Week 7 - Stations Lab for Newton's Laws & A Science Tech Symposium

A week late, but still worth sharing.

Through the connections I have made on Twitter I have come across some very interesting ideas, concepts, people, and many fun moments. In a recent #flipclass twitter chat (Mondays 8pm ET) someone questioned how a flipped physics class can address misconceptions and it lead to Katie Lanier mentioning activities/labs that they do for this specific purpose. She was nice enough to share the one that she uses for forces and I used it after introducing Newton's 3 Laws. The students enjoyed doing it and said the next day that it was helpful for clarifying the ideas. I took some videos of them and have linked them with brief descriptions below. Some of the video is better than others (i.e. sometimes I asked students questions, and sometimes it is a just a shot of them doing it). [Please let me know if the links are not working]

Station 1: Flick a piece of cardboard off of a beaker that has a penny sitting on it.

Station 2: Determine which of two boxes is heavier without picking them up.

Station 3: Balance a metre stick (weighted on one end) on your palm.

Station 4: Pull the "table cloth" out from under the "dishes".

Station 5: Try to pull only one square of toilet paper off using one hand.

Station 6/7: Use a "tapping device" to move a ball (one is starting it moving, another based on changing its direction and controlling how far it goes).

I would definitely do this again and would love to find more of these types of activities for other units (even if they are simulation based) to help with other misconceptions. These are exactly what you hope to find time to do by flipping a class :)

One thing I might do differently would be to make at least some of them a bit more PEOE style (predict (explain) observe explain) so that they have to put thought into it BEFORE trying instead of just after seeing it.

Thank you Ms. Lanier!

Last Saturday my board posted a Science & Technology Symposium. There were some interesting topics discussed and it seemed like everyone walked away with something new in their minds (which is all we can ask really). I went to a session that was about getting students to use concepts and ideas to come up with research projects that relate to the curriculum that will also involve primary research and then actually coming up with community action to create awareness about their topic. The second keynote speaker was a professor that he had worked with that was doing research on students using this process so it was a nice tie in and made me wish that I was teaching Gr 10 Science so that I could try it myself. Maybe I can convince my colleagues to try it themselves ;)

The Trouble with Technology (and Teaching)

I just finished reading a blog entry by Denise Krebs called "What Does Technology Have to Do With It?" and it made me want to write an entry of my own. (At the start of each school year I always vow to do this more and never succeed in doing so...it takes inspiration, and I guess I don't see the inspiration to share in my every day "teaching".)

Here is what I see as a problem with the every day technology in our classroom:
We have yet to change the way we teach. Period.

Too many of us are looking to use technology to change the way we teach instead of changing the way we teach and then adding technology. Yes, it is cool when your colleague who is a few years from retirement wants to add a doc cam to his classroom and then uses it and tries to explore it. But really it's no different than when an overhead projector was used.

Unfortunately I am just as guilty of this phenomenon. And I am in my fourth year of teaching.

I grew up with teachers who taught us concepts and then asked us to practice them. It is easy for me to now do the same. Don't get me wrong. I am making efforts to change and am trying new things, but it is extremely overwhelming. There is so much out there and there are so many great educators that I am now connected to (through blogging, voiced, smarter science, and the verity of educators and education technology folk on my twitter account).

I give smarter science (and my colleague that first went to the work shop with me and got equally excited about it) the credit for the start of my changes. I am a math teacher at heart and have been teaching science exclusively since my second year on the job - so it has been great to be motivated about the subject and the job despite it really being a "second" love. It has shown me that we can use ways to motivate our kids to learn and it has given me the first few opportunities to stop "teaching" and start "coaching" (this is what I see as ultimately the change that most of our classrooms need - and I think would be a huge challenge when I get back into math).

So here I am. Excited. Motivated. Hopeful. But I still find myself teaching. And using the doc cam as a fancy overhead projector. And being scared to even begin to find something tech related to start with. because here's the truth - I may be seen as a "tech" teacher at school (people like to come to me to "fix" things when they are not working) but the REAL tech (the new apps, ideas, etc) has a learning curve that frightens me.

Hopefully we are able to end up with class sets of tablets at our school in the near future. Hopefully this encourages me to tackle something new. Because I still want to try.

I just worry that the technology will never be the motivator [of students] we are wishing for.

((I am realizing this entry is a little all over the map. For that I apologize.))

Or maybe I am doing this all better than I think. We are our best critics after all. And every time I go to any PD hoping to come out with a new tech idea, I feel less behind the curve.

Data Driven Triangulation

Like many educators I often find myself frustrated with the education world lingo. Every once in awhile some new initiative comes down the the Ministry of Ed that forces some modifications that, in essence, just takes us back to something that used to be with a new name. Not entirely what I am about to talk about, but it is definitely related.

Current big ideas/words/phrases
- triangulating assessment
- observations and conversations

We are continually told that there are things we can do and tools we can use that can decrease the marking work load and lead to more reliable and accurate grades for our students. The current thing being "triangulation of assessment" - where we consider student products (the part we all know and love), observations, and conversations. And this is all well and good - we effectively use these all of the time. For instance, maybe in conversation with a student they showed understanding of an idea but on a test they struggled to use the correct terminology, etc in a question. I may give them the benefit of the doubt based on the conversation. Really what we are now being asked to do is have written "evidence" of these conversations and observations and include them as part of the grade calculation. Less work? I think not.

