Scott’s ROCKing Science Blog

I don’t know what to put on the poster. (I was under a bit of stress at school)

Anyone else having trouble? (guess not)

Things always go according to plan…

My Timeline

• Phase 3 (January – February) : Implement AR plan and data collection…I am collecting the last of my data today (2/13).
• Phase 4 (February – April) : Analyze data results, research related literature, write and report my research findings.

I am currently in Phase 4 of my AR with all of my data collected but not entirely analyzed. I have done preliminary analysis to check my progress towards my goals and questions (see my previous blog).

My plan is to analyze the data, write up some findings, & correlate it to some reform literature during the course of this week (unlikely) and next week (spring break…from students anyway).
I am also in the process of creating my tenure portfolio, my mid-year review, and my APPR documents all for a meeting with my principal on the Tuesday after break…fun.
In all realness, the true writing of the 2nd and 3rd draft will occur after this tenur-ous process. I will have 2 copies of the paper ready on March 4th.

Peace

Driving question: how do student-centered closure activities impact student understanding and achievement?

The setup: 3 classes with 3 different review/closure activities.
1. First class is student inquiry based closure.
2. Second is teacher created review/practice.
3. Third class has no extra review nor closure.

All three classes were assessed the following day with the same activity (on this day I used a bellringer quiz).

I have collected “peripheral” data that I may not use, but I wanted to cover my bases. For example, I may decide to just analyze class 1 with class 2 only or class 3 only. I also have collected the students’ work on the review activities that could be compared to the bellringer quiz to show improvement or evolution of understanding. I will see as my data collection continues and my action research project mutates.

I have been happy with the result thus far. My data is supporting the idea that student inquiry greatly improves student understanding and achievement compared to teacher review and (quite obviously) no closure or review.

“I don’t get this…what are we doing…I don’t understand…wait for me…”

Brave words for a 14-year-old. My 9th grade students feel a tremendous amount of pressure in school besides the actual work and grades. They feel like they are always in the spotlight; always under the scrutinizing eyes and ears of their peers. The fear of being ridiculed for saying/wearing/doing the “wrong” thing…teenagers can be brutal to each other.

Being conscious of this, I have tried to create a classroom environment where students feel safe, physically and mentally. I use humor and student ideas to drive the lesson and try to build that community of learners. I try to make students feel comfortable and unafraid to make a mistake in front of the class or “ask a stupid question”. I feel that I do a good job “correcting” student mistakes and pulling the class together to help us all get a more complete understanding. Repeating student questions for the class to hear and using the strong aspects of a students’ contribution (the “correct” aspects) will help to bring a positive vibe to classroom sharing.

A couple of years ago, a teacher told me how she and her students were simply using the word “hazy” to identify concepts and questions that troubled them. It is difficult for many teenagers to admit they are wrong or that they do not understand what is going on. This amazingly simple phrase (if presented to the students well) can be an invaluable tool for helping students feel safer and more bold.

It is much easier for a student state: “I am a little hazy on this” than admitting to the class: “I don’t get this”. I use the word myself to model its use in classroom discourse. They smile when they say they are “hazy” (and I smile back to reinforce that it is ok to be hazy or wrong or not understand something). Sometimes I am amazed that many of the students become happy and smile when another student uses “hazy”. Who would have thought that young and vulnerable teenagers could actually enjoy admitting their faults and misunderstandings! Students from the past tell me they still love using hazy, even in their other classes full of 11th and 12th graders.

As an additional point, when students admit to being “hazy”…there are usually a few students that chime in that they are “hazy” too. I feel that this can give me a more honest representation of students understanding when I am informally assessing them during class discussions and activities. Normally, these students would be silent and not let me know that they were not ready for the next concept or level. I feel that this has also helped students become more conscious of what they understand and do not.

I highly recommend that you start this with your students. I can explain this in person and give solid examples in class if anyone is still “hazy” on what I am talking about.

April and Liz came to Hilton last week to observe one of my classes. I tried to keep everything pretty normal (as normal as our class can be with a camera and two new people in the room), so you could see what daily life can be like in Earth Science.

The objectives of the lesson were for the students to understand how to read and write isolines. In particular, the students needed to understand isolines in the context of earthquake zone damage.

Activities include a worksheet (earthquake time and distance graph interpretation); a lab that analyzes earthquake damage through a real life scenario; and a review activity where students will use whiteboards to create an isoline map (points of value) that their partner will complete (connect equal points). At the end students will have time to share-out any tips & tricks to help each other understand these concepts better.

