Grade 7 Science

Trauma is serious. But concept creep is doing its best to manufacture trauma out of normal life experiences. “Trauma-informed” education is particularly bad on this front.

2 of 2 Grade 7 students easily learn to use a “tree diagram” to represent a simple probability experiment, e.g., flipping a coin twice and getting heads both times. But then we move to more challenging curriculum objectives: Representing all possible outcomes of a probability experiment involving 2 independent events, and determining the specific probability of any one specific outcome. These objectives can quickly and easily be demonstrated to Ss using explicit teaching and a tree diagram. But here’s how I introduce the content before asking Ss to do it independently… I tell my class we’re going to have a race. They’re asked to sort themselves into 6 teams and create a vehicle using provided materials, e.g., plastic bottles, cardboard boxes, silly objects. I use an alarm timer and give them only 5 minutes, which I know is not enough time and will result in hilarious presssure, conflicts, and strange looking products. Each of the 6 groups then choose one of these numbers to label their vehicle: 212, 311, 410, 59, 68, 77 Next, I explain the race. We will move out to the hallway where there are metre-long tiles. Two jumbo dice will be rolled. If the total is 2 or 12, then vehicle 212 moves ahead one tile. If the total is 3 or 11, then vehicle 311 moves ahead one tile. And so on. We will continue rolling the dice until one of the 6 vehicles has moved approx 25 tiles to reach the finish line. Then students move to the hallway, set up, and begin. The teams are now excited and everyone is sure their vehicle is going to win. I choose a student to roll the dice, and someone else to move the proper vehicle when the rolled dice total that vehicle’s number. In a 25-tile race, vehicle 68 is very likely to win, although vehicle 59 has an outside chance. After the race, we return to the classroom and I lead the group in building a tree diagram to represent the 36 possible outcomes when 2 dice are rolled. In that process, it becomes clear to every student whey the race wasn’t fair. Vehicle 68 was highly likey to win. My question for teachers, or anyone reading this: Why bother with the race at all when I could have just drawn up a very clear tree diagram on the blackboard?

Scripted curriculum (of high quality) is good for students and teachers. It provides clarity and cohesiveness for students and lightens the preparation time and pressure for teachers.