Now there are some really neat ideas, don't get me wrong. And I am more than aware that there are students who gain understanding and then struggle to read and/or write about those ideas. So the question is, how do we determine the value of all of this and what can actually predict the success of these students in the future? The last thing I want to do is lead a student to believe they will be academically (or otherwise) successful when they, in fact, may get to the next stage of their lives and discover they are missing a valuable skill. Or maybe I am just over-thinking all of it.

The one thing I like and can take away from this right away is feeling like I have permission to translate the inquiry based lessons and process that I use (especially in my Applied classes) into grades. One of those lessons from this semester was manipulatives I created to get my grade 9s to show me Bohr-Rutherford diagrams. I used a word processor to create a document with a large nucleus, small electrons, and various numbered charges (protons/neutrons). I printed them on coloured paper and cut-out 5 copies so that I could put students in groups of 4. It seemed helpful for many of the students, especially those who had missed one of the lessons needed to successfully draw a BR diagram. So here is my problem - now I have to either find a way to record each student using them (i.e. recording each other on flip cameras for me to view later and assign a mark) or spend more hours creating enough manipulatives for each student to have a set (the 5 copies took me more than an hour). Either way, time required...and how many really benefit from this compared to drawing a BR diagram on paper?

Of course I should collect data. Try it both ways. Reverse the order with another class and try it again. Analyze. But I am frankly sick of the data driven obsession that has been created recently. Everything is about credit accumulation and wanting to increase these numbers and increase graduation rates. The way I see it, what we end up accomplishing are skewed grades and students ending up in streams, grades and levels that they are not yet ready for. I would way rather help a student succeed at their pace than use some way of assessing that increases my credit numbers and pushes students into things they are not prepared for. It does them no favours.

Please bare in mind in this entry that I am barely grazing the ideas and issues at hand. I am aware that there is more to it and that there are many like-minded people that will seek to answer these questions and help students to the best of my ability. I just needed to rant so that I can go to sleep and wake up refreshed tomorrow to seek for more answers.

Despite our system's difficulties, I love my job. Let's keep the conversation going.

Blast Off!

This year my colleague and I made an effort to use more Smarter Science inspired lessons/labs in our department. We taught SNC 1D0 together last semester and used the Blast Off lab that used to appear in the applied 10 textbook as the formative lab for chemistry. We wanted it to be about the fun AND the scientific process more than it was about the content of Grade 9 Chemistry (we do start reactions in grade 10 and talk about chemical change, so that part is relevant regardless). This semester I am teaching SNC 1D0 and 1P0 so used this lab in both classes.

I am finding the 1P class challenging this semester. I have 21 students including 11 with official IEPs, 1 with an unofficial IEP, and 3 low level ESL students. The range of the class is astonishing and it is impossible to engage all of them for an entire period. I try to get the fast workers to be helpful and work with other students, but it does not always work out that way. I won't delve into the depths of my class though.

The point is that I used this lab and combined the use of the first two Smarter Science posters (with both classes actually) to help get them started (a process they had seen in full already) and combined it with the format that they would see for the summative and final performance tasks (we have taken the stance in the department that having them complete formal, typed labs during the semester and then use a hand-written format for culminating was counter-productive). They seemed to really engaged in the lab itself and really liked that they got to pick their own indepedent and dependent variables and were trusted to create their own procedure (with support and guidance of course). In the end the class averaged a 70% on the lab write up (which is awesome for the first one, even though it was heavily supported). I am pleased with the results (and also hope to continue getting the support of the school's student support teacher - there is a mini task force being set up to come up with an action plan for this group (in multiple classes)).

Challenge accepted!

Now imagine a class of film canister lids flying off - amazingly simple :)

Inspiration has Returned!

I promised myself that I would head to bed at 10pm last night (I stayed up to watch the Oscars with my mother last night and still had to drive home and organize myself afterward) and then the inspiration bug hit.

I actually came home from work, completed some of the work that had to be done, had dinner, and found myself listening to a colleague's take on her tweetchats with her Grade 11 Biology class on an ed pod cast. I have been following her on twitter since meeting her at a Smarter Science conference last June and had taken an interest in the idea - so I was excited to find out she had done this podcast. I think it was the perfect time to get myself reconnected with the online ed world and engage in something new. I had been feeling particularly disengaged from the passionate teaching world recently and somehow tonight made a turn for the better.

In past posts I have vented about technology in schools and how discouraged I felt about being technical and using it to connect with my students. So often we are discouraged by our union and school board about taking these paths, but the fact of the matter is - it is here to stay, and there are ways to do it safely! @EurekaTeacher is active proof - and I want to be a part of it.

Step one - tomorrow I will speak with my admin and make sure they are behind my initiative - to get my 3U Physics class on twitter and discussing concepts, without the numbers, from home (or anywhere on their smart phones!).

