November 26, 2007
Man, the freedom to just “ignore” the standards and the exams … what a luxury! Since I teach a course which ends with a Regents exam, my job is centered around standards and exams.
I like the idea of students using their Fridays to go out and experience the world, to give back to their community or develop an area of personal interest. Maybe if teachers gave up this time they may find students more engaged in learning … hmmm… or maybe more resistant to the type of learning that is “mandated” to occur in public schools. And here I am again, my mind linking to critical and feminist pedagogies. Are Gatto’s ideas for students - look for ways to become learners, don’t worry about memorizing the facts, develop your personal interests - a key to dismantling what has become a (dare I say) opressive educational system?
It is scary to let go of the idea that students should leave school with a standard body of knowledge. Gatto seems to be pushing not for a standard set of knowledge, but instead a standard set of skills which stem from knowledge of the self. For me it is mind boggling to think of letting go of a system of education that I have experienced, and as a student have been successful with, to work towards something unknown. But, as a teacher it is obvious to me I need to push in new directions in order to best engage and serve my students.
November 25, 2007
The Tinker and Tobin readings have me thinking about how my students experience science. If I quickly polled my kids on their feelings about the course and about science in general, what kinds of responses would I get? I know labs and activities would be a high point for most of them, but I’m willing to bet few of them would be able to articulate how science is a process or that at its core science is a very creative subject.
I am very interested in Tobin’s take on labs and science education in general. Specifically “the capital needed to participate in open-ended activities … is well provided by life in middle class homes and may not be well supported by the capital produced by life in homes where economic hardship leads to the production of different kinds of capital” (p. 10). This is the core of what I have experienced in my district. Tobin goes on to state that one of his own weaknesses as a teacher in an urban setting was providing “insufficient structure” for my students who expected me to ‘teach them’” (p. 10).
I have the same struggle. Maybe part of my appreciation of Tobin’s perspecitive is that it quiets some of my guilt for not being full on into project based learning or letting my students experience the messy processes that go with inquiry. When I have presented project or inquiry based science to my students they often struggle. They don’t have the skills built up to find a place to start, let alone experience enjoyment in the process. The messiness of these approaches isn’t fun to them, it’s frustrating.
So, I attempt to scaffold them through the process, but when I do that I feel like we aren’t really doing inquiry any more, we are back to those “cookbook” type of labs.
So, maybe I should be content with letting students experience the “habitus” of doing science. Tobin states “to do science and to be successful at it is an important step is seeing the self and science as interconnected”. Yep, I’m on board with that and I think the lab experiences I provide allow students to build their “habitus”. But, what I am really being pushed towards in my Warner education is to NOT be content with that. I shouldn’t be providing students “with the skills and tools necesary to join established knowledge communities”, but instead I should be working with students on how to transform those communities (Mayberry, p. 5). For sure the greater “scientific community” does not look like the community around and within our public school. Why are the two communities so different? What are the differences and how do they come about? Maybe these are the things I should be sharing with students.
November 7, 2007
The entire Middle School staff got a memo in their mailboxes yesterday. The RE: section was titled “Apathy”. My first reaction was “great, we are finally going to address student motivation!”. Boy was I wrong.
The memo listed three examples of what they felt was collective staff apathy. What a slap in the face. It was signed by the Middle School leadership team, which includes our principal and team leaders. I can’t believe that one, let alone all of them, thought this was a good idea.
Some background …
Our district has a huge focus on raising achievement. Over the past three years teachers in our district have been asked to work with several new initiatives and programs to help raise test scores and also promote positive behavior. Teachers are held directly accountable for student achievement in the classroom and on standardized tests. The level of teacher accountability is what I would consider “maxed out”, so much so that it now feels like the students do not need to take any responsibility for their own learning. Without a doubt it is easier to give a student a 65 for the marking period than it is to go through the red tape of handing out a failing mark. Many teachers, myself included, feel mentally and physically exhusted from all these demands.
