Why I teach…

Today was one of those days that I live to teach for (5th period anyway). I came in a little upset because of previous classes and a couple of my students noticed. I was smiling within 5 mintues of just chatting with my students. Right now we are in the middle of cell reproduction. We have just finished mitosis, and are working on learning about karyotypes as an introduction to meiosis.

Yesterday, we started off with a short multiple choice question review on chromosome structure using the active voters (small remotes that have multiple choice answers so students can answer questions from their desks and feedback can be immediate). It was the first time we had used them, and the students were very excited. I was able to see immediately the the class remembered everything about chromosome structure. We then discussed the different types of chromosomes (autosomes and sex chromosomes) and the different types of cells (somatic cells (all cells in your body except sex cells) and sex cells (eggs and sperm)). The students were asking lots of great questions and we did not get through very much material because they were asking such great questions. At the end of the period, I had them write a “clear/ unclear” statement, which was also a first for this class. I have had them write summaries before, and answer specific questions, but I have never asked them to write about what confused them. This was extremely beneficial because I could see exactly what I needed to re-address, or what I needed to go over. I also had some students ask great questions in addition to explaining what they didn’t understand, most of which will be answered once we start meiosis on monday . Examples of students responses will be posted soon.

Today, I used the warm up to start a conversation about the concepts covered the day before. I included a visualization activity in which the students were asked to close their eyes and think about the chromosomes in different parts of their body, so they would get an idea about how many chromosomes they have in their entire bodies. It was great because I got a lot of students saying “ooh!” because they get what they did not understand the day before. Then, we talked about karyotypes, both what they are, how they are put together, and what they are supposed to look like. Again, the students asked great questions and starting great discussions. Finally, we talked about chromosomal disorders, issues with the number of chromosomes people can have, using karyotypes of specific disorders. The students were so interested in the different disorders that as soon as I put up a picture of a new karyotype, they immediately wanted to know the symptoms, and would barely let me describe the chromosomes before berating me with questions about the symptoms, even though I was about to list them. The questions the students were asking were so great. As we were talking about disorders, I breifly introduced meiosis, just to get the students thinking about how you inherit each chromosome. One student had a great “aha!” moment. She asked “so is that why pregnancy takes 9 months? Because the baby starts out as one cell, then divides exponentially? Like it starts out as one cell, then becomes two, then becomes four, then becomes eight and so on?” I said yep, and she exclaimed, “ooh! that is so cool!” Then the girl behind her says, “This stuff is so interesting! No offense, but I wasn’t so interested in previous units, but this unit is so cool. Well last unit (mitosis and DNA) was cool too, but this is really interesting!” The last thing we did was use the active voters to see of the students understood how the karyotypes showed disorders. From the few slides we got through, it was very obvious that the students really grasped the concepts. Today was one of those days that I live for. My students all were super interested in the material, and they made me feel like I was really doing a great job teaching them to love biology.

Helping My ELL Students Succeed

The reading this week affirmed many things I already know and taught me things I did not know about helping ELL students. Both classroom scenarios were very similar to experiences I have had this year in the classroom. Ms. Lockhart’s experience was very familiar (Curtin, 2009, 2-4). Just like Ms. Lockhart, I have several students who seem to understand the material in class, or even when I help them after school, but then perform poorly on tests. I have some students who should be in the ELL program, but are not, either because their parents do not want them to be, or because they have never been tested. I also have students who do not qualify for ELL, but they still have limited English skills. These students often have other responsibilities at home, such as caring for younger siblings or making food for the family. How can I help these students, when they do not have time to come after school and I try to alter my lessons so that I can help these students as much as possible?

It was also interesting to read about all the different methods of helping ELL students in school. Skyline uses a program similar to the partial ESL program, where the student spends one period a day in an ELL class, working with an ELL teacher on current material in other classes. The English Language Development (ELD) caught my attention (Curtin, 2009, 16). This program has one teacher who is trained in ELL, teaching ELL students the subject matter appropriate to their age group. I have heard of programs, such as one in the math department at Kentwood, where a subject is team-taught by two teachers, one certified in the subject matter, one ELL certified. I think this program would be the best for the students, because the ELL students have a second teacher to help them when they need extra help that the subject matter teacher is unable provide. This tactic would be difficult because of the shortage of ELL teachers we have. Skyline only has one ELL teacher. In order to make a program, like the one at Kentwood, work, we would need to hire significantly more ELL teachers than we have now.

Reference:

Curtin, E. M. (2009). Practical strategies for teaching English language learners. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson.

Standard V Project

I completed a project for EDU 6613 that required an assessment, teaching to help students master the material, then another assessment on the same material. I learned a lot from this experience, and I am looking forward to using this strategy in my future teaching, especially because I can have students share their strategies for solving prolems with other students, because I find that studentss with a system tend to perform better on exams. My completed project can be accessed through the link below.

Standard V Project

Don’t forget the little things!

