OpenSciEd Unit 7.2 · Lesson 08 · 8.A
Look for: As students are constructing the charts, list…
From Teacher Edition
Facilitation guidance from the lesson plan — what to notice in student thinking and how to respond while teaching.
Building towards
8.A Evaluate competing design solutions based on jointly developed and agreed-upon design criteria using systematic processes to show how small changes in one design characteristic might cause unexpected changes in other design characteristics.
What to look / listen for
As students are constructing the charts, listen for teams using cause-and-effect relationships to predict outcomes that are not on their Design Testing Matrix. Look for arms in the organizer to branch (a cause having more than one effect) and for there to be a series of boxes more than just one step removed from the cause (cascading consequences).
What to do
Circulate while teams are working to look and listen for discussions that are explicitly mentioning cause-and-effect relationships. Encourage this practice with prompts, such as the following:
Help me understand what I’m seeing—what things did you change? What was affected by that change?
How did such a small change to ___ have such a big effect on ___?
Does this change cause a positive, negative, or neutral consequence?