Yet, there are teachers in our school who go above and beyond every single day. One of my colleagues has already called home for every single student she teaches to give parents an update. Another is volunteering time before school to tutor a student. The teacher next door to me has taken a pregnant student “under her wing” to help her deal with the situtation and keep her grades up.
So, this is our apathetic staff?!!
November 5, 2007
Overview: This is a reading comprehension strategy in which a student leads a small group through four concrete stages to decode a text. Ideally, after an initial introduction to the technique, the teacher will take a “back seat” and the students will lead the groups on their own.
Possible Implementation Methods:
1. one student leads a group of 4 students through all stages (then leader role rotates)
2. four students each take a stage to implement for the group - everyone has a role
Four Stages: predict, question, clarify, summarize
Guiding questions for each stage:
Questioning *One question I had about what I read was…. *What were you thinking about as you were reading? *What question(s) can you ask about what you read? *I’m curious about…
Clarifying*One of the words I wasn’t sure about was…*What other words do we know that we can use in place of…?*What words or ideas need clarifying for you?*This is confusing to me. I need to ________(strategy) to try to figure out this word.
Predicting*I can look at the title and all the visual clues on the page. What do I think we will be reading about?*Thinking about what I have read and discussed, what do I think might happen next?I wonder…I predict…
Summarizing*What does the author want me to remember or learn from this passage? *What is the most important information in this passage?*What kind of “teacher” question can I ask about the main idea? *In my own words, this is about …*The main point was…*The author wanted me to remember…
Resources:
1. general overview: http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/students/atrisk/at6lk38.htm or http://www.greece.k12.ny.us/instruction/ela/612/Reading/Reading%20Strategies/reciprocal%20teaching.htm
2. general lesson plan: http://www.readwritethink.org/lessons/lesson_view.asp?id=403
3. materials and reproducibles: http://146.145.202.164/downloads/publications/videos/500-VideoGuide.pdf and http://www.forpd.ucf.edu/strategies/stratreciprocalteaching3.html
October 28, 2007
Harry Wong has a quote that is something along the lines of “whoever is doing the work is the one who is learning”. I think about that all the time in my classroom and I think it has a lot to do with how students learn science.
I know when I start to feel like I am really working, whether it is to keep kids on task, get a point across or de-mystify lab data, something is wrong. Usually it means things have gotten too teacher centered. I had this experience just last week trying to explain the results of a model cell lab. The kids just weren’t getting it and I was running myself ragged trying to engage them in figuring out the process. Finally I said “forget it, let’s do the lab again”. Man, that was the best decision ever. It engaged the kids right away and washed away our collective frustrations. As a bonus, when we went back to the results after the second round, it made much more sense to the kids.
So, I do think when students are asked to do the work they learn the most. This “work” comes in lots of forms in my room. We take notes, but then the kids need to apply the ideas to something else - a lab, some questions, an internet activity. We have a class discussion, then the kids write their own position statements. We practice concept mapping, then the kids create their own. We talk about key phrases and key concepts, then the kids come up with ways to illustrate them.
There are tons of factors that influence how willing students are to do the work and the quality of the work. Cassandra does a great job of talking about these in her science learning epistemology post and I wholly agree. But, I feel that if students are really going to learn anything they have to be “minds on”, doing the work.
October 26, 2007
Every ten weeks our school sends out a newsletter. They are filled with the fun stuff that happens around school, but they are also full of things like “how to prepare you child for standardized tests” or “effective reading strategies”. For this issue I was supposed to contribute something about strategies for decoding Regents science questions. As I sat down to write, I realized I just couldn’t get anything onto the paper.