Yesterday I switched rooms with a colleague who needed lab stations (her current room does not have any). I was doing a review session with my students, and I thought- all I need is the doc cam and my transparencies, so I don’t need to worry about bringing anything extra. I’ve gotten so used to the stack of scratch paper under the doc cam in my room that I didn’t think about the fact that my mentor and I are the ones who put it there. Of course, there was no scratch paper in the other room,  no white board space and I only had two pieces of scratch paper in my binder. I also had students absent the day I gave out the review sheet, and all the extra copies were in my filing cabinets in my room. This was an easy fix, as I just sent a TA to get them (should have thought of this for scratch paper too, since I knew where the stack of scratch paper was!). I wish I could have written things out for the students, and I will know better next time to always check before hand for the little things, and try not to take things in my room for granted.

Marzano Strategies: summarizing and note-taking, cues, questions and graphic organizers, and formative assessment

Lesson Plan: Ecology

a. Instructional Strategy-Referenced Reflection

In this lesson, three different strategies were implemented in different sections in of the lesson. First, students were asked to recall how to summarize something by summarizing what they learned when they took notes on the definition of ecology, the biosphere, ecosystems and abiotic/biotic things, the day before (summarizing and note-taking). The students then took notes on a power point presentation and lecture using a graphic organizer. Examples were given, stories were told and students were asked questions to help them think of examples in their own loves (cues, questions and graphic organizers). Finally, the students filled out a worksheet that asked them to determine whether something was biotic or abiotic, which shows if they learned what the words meant the day before (formative assessment).

I thought the lesson went fairly well. The students seemed to benefit from the teaching strategies used, and would not have made as many connections if the strategies used were less diverse.

b. Standard S Criterion-References Reflection

In this lesson, students needed to summarize their notes from the day before. To do this, they needed to read over their notes, understand what a summary was, and write out two to three sentences. They needed to know how to effectively complete each of these tasks in order to be successful in this lesson. I presented these outcomes to the students and gave them a time limit in which to finish the assignment.

During the lecture, the students can read the power point lecture and fill out the graphic organizer. In addition, they needed to listen to my examples and stories, and come up with their own to show that they could recognize and apply the concepts. I related the concepts to geography, by showing a map of different ecosystems throughout the world. I think technology helped out the lecture a great deal. We could show pictures, and put up the information in an interesting, colorful way. Simply talking about the material would inhibit the visual learners, and there would not be any visual stimulation to catch the students’ attention.

After the lecture, the students were given a worksheet to fill out to discover how much they had actually learned about biotic and abiotic things the day before. They were asked to determine different things as abiotic or biotic. The students had issues with the idea that “dead” things are considered biotic when this was first taught, but today they seemed to understand the difference between dead and non-living. They still had trouble with the idea that fossils and molecules were abiotic, because fossils were “once alive,” but talking about how fossils are made seemed to help their understanding. Talking about the different kinds of molecules that are possible helped them as well, because they could see how molecules could be abiotic.

c. Standard T Criterion-Referenced Reflection

After reading the students summaries, I found that my students are either lazy, or do not know how to write summaries. Many of the students simply restated a few different sentences from their notes, rather than actually writing two or three sentences about the big ideas. A few students got the idea, but most did not. The problem was that I assumed that all students would know how to write a summary, which my mentor said that they do, they were just being lazy. We will still be going over this another day, probably using an example, such as summarizing a current movie or book.

The lecture was definitely more interesting to the students with the power point than it would have been if I had just talked. We were able to show large color pictures of organisms, maps of the world with biomes labeled. During the lecture, I told stories about Cokany Salmon, the biome that Sammamish is in and about my mentor’s previous research. These examples gave the students a way to relate to the material in an interesting way that was easier for them to understand. Students were also able to fill out a graphic organizer to help them remember what we talked about. The organizer makes it much easier for students to take notes, and get down the main ideas of the lecture.

The worksheet at the end of the period was a self-assessment (see student work below) to see if the students understood what abiotic and biotic meant, and to see if they could classify examples of biotic and abiotic things. On the worksheet I gave them a range of things, including things I thought they would know to things I knew would be difficult. I wanted to challenge them, but not force them to fail. I think it worked well. Almost all of the students understood the ones I thought they would get, and some got the ones that I thought would be difficult. When we reviewed the examples in class, it was apparent that the students understood what biotic and abiotic meant and could identify things as either biotic or abiotic. They got things wrong when they were unsure of the composition, such as a fossil. Many students did not know how fossils were formed, so they did not understand how they could be abiotic. We had a great discussion about how fossils are formed, which helped them understand exactly why fossils are abiotic.

Student work: 1, 2, 3, 4

Differentiation in my classrooms

After going back into the classroom, I made some observations in my classroom of differentiation. In chemistry, I see very little differentiation. My mentor lectures, then has students do practice problems, both in class and for homework. Then, students take tests that have both multiple choice and written answers (math problems). He does perform demonstrations, and have the students do labs, and they are linked to the material learned in lectures. My mentor is willing to answer questions and clarify material when students ask them. In this way, he has some differentiation in his classes, but his teaching strategies are not very differentiated.

