Coherent units are critical to student understanding

Here is a nice article about how, even as we integrate more activities and information sources into our lessons, it is critical to help students build a framework within learning units.

"When science teachers adopt innovative curricula, it’s important that they structure students’ activities as a unit, rather than as a set of linear, discrete events. That’s because students learn with deeper understanding when the teacher has woven the concepts and activities into a coherent whole. Recent research by UW-Madison education professor Sadhana Puntambekar has helped to pinpoint how that’s done, and how science teachers effectively facilitate classroom discussion."

http://www.wcer.wisc.edu/news/coverStories/2009/how_science_teachers_enact.php