Step two - find out if there is a way I can access twitter from school so that we can discuss the idea of internet safety, twitter itself, protected tweets, spam, etc

Step three - host the first class tweetchat on motion!

Wish me luck! And please let me know if you have ideas, comments, questions, or concerns. It will be a learning experience and I will appreciate what others have to say on the topic.

Concave Mirrors in Action

As a Physics teacher it can sometimes be difficult to picture ways to modify labs and make the content of the Grade 10 Applied Optics unit accessible to my students. I think that I have mentioned in a previous post that I really like the group of kids I am working with this year. A bunch of them are very curious and they ask good questions (even if they are off topic sometimes, you've just got to go with it!) and most of them are just trying to be successful enough to not only finish their Science credits, but to achieve a level 3.

One afternoon I was talking to a colleague about how teaching mirror and ray diagram rules are too complicated for these students and that I wish I could find a way to make them accessible through a lab and to find a way to create a meaningful summative evaluation. She inspired me to work on creating templates for the beginning steps of doing curved mirror ray diagrams to give them the chance to follow instructions for the actual rays while still giving them an understanding of the principle axis. I felt that a concave mirror would be the easiest way to do this.

The image shows the core diagram that was given to them for each rule (we did three of the rules). The instructions were put on the overhead (it is a good way to keep enough light in the room to not end up tripping over one another) for each one. The first set of instructions was detailed with specific areas to be labelled and fill-in-the-blank sentences at the bottom and was completed as a formative exercise (along with the second rule and set of instructions with slightly less detail). The following day we did the third rule, with even less detail and less support from the instructors, as a summative evaluation, and each student had to submit their own drawing (for the benefit of time each pair only had to create one diagram for the first two rules, unless they were speedy).

The students were engaged in the process and wanted to do well. Many of them asked to have the rubric so they could check over their work and double check that everything was included. The students averaged in a level 3 and were all very happy with their results when the rubrics were returned to them. I will definitely be seeking to involve more ideas like this when I teach this course again, and hope to be able to evolve it more and continue to use fewer "content-based" lessons throughout the unit. They seemed to have a decent grasp of the idea of a focal point, although they may have overextended this idea and lost sight of the fact that the third rule relates to the centre of curvature. A goal for increased understanding the next time I teach the course!

Hooray for collaborative teaching!

Simple Labs Don't Make for a Bored Class - Yay!

I tried this lab last year, mostly out of desperation with a difficult class teaching a course I had never taught before, but decided to try it again to see if the engagement it created the first time could be reproduced. Because labs require writing they are always going to be difficult with a class with a number of students with communication exceptionalities, etc. The students continually require attention from the instructor to get through the process and I was lucky to have a second body in the room to help out for Day 2 and 3 of this process.

When I showed the lab to the aspiring teacher who was helping me he was concerned that it would be too simple for them and would not engage them for three periods. The lab is simply investigating the combination of two ingredients to determine the best tasting mock champagne. It allows me to have them work on skills such as writing a procedure, hypothesis, identifying variables, creating an observation chart and drawing a conclusion. As well as have them practice an important skill - measuring liquid volume. And they love that they get to drink their lab!

The next one will be more complicated - measuring the pH of stomach acid and its changes as different antacids are added to it. We will probably have to practice a couple of the lab writing skills again before we get there. As this one will be a summative piece of their chemistry mark.

An aside: We changed our formal (but formative) lab in Grade 9 Academic this year to a simple, but fun, lab using Alka Seltzer tablets, water and film canisters and went "Smarter Science style". The kids loved it. Can't wait to evaluate the formal lab write-ups that went with it. I hope they learned something through all of the peer and self evaluation that we tried in my class with it this week. (Cross your fingers for me, next year I hope to do some action research with peer and self evaluation).

Inquiry Based Ionic Compounds Lesson

I am so excited about the lesson I conducted this morning! Engagement. Learning. Oh, so great.

I spent approximately 2 hours yesterday preparing this lesson. I created a word document with a variety of elements represented in Lewis Dot Diagram format, arrows, regular element symbols along with charges and numbers that could be used to create the ionic compound formulae. Then I printed out enough copies to have 5 groups going at a time so that they could work in smaller groups to manipulate the pieces and learn from each other. The elements that become positive ions were blue and the negatives were pink - this because I gave them a periodic table to keep in their binders that is blue and many of them coloured the non metals pink when looking at the periodic table in the back of their textbooks.

So this morning we went into a larger classroom that I had booked so that they would have the space to work. It seemed a bit harder to get them to settle down to give instructions, but the space was nice to have. I demoed the use of the manipulatives once for them and then asked them to get into groups of 3-4 (so that there were 5 groups). I gave them a set of the papers and then asked every group to create the same compound. I would give them time to work on it and go around and observe, scaffolding where necessary. It was great to see them so engaged and to see the ones that understood it well teaching their peers and helping them through the process. I wish I'd had my camera with me.

Anyway, at this point I am rambling and if you have read this far, I thank you for sharing in my joy. Hopefully the fun continues in the weeks to come! Next, polyatomic compounds!

Thank you Smarter Science (and a couple of my colleagues) for the inspirations behind this lesson!