Miss Sarah

Well, I feel like March 4th is going to sneak up really quickly… I haven’t really given much thought to when I would actually start writing. I’m gone for February break so when I get back (that second Saturday), I could start writing that then- maybe the introduction and start outlining the research section. I think that section will be the most difficult to write. During the week, I might try to finish up the research section so that by next Saturday, the 1st, I can work for a good chunk of the day to finish my draft. I know this is getting close to the deadline, but I’ll make it work. Anyone watch Project Runway?

I really enjoyed the process of having Liz and April observe and debrief with Alpa and I. When I get observed at school, I know that the comments I will get in my post-observation will be more logistical issues and not the things I think are important in science education. The comments I received from April, Liz, and Alpa were really helpful in pushing me to think about the bigger picture of my content and made me feel good about my science teaching. A lot of the time, I feel like I’m doing what any other teacher does and I don’t necessarily feel that I’m doing anything special or unique. It was nice to get their feedback and made me feel proud of what I’m doing. So thank you to the three of you!

So after talking with our group and showing them our data tonight, I think Alpa and I are in need of refining our question. Originally we had come up with the question, how does changing the format/presentation of the lab affect student autonomy? Eric and Vince kind of talked us through what we meant by both of these aspects of our questions.

First, what do we mean by changing the format/presentation of the lab? In the past two labs, we have given students less direction, more freedom, more time to discuss the lab. In the gum lab, students created the entire experiment and in the solubility lab, they created their own procedure. Isn’t this autonomy? Would seeing how changing the level of student autonomy in the lab prep affect student autonomy be a little redundant? Seems like it.

The second part of our question– the affect. The first source of data is a pre-survey that we handed our class. In this survey, we saw three themes emerge from the questions we asked: autonomy in lab (coming up with procedures, feeling confident doing lab technique, etc), affect about labs (do they enjoy labs), and understanding. Autonomy and affect would only be studied by our surveys. It seems like based on our data we are collecting that seeing how being more student led affects understanding may be the easiest to look at with the data I have.

I will edit and write more on this topic later.. it’s 7:30!

Well last week, April and Liz came to Hilton for a marathon observation day. The lesson they were observing didn’t directly relate to our action research project- that data has already been collected a long time ago. But the lesson did have to do with labs that we are beginning to change as a result of the research.

The lesson started with a lab reflection. They went through their lab notebooks and reflected on their write-ups: how they were doing, what they were losing points for, if they have adequate time to finish, and if they understand what they are doing. From there, we went into talking about the lab they were going to be doing the following day. I handed them a sheet that included a prelab discussion, materials, data, calculations, and a graph, but was missing the procedure. They read the lab, we talked about the purpose a little bit, and then I gave them some guiding questions to think about before they wrote a procedure. Students were working with their lab partners to create procedures. I went around to each group and talked about the procedures they created, made corrections, etc.

After doing that, we switched gears and just took some notes on vapor pressure. This was more teacher directed lesson for the Regents exam.

I thought the lesson went pretty well. I felt that after the lab portion, my students (most of them at least) had a solid understanding about what they were doing with the lab and that they could be independent during the actual lab. After doing the lab this year with this sort of method, I can’t imagine just giving them the instructions to follow. It made a huge difference in the actual implementation and write-up of the lab.

Here is a quick update on where I’m at…

As far as the action research goes, when we got back from Christmas break, Alpa and I started the preparation phase of the gum lab with our students. During this time, we spent 1/2 a period analyzing a previous lab that we had doen and giving our students a lab survey that included topics on how they feel during lab and how well they understand the lab they are doing. We also spent another 1/2 a period allowing the students to meet with their lab partner and plan out the lab that we would be doing later that week. During our students next double period, we actually implemented and wrote up the lab. The lab went well and after grading some of their notebooks, it seems like most of our students had the right idea. Even though this was a very simple lab, it still took a lot of preparation time and it was expensive (Alpa spent $60 on gum!). We haven’t given our students a post lab survey or talked to them about their experience really due to the timing of midterms and stuff, but I assume we will do that next week.

What’s next? So I’ve been thinking about where we are going next and here are some of my concerns… Do we have enough data? Is one lab enough for students to decide how they feel during lab? Will I have enough to write about in a 10 page paper? How am I going to force myself to write a long paper while school is keeping me busier than ever this year?

I get tenure! woohoo! Then desserts from Phillips European to celebrate!

Well after class last Tuesday, I had the feeling that because of timing the original plan we had drafted was not going to work out. Alpa and I spent some time talking about our ideas and decided to go with the second thing we always talk about fixing up- our labs.

Here is the new draft of our plan:

ACTION RESEARCH PLAN

1.Write an area-of-focus statement.

