Generate-Sort-Connect-Extend

Moton Charter School

3rd Grade

Ms Simmons & Ms Chambliss

Students in Ms Simmons’ and Mr Glazebrook’s 3rd grade science class at Moton Charter School utilized the Generate-Sort-Connect-Extend thinking routine at the beginning of their planning process as they begin preparing to film a documentary about their science learning for the semester. In this thinking routine, students first generate as much information as they can within a large umbrella subject (in this case, “Science From This Quarter”) on their own. Then we work together as a class to begin sorting that thinking into the beginnings of a concept map. As we sort student thinking, certain trends begin to emerge as connections arise between concepts that students have generated. Once we have established a few connections, students are encouraged to extend their thinking into new areas they are curious about or would like to explore further.

In this instance, you can see that many students connected to their unit on magnets and discovered connections within what magnets do. Students further built their connections between magnets and the idea of a science “experiment” and ended up extending their thinking into what they’d be curious to find out. We ended up with questions like “Does gravity affect magnets?”, “Can you find out if something is metal using a magnet?”, and “If I put my hand between a magnet and a piece of metal, will the magnet still stick?”.

Stay tuned to see what areas of science our documentary ends up exploring!