I know plenty of strategies, and I share them all the time with my kids, but something just felt wrong. The article is my first “introduction” of myself to some parents. To write about Regents strategies just felt way too fake, way too contrived. Drilling for the exam is not how I believe kids should experience science, and I guess writing about preparing for a June exam in October was like a wake up call for me. I know where my beliefs about science teaching and learning stand … and they are far from teaching to the test. But, ultimately that is what I do. I am evaluated on how my students perform. When I took over accelerated science the first comment from both the HS and MS principals was along the lines of “I can’t wait to see where the scores go now that you are teaching it”. What?! A sad commentary on the state of public education today.
Ultimately I scrapped the Regents prep article and went with how to encourage your child’s science curiosity at home. I did mention that both 8th and 9th graders would have a standardized science exam at the end of the year. But, I also pointed out the real importance of science for children was encouraging exploration and making connections between science class and the real world. Now, if only I could be given free reign to practice that I preach!
October 18, 2007
This week things have hit me hard. I am feeling the pressure of all my “roles” in life. I had a large project due in one of my classes and that combined with general coursework, my job and my family made me just want to say “forget it, I’m done”. As an added bonus, our pet goldfish was eaten by our new kitten and ever since my three year old son has been fixated on what it means to be dead. It was our bedtime conversation about “magic” (this is apparently his term for staying alive forever), family, and our love for each other that pretty much took me to the breaking point. I was an emotional mess.
But, I guess you just pull yourself together and keep going. That is the bonus of the rigidity of routines and obligations. Anyway, sometimes there is nowhere to go but up. This seems to be true because of two late in the week happenings.
1. I designed a measurement lab using pumpkins which my 8th graders are loving
2. Senator Mike Nozzolio got in touch with one of my students who had emailed him asking why we couldn’t have a turtle in our classroom. The Senator wrote and called my student, letting him know in fact we CAN have a turtle in our room as long as it is longer than 4 inches and we post a sign about the health hazards (they carry salmonella). What a powerful lesson in civics for my students to learn!
I’m still getting used to the magnified “give and take” that comes with my decision to pursue this program.
October 15, 2007
Like Lederman and Niess, I am in the camp that thinks planning is essential for high quality instruction. But, I was also one of the students they describe as reluctant to plan. I think the fatal error in my teacher preparation program, and it seems in theirs too, was that I rarely ever got to try out my plans. To me, the plan only really becomes meaningful when you can take a group of students through the plan and see how it all fits together. When plans are put into action the importance of things like scripting out transitions and writing a detailed closure piece come to the foreground.
If as teachers we are charged with facilitating conceptual change for our students, then we must scaffold them through the process with intentional, high quality learning activities. This does not happen without adequate planning, both for the specific lesson and the unit. I will say a large component of effective planning comes from experience with the curriculum and having a “feel” for the population of students you are serving. And sometimes an “unplanned” or “filler” lesson can be a big success. But, without planning the curriculum devolves into simply a year’s worth of activities with little direction or coherence.
October 14, 2007
John and I had a Saturday course this week. About halfway through the day our table partner found out we both taught science and just couldn’t believe it. When he left he told us it was great to meet us and we had totally changed his view of science teachers. I laughed when it happened, but now I wonder … what are the preconceptions people have of science teachers?! What kind of “reputation” does our profession have?
October 7, 2007
All these readings about mediating conceptual change through addressing students’ prior working explanations has me reaching for examples. By far, the worst one I deal with all year is around the whole idea of respiration.
It is brutal trying to get the kids to understand that respiration isn’t just breathing. After all, the respiratory system is what does the breathing, so of course respiration is only about taking in oxygen! It obviously has nothing to do with energy because the digestive system gives us energy from the food we eat. In a nutshell, that’s what students believe when they come in. And, just like our articles say, I’m betting it is what 90+ % of them take out of the classroom when the unit is over.
I hate teaching that unit. We compare the respiration and photosynthesis equations, we do a lab on fermentation and we practice tons of sample questions. But, I have nothing to make them feel my explanation is any better than the one they’ve been working with since they started learning about body systems … respiration = breathing, digestion = energy. It makes me feel totally ineffectual.
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