Skip to main content

MBER ESSENTIALS

WHAT TO EXPECT FROM THE MBER ESSENTIALS

The MBER Essentials are a collection of helpful tools, strategies, and resources designed to help you, the teacher, gain a deeper insight into the nuances of the Model-Based Educational Resource. The ideas presented here are designed to help you understand what changes in thought and action will help you and your students transition to a model-based classroom.
Immediately below you'll find extensive information about some of our design commitments and philosophies. Use the list at right to find descriptions of some key tools used in the curricular resources. And at the bottom of the page, you can find a growing list of FAQs, each asked by teachers at our MBER Institutes.

Essential

A Year-long Coherent Sequence

We have designed a year long sequence that engages students in the science and engineering practices while building the life science disciplinary core ideas.

Looping back, going deeper

Essential

What is a Model?

Models are sets of ideas that explain natural phenomena. Scientific practice is about building models to better understand and explain the processes we observe in nature. Models are shared and discussed among scientists and are continuously tested.

"Models of" vs. "Models for"

Essential

What is a Model Triangle? How do I use it?

Our curriculum uses the PQM, or Model, Triangle as a reasoning tool for students to learn biology. We present students a biological phenomenon (P), students then generate questions (Q) from which they will build a model (M).

P to Q to M, back again
students in a classroom

Essential

Preparing Your Classroom for Modeling

An MBER classroom looks and feels different than a traditional classroom. In MBER classrooms students are asking questions, gathering and analyzing data, developing models, collaborating, and discussing their models.

Create the Environment

Essential

A Typical MBER Lesson Sequence

Introduce the phenomenon, break into small groups, discuss, return to whole class, generate the driving question, compare student ideas, break into small groups, construct a model to define the phenomenon....

What are we trying to figure out?

Essential

Making Student Thinking Visible

In MBER, we place students and their thinking at the center of the classroom. If we want students to build the knowledge, we need to help them track their ideas as we make sense of natural phenomena.

Students building knowledge... together

MBER ESSENTIALS - FAQS

FAQ and Tips: Eliciting Student Thinking about the Driving Question

Most any time we have a question in the classroom, we want to give students the chance to share their initial thinking. Not only does this give students a chance to voice their ideas, it also gives us (as teachers) a window into their current thinking, some of which we may want to leverage and some of which we may need to help them re-work over the course of the unit.

MBER Essentials FAQs

FAQ and Tips: Developing an Initial Model

Developing models with students requires that we attend to a number of things. Our students must have something to share ideas about--a phenomenon that requires explanation)--and often need to have first developed some kind of a focal question so that our attention to that phenomenon is bounded. It is also critical that students feel safe in sharing their ideas. This requires not only setting a classroom culture where students feel safe in sharing, but also framing the immediate task for students so that they understand the goal of sharing out ideas (e.g.

MBER Essentials FAQs

FAQs and Tips: Close Enough

For each triangle on the website, the central component is the list of model ideas displayed near the top of the page. These are the ideas we suggest are key to explaining the phenomena at hand. They are also the closest way we have to tracking content alignment with NGSS in a model-based classroom.
Our model-based reasoning approach to learning is also student-driven. In many cases, students generate the questions. Certainly the students do the intellectual work of generating, revising, and applying the models as needed to make sense of the puzzles in front of them. So, what should you do as a teacher when the model ideas students generate do not match those listed in the curricular resources? When are the ideas or the final model "close enough"?

MBER Essentials FAQs

FAQs and Tips: "Finalizing" the Model

Models in science are never really "final", but in the classroom, there are times when we need to put a "period" (or at least a "comma") on our model so that  we can move on to new phenomena and ideas. Working through the process of finalizing the model with your students can be tricky, especially if there are ideas that still need to be evaluated or even generated before you are ready to do so. Here are some tips for handling pieces of this process that teachers have found useful.

MBER Essentials FAQs

FAQ and Tips: Writing a Final Explanation

Even if your students seem to be "getting it" as you move through exploring the phenomena and building model ideas over the course of a unit, you may be disappointed in their ability to apply the model to write a final explanation for the anchoring phenomenon (introduced at the start of the unit) or a new phenomenon. There can be several barriers to writing an explanation including understanding the model, understanding how to use the model to generate an explanation, and a number of barriers to expressing oneself in writing (general confidence, English as a second language, prior writing instruction, etc.).

MBER Essentials FAQs

FAQs and Tips: What to do with student absences?

Student absences in a discussion-based curriculum that requires classroom engagement with data, peers, and teachers simply cannot be re-created in response to student absences. In some communities, student absence may be a chronic issue. In others, it may be episodic or situational (e.g. my last period of the day is plagued with athlete excused absences due to travel for away games).

MBER Essentials FAQs

FAQ and Tips: Where do I put all of these posters?

"Making student thinking visible" means that we are often recording ideas publicly in the model-based sensemaking classroom. Though at times it makes sense to record ideas electronically (e.g. in the PowerPoint slides), there are many ideas we want ot make continually available to the class as we continue to engage with new phenomena and questions. So, if you are (for example) teaching 5 periods of biology, where do all of the posters go?

MBER Essentials FAQs

FAQ and Tips: How do I turn all of this sensemaking into grades???

Perhaps your classes are getting into the swing of this sensemaking thing--they're engaged and model-building is starting to come more easily. Suddenly you realize that you have not recorded a single grade in the grade-book for two weeks! And to make matters worse, progress reports or grades are due in the near future! How can you turn all of this sensemaking into points that reflect not only an individual student's effort but that also reflects their learning and accountability to state and school science standards?

MBER Essentials FAQs

TEACHER TOOLKIT

Assign Student Roles
Card Sort
Communication Triangle
Doodle Sheets
Drawing Straws
Four Corners
Friendly Talk
Gallery Walk
Glossary
Graphic Organizers
Group Norms
Obligation Points
Paired Reading
Parking Lot (or Bike Rack)
Planning for Whole-Class Discussions
Pods
Red/Green Cups
Silent Board Meeting
Stickpicks
Talking Sticks
Think-Pair-Share
Using Whiteboards