Students were assessed by my observations and perceptions for the first worksheet (answers were checked and given by volunteer students in the classroom). Students’ labs will be assessed on their earthquake damage analysis, damage isoline drawing, and conclusion questions. The review activity was assessed by their partner (as they tried to draw the isolines). This is one of the review activities for my action research and additional data was collected the following day as students completed a quick quiz drawing isolines. Students were assessed the following day with a quick isoline-drawing quiz.

I think that most students will be able to understand the concept of isolines through the scaffolding of activities that we have done as a class. I think that students will be able manipulate information to create products that have real-world connections and applications. I think that student collaboration plays a key role in their understanding and growth. I feel that I have many aspects of a community of learners, but 9th graders can easily become unfocused and very social. Potential weaknesses also include certain seating arrangements and student groupings. I am trying to find a balance between student choice/autonomy and fulfillment of their responsibilities as students.

I want my students to understand and apply their understanding of isolines. I want them to understand the connections to their own life (and their future self). I want the students to enjoy learning and have fun with science in their lives (talking, watching, doing). In my opinion, there is little worse than passing the Earth Science Regents Exam but leaving with a hatred for science (I am thinking of certain people in my department that teach to the test and place a lot of unnecessary stress, pressure, and dread upon their students). I like to have fun learning with my students. Students in my classes, hopefully, have a renewed interest and appreciation for science in their lives.

ast week, I did some preliminary data collection using different review materials. I used our midterm review time to try a few methods that I had been thinking about. I offered review resources to my students including two Regents Exam centered reviews (www.Schoolisland.com and an Earth Science Reference Table worksheet) as well as a student-created review sheet . The students’ review sheet was very open-ended and student-created; described to the students as being like a “cheat sheet” to write down stuff you don’t know or are struggling with (to go back to later and study before the midterm). I encouraged them to draw pictures of these things to help visualize them better.

I offered these assignments simultaneously and the result that I saw disappointed me. I was discouraged by the number of students that did not do anything to create their own review sheet and those that did very little (3 sentences or vocab words). On a positive note, I was happy with the amount of work being done to review for the midterm using the teacher-created stuff.

I think that main issue was that they were given simultaneously, rather than giving specific time to create their own review (then use the teacher-created review to cover these areas of difficulty). I also believe that I need to give the students more structure and guidance for their review sheet or provide a model of what I expect.

I think it would be very important to have the students share with their classmates. I would like to give them time to talk about what they have created and things that are still “hazy”. This sharing time would benefit the group that has to teach/explain; in addition to the entire class, they will hear the explanations and struggles of their classmates. Alternative suggestions posed by other students as well as their questions will drive discussion and hopefully improve everyone’s understanding. Ideally, I would like most of the review materials to be student-created. I need to be more explicit about what I am expecting as well as give them time to struggle with them at first but master them with time (becomes a routine)…however, the biggest hang-up was stated twice in the last sentence…time.

$@#%&!

“Real Word Problems From My Physics Book: PH17 – pg 71″

If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn’t be called Research. -A. Einstein

Dinosaurs represent a great topic for discussing the Nature of Science (NOS)
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~The story of their discovery and how scientific thinking has changed…even today.
~What ever happened to that childhood favorite, the Brontosaurus?
~The history of dinosaur evolution…dinosaurs have evolved into birds…maybe that’s why everything “tastes like chicken”…
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I think that many of the topics in the Nature of Science embrace the “story” of dinosaurs and the development of our scientific understanding of them. The NOS is apparent when scientists get the opportunity to study dinosaurs:
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~Scientists acting like scientists…digging in the dirt and loving every minute of it;
~Scientists using specialized equipment, collecting precise data, sharing findings, following repeatable procedures & methods;
~Scientists inquiring, investigating, and inferring about the remnants of extinct creatures;
~Communication and collaboration of scientists around the world;
~The interdisciplinary approach that many people use when tackling the same problem;
~The progression or “evolution” of scientists’ thinking and understanding of dinosaurs (locomotion, abilities, evolutionary tree, behavior, eating habits, blood type…);
~And the list goes on…
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DivX Video Player Download Page

www.DivX.com

These HD videos are from Stage6 which is owned and operated by DivX. “DivX Stage6 is helping to redefine the media experience by enabling anyone to create, share and play highly-compressed, high-quality video content”.