Depth of Knowldge

Weather can be pretty boring in California, but atmosphere, climate, and weather are what my 6th grade students are studying right now.   I do feel the pressure to get them to DOK 3 and 4 but it seems most of my students never even noticed that the hills to the west are covered in thick redwood forests while the hills to the east are are covered with brown grass.  Nevertheless, I have to get them thinking about what climate patterns are responsible for this di-chromatic arrangement of plant life, and beyond that, have them predict what plant species live in other parts of the world based on the climates of those places. . So much of my time is spent on just getting my students to DOK1.

Yes, on my classroom walls are giant posters my students made that say things such as:"A=B, B=C, therefore A=C""What is the physical evidence?""What is the energy doing?""If two claims negate each other it is possible that both are false, but one must be false.""What are the premises?"A ≠ non-A""Where is the energy going?""Does this make sense in light of what I already know?""Can an analogy be made that relates this to something else?" So, I am on board with trying to get them to DOK3 and DOK4 but...

My students are not on board.  After reading the textbook about atmospheric pressure and answering questions about the reading, after watching two videos about atmospheric pressure and barometers and doing handouts with the videos, after hearing my lecture and making a foldable to describe atmospheric pressure and barometers, and watching me build a barometer; after all of that 13 of my 60 of my sixth-graders could not tell me what a barometer is for, eleven didn't understand how this barometer worked because they had never learned about Newton's Laws of Motion or class one levers (both are fundamental to the design of this type of barometer), and four students  actually - I swear, I am not making this up - they actually immobilized with tape the pointing arms, WHICH ARE SUPPOSED TO MOVE and point to different numbers depending on the pressure,  to the scales thereby rendering them inoperable.  This last thing utterly amazed me.  I had actually said, "Let's do this together, step by step.  Only do what I do.  Only do it when I do it.  Do not do anything I don't do."  And as I was doing it I explained why I was doing it.  And all four of them taped the pointer arms in place, thereby demonstrating that they had no idea what the barometers were supposed to do.

So, yes, I am all in favor of Depth of Knowledge.  I want my students to be able to predict outcomes of experiments.  I want them to design machines.  I want them to read some scientist's claim and say, "I don't think his deduction is valid"  but they aren't ready.  
I think, at least in the case of many of my students, trying to teach DOK3 and DOK4 is unreasonable.  It's like trying to teach rhetoric to someone who doesn't know grammar, or algebra to someone who doesn't know how to multiply integers.   They can barely make a two column chart showing rainfall over time (a DOK2 activity) let alone design a working model of the water cycle (a DOK4 activity).

Nevertheless, it is my job.  So, I have to go slower, even though the pace is already so slow it is boring some of my brighter students.   (I have two students on the autism spectrum.  They are amazing.  They see all the relationships and even if a concept is new to them they master it in minutes.  I think they should be in high school science classes).  Hmmmm.  Maybe the solution is to stop grouping students by age and instead only allow them into a class if they can pass a placement test.