My biology mentor is somewhat differentiated. In biology, the students see lectures, worksheets, group activities, demonstrations, labs and tests with fill in the blank, matching, true/false and multiple choice questions. My biology mentor is flexible with her schedule as well, so that time can be spent reviewing material that students do not understand. I feel that all these different types of assignments give students the best opportunity to do well in her class. The assignments are differentiated enough that each student should have at least one assignment that uses the learning strategy that they can learn with best.

20 minute Lesson Planning Reflection

I had a hard time creating an entertaining lesson on my own, and ended up having to go online for ideas. This is not a bad thing necessarily, but I got frustrated because I only found one example, and could not think of any alternatives. I have the lessons from my mentor teacher on the subject, but they are more lecture and power point based, and I really wanted to do a hands-on activity. I also wanted to be able to address the misconceptions about classification, and the power points did not work so well for that. I also was worried because I had no idea how long it would take the students to complete the activity. I over planned the lesson, to make sure I would not have down time, but then I ended up having some anyway (see 20 minute lesson reflection).

                I learned a lot from the Science Curriculum Topic Study and the information was very helpful when making this lesson my own. I was thinking about the misconceptions about classification (again, see 20 minute lesson reflection) when I wanted to start with a journal entry and then have the students make up their own systems. This way, I could see both what students were thinking individually and what students came up with as groups. From there, I could address any forms of systems that were not the hierarchy system and hopefully the discussions would help them see why we classify using the hierarchy system.

I think that this lesson specifically addressed the idea that students come in with preconceptions from How People Learn. The article talked about how it is important to address the misconceptions or students will not fully understand or use the correct model. I thought the lesson could have done this, but since none of the students showed misconceptions in their systems, this part seemed skimmed over or skipped entirely. Maybe I could have been more explicit, or asked the students to be more explicit, when explaining why they created the hierarchy system.

                I feel that this lesson in itself was a formative assessment. Although I did not present the journal entry, I think that also would have been part of the formal assessment, because I could see students individual thoughts on the types of systems used in classification, rather than just what the group came up with. One student could have thought something different than the group, and just not said anything because the rest of the groups had agreed on something else and they did not want to look stupid.

                Overall, I think lesson planning done right is much harder than it looks. It takes a lot of time and energy to develop and perfect a lesson, but once it is done, you can use it over and over again.

Lesson Plan

Formative Assessment

Activity Directions

Reflection on Class 8/18

Today in class we went over the different portions of the WASL, and example questions and answers. This was really helpful fro me, since I am new to Washington and had never seen or heard anything about the WASL until I started this program. I really liked going over the different questions and how they are graded because I was able to think of ways to implement practice in my classroom and hear others thoughts. Especially in the inquiry section, I thought of a lot of different ways to use the types of questions, such as in a final project, or as a quiz or test question.

I think all the questions were very valuable, and should be concepts that students know. I never learned this kind of thinking in high school, but we had to use it a lot in lab in college. It would have been very beneficial to learn and practice those kind of questions before I was expected to do it on my own in my college classes. I was already planning on asking the students to design their own experiments, and because of their presence on the test, I may do one every unit or so, as Jen suggested in class today.

Reflection on Class 8/13

Today we talked about formative assessments. I really appreciated all the books Jen showed us. I will probably have to buy them all….eventually. I thought the chalk discussion was a great tool to learn. I’ve never used it before, but I thought it was quite effective. I think many students will be more inclined to participate because they do not have to speak in front of the whole class, nor do they have to put their name on their answer.

We also talked about probes as a form of formative assessment. I liked how we were able to look through all the books for ideas, and then were able to come up with our own probe. I think these probes will work very well for discovering what misconceptions the students have about specific topics before we start discussing them. By knowing what misconceptions are out there, we can address them directly and hopefully have an easier time helping the students learn the material.

Reflection- Working Inside the Black Box: Assessment for Learning in the Classroom

A great way to improve question and answer discussions in class is to increase the time given for students to think (which always seems much longer than it actually it is!) and to allow students to discuss the question in pairs or in groups before asked for answers. The latter will help students get all their ideas out, and they will be less likely to be afraid of giving the wrong answer, because they have confirmed or refuted their ideas with a few of their peers, before speaking in front of the whole class. Follow-up questions can also help increase student learning, because they can get students to explain their thinking, and possibly talk their way to the correct answer. Student improvement is important in learning, because all students need to improve; otherwise they should not be in that class. Grading has always been an interesting subject for me, because I agree that letter or numerical grades can be detrimental to students. I think it is good to have a mix of assignments, some which have comments, but only a “plus” for credit, and some of which have numerical grades. The students will have an idea of where they need to improve, and then get the papers with numerical grades so they can know how well, according to a grading scale, they are doing.