about biomes and adaptations. Similar to the other comment, I have little experience with 3rd grade standards, but I also feel like this can be extended. It’s nice that you are allowed to have a frog though! To have something that students can see and become familiar with is a great piece of buy in. Maybe you can do a 5 minute piece of information a day with the frog? I’m not sure, but I hope this helps!
Thank you for your comment! I could add some information about adaptations, as this information will be helpful for them in the following year. Part of the goal is to show how an animal’s life cycle adapts to its environment. For example, at the tadpole stage, they still have a tail because their environment is water, and in the next stage, they transition to land.
Hi! I think your unit plan is clear and focused already! I’m sure that will serve you well as you flesh it out. I like your concept, “during a frog’s life cycle, there is a relationship between the environment and the traits they develop.” But I wonder if you’ve thought about how that can be extended and related to other disciplines. I worry for myself that I am too broad, and perhaps that is why I’m wondering if this is too narrow? Maybe consider different life cycles of different organisms (rather than just frogs). Is there a common theme that runs through all forms of life? And does that theme interact between disciplines? to be clear, I teach high school, so the last time I really interacted in a 3rd grade classroom was when I was IN 3rd grade, so I am unfamiliar with your standards and what is expected of a 3rd grade student, but it does seem like there is some extension that can happen with this by studying frogs alongside other organisms to help studetns understand something bigger.
Regarding extending it to another discipline, I forgot to mention that I will be timing up this unit at the same time as the students are doing their ELA unit on frogs. Students will get the science aspect of the life cycle with me and then more information on frogs with my ELA partner. I do like your suggestion with another organism. I could have a butterfly, and then they could compare how the environment affects their life cycle. Thank you for your comment; it gave me some things to think about and how to improve my lesson.