The purpose of this study is to…

Describe the effects of changing the format and presentation of labs (from more prescriptive to more inquiry based) on student autonomy.

2.Explain its connection to reform-based science education.

This study attempts to addresses the following central aspects of reform-based science education:

Inquiry and Understanding the Nature of Science

3.Define your variables.

a. Lab design- How lab is presented. The format of the lab, how much information (research question, procedure) is provided in the lab handout, and by the teacher.
b. Lab preparation- How the students prepare for the lab. More time will be spent on the lab preparation, students are collaborating more in order to determine procedures of the lab
c. Student autonomy- How independently the student works, student is self-directed, seems interested, can explain what he/she is doing, student “feels” like a researcher

4.Develop research questions.

How does modifying the lab design impact student autonomy?

5.Describe the intervention or innovations.

I will change the lab design of one lab by changing the following things: the pre-lab discussion, planning time given to students, flexibility with the research question, and more time to write the lab report and reflect on the process.

6.Describe the membership of the action research group.

I will be working with Alpa to discuss the specific changes we will make, how we will prepare the students for the experience, the time that we will allocate to the lab, and in the analysis of the data we collect.

7.Describe negotiations that need to be undertaken.

Permissions needed from administrators? Parents? Students? Colleagues?

Don’t think so.

8.Develop a timeline.

Phase 1 (August – November). Identify area of focus, review related literature, develop research questions, and reconnaissance.
Phase 2 (December, January) Plan for changes in lab design
Phase 3 (January, February) Conduct the lab, collect data
Phase 4 (Febrary, March) Analyze data and write report.

9.Develop a statement of resources.

Use of Related Literature: Barbara Crawford, Mark Windshitl, others
planning time
help with survey design

10.Develop data collection ideas.
(If you have drafts of surveys, interview protocols, etc., please attach them.)

student lab reports, post-lab questionnaire (1 week later), autonomy survey, possible voice thread

11.Describe your intentions or hopes for publication.

Not sure.

Well I have a semi-clear picture in my head about what I would like to do for my action research.. Because I am interested in relevance and nature of science and Alpa is interested in providing authentic experiences in science, which I think has to do with both of the things I am intersted in, we are going to team up and research the same topic but with two different slants. I think because Alpa and I work so closely together at school (we are usually teachign the same lesson on the same day, give the same tests, do the same labs, etc.), I would end up participating in her project and she would end up participating in my project. It makes sense that we would work together to make our instruction better than it is now.

ACTION RESEARCH PLAN- Revised Version of Alpa’s

1. Write an area-of-focus statement.

The purpose of this study is to…

Align current instruction with existing unit projects and a real-world authentic problem and study how this impacts my students.

2. Explain its connection to reform-based science education.

This study attempts to addresses the following central aspects of reform-based science education:

Teaching science in a context that is real to the field of science, the disciplinary nature of science.

3. Variables, definitions and the way I’ll know it when I see it

Unit design
-The process and product of creating a chemistry unit.
-Design 2 thematic units, one for solutions and one for kinetics.
-Place emphasis on authentic problem
-Authentic problem will be relevant and address the nature of science

Student affect
-The way our students feel about chemistry
-Through interviews, surveys we will be able to tell how our students feel about chemistry

Student perception of relevance
-The authentic problem we introduce may appear to be relevant to us, but may not actually feel relevant to the students
-Through interviews, surveys, etc, we will be able to see if our student believe the new design of the unit is more relevant than previous designs

Unit test scores
-The results on a regents style unit assessment
-Data from a unit exam with a comparison to a past years’ exam

Student understanding of nature of science
-How well students understand what science is, how it is done, who does science, etc.
-Literacy projects designed with this focus in mind, reflection sheets for projects
-More focus on this in the lab write ups
-More discussions of this topic in class

4. Develop research questions.

How does situating instruction in authentic problems will impact students’
1. understanding of the unit of study?
2. understanding of core concepts in the unit?
3. understanding of the nature of science?
3. perception of relevance?
4. affect for chemistry?

5. Describe the intervention or innovations.

I will…

Create two thematic units. The two units of study will be solutions and kinetics. During these units, it might be possible to create a theme around the authentic problems of water pollution (solutions) and global warming and ozone depletion (kinetics). The design of the units will allow for a more integrated approach of these authentic problems in comparison to past units where the relevance piece is very brief compared to the content covered.

Modify existing literacy projects so that they are aligned with the authentic problem posed in the unit.

Modify labs within the unit to focus on core concepts within the context of the authentic problem.

6. Describe the membership of the action research group.

I will be working with Alpa to design, collaborate on data collection, analysis, and reporting. We will each analyze two to three areas that we are studying.

7. Describe negotiations that need to be undertaken.

Permissions needed from administrators? Parents? Students? Colleagues?

Not sure if there are any. Perhaps from students.

8. Develop a timeline.

Phase 1 (August – November). Identify area of focus, review related literature, develop research questions, and reconnaissance.

Phase 2 (January/ February) Implement changes in two units and Collect Data

Phase 3 (March) Analyze Data

Phase 4 (March/April) Report on Action Research

(Note: The main effort should be implemented in February, 2008).

9. Resources

not sure yet

10. Develop data collection ideas.
(If you have drafts of surveys, interview protocols, etc., please attach them.)

Design surveys, conduct interviews, analyze test data, and analyze reflection sheets from the literacy projects.

______________________________________________________________________

This is definitely a work in progress. For me, I’m not sure if students will find the authentic problems posed will be of interest to students for if I might want to think of a theme that is more relevant to the daily lives of my students such as sports drinks for solutions. Just thinking aloud.

As I was trying to clarify an area of focus, I decided to think of the things that felt icky in my classroom. This is what I came up with:

1. Students do not care about chemistry- see a lack of relevance
2. Students don’t really get the nature of science
3. Students care about the exam, not the learning
4. Lack of participation from ALL students
5. Labs- some are great, some are cookie cutter, some are really just activities

I will post more on these later…
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I really never anticipated struggling so much to think about a topic… I care about a number of things, I guess it’s just hard to focus that into something I feel like I can accomplish. I think from the comments I’ve received that it seems like targeting the relevance piece or nature of science piece is something I can work on through the use of my projects, the course map, etc. These are my thoughts on those two topics…

Relevance
I’d like to make my classroom more relevant in a way that doesn’t seem so separate from my daily teaching. I hate the thought of teaching the unit for a week and then talking about something relevant/nature of science for ten minutes and moving on. I guess that’s what I need to change then- how to make my teaching relevant without feeling contrived. Also I want to make sure that my students really get it when I’m being relevant- sometimes I’m not so sure that it actually connects with the students.

Nature of Science
As far as the whole nature of science piece goes, on the first day of school I did this whole thing about how I want my students to act like scientists and understand what science and chemistry is. Our first round of projects has a couple choices that are based on the idea that the model of the atom has been developing over time with increasing evidence. I feel like after grading those projects, my students did take that in while they were writing. But, when they were doing the reflection sheet on their work in class today, I’m not sure that they made that explicit connection between what they did in the project and how it’s related to the big ideas of science. I would like to make the connections between activities that are meant to teach about the nature of science and what the students are actually understanding more obvious.

So I know that I am still just in the thinking phase of this whole thing but April, I promise I will have a draft for you by tomorrow!

Why am I avoiding my action research post or thinking about my action research all together? At first it was the timing- I’ve been very busy at school trying to catch up with everything I put off while working on my portfolio. But now I feel like I’m forcing the action research when I haven’t really developed a full idea in my head of what I want to research. It takes longer for certain people to create these ideas and I am one of those people. So I’m going to start from the beginning….

The first summer after I started working at Hilton, the chemistry department rewrote the Regents chemistry curriculum. Alpa lead the way in the discussion about what needed to be changed in the Regents curriculum. She felt like the kids had no connection to the science they were learning in our class and suggested we focus on the core ideas that make up chemistry and use Project 2061 to guide our thinking. The goals of rewriting the curriculum were to help develop scientifically literate students and to promote a lasting knowledge of chemistry. We took each unit and asked ourselves the question, “What do we really want students to know and remember after they leave our classrooms?” The Regents curriculum requires us to teach the small facts that we know have very little importance in our students lives, but we really wanted to figure out what was most important to emphasize in our daily teaching.

After going through each unit and asking ourselves that question, we came up with a set of “literacy standards” as we call them. These are the standards we tell our students that these standards make up a basic set of knowledge that someone who is literate in chemistry knows and this is what we hope they remember after leaving chemistry. As a way to integrate these standards into the classroom, we developed end of the unit projects. Each unit has a series of 4 projects (1 for each of the 4 Silver-Strong learning styles Mike Dupre taught us) based on the standards. Students pick one and we keep them in a portfolio throughout the year. These standards also helped us develop our course map.

So we’ve gone through this project cycle for two years and I am starting to feel a little blah about the projects. The whole point of doing the projects is to show the students that chemistry is related to their lives and to help them see the big picture of science–process, history, experimentation, etc. Right now I feel like the projects are a very separate part of my teaching. I teach the unit, test, assign the projects, and move on. I’m not sure if they are actually meeting the original goals of creating the project. Because we have this innovation in our teaching already going, I was thinking it makes sense to focus on the projects for my action research. But I’m struggling to figure out where to go from here or if this is actually what my focus should be or rather an action I should take for a different focus.