The two ideas the really struck me in Ellis’s lecture this week were ideas about constructivism and student independence. The first idea, that “things and objects and so on should be studied before abstract rules are studied” (Ellis, slide 9) made me think of the constructivist view that our schools are pushing towards now. We encourage students to build their knowledge from discovery activities and we use inquiry strategies to help the students discover knowledge on their own. We use inquiry activities a lot in my biology classroom. We had the students complete an activity in the beginning of the year where they classified different household objects, such as toothpicks, rubberbands, pieces of cloth, and metal pins. This idea was to get them familiar with the idea of classifying different objects so that they would be comfortable when we started classifying organisms. This led to the second idea that struck me in the reading, “that students should be more dependant upon their own investigations than upon authority” (Ellis, slide 11). This idea is also just becoming widely used in the classroom, getting students to take responsibility for their learning. We want the students to discover their knowledge, rather than just having us tell them what concepts they need to understand. In my biology class, my students inspected plant and animal cells to discover the differences between them, rather than just telling them what the differences were. I think both of these ideas are very important to American education today, and it is very interesting that they come from Europe.
Tag Archive: lessons
In this module, I learned that education is moving towards the active student, rather than the passive student. The passive student “sits in his or her seat [and] listens to what the teacher has to say, who follows the prescribed curriculum, who turns in the assignments, takes the exams, receives the grade, and moves on to the next level”(Ellis). This classroom would have mostly direct instruction, and little constructivism or inquiry. In classrooms with active students, there is more student-student questioning and hands-on work in which the students are working together to figure something out. I learned that this idea of the active student increases the amount of knowledge the student gains by discovery, rather than by receiving it from someone else. Students internalize knowledge gained by discovery, and the idea of the active student puts the pressure on the student to learn, rather than the teacher to force the information into the student.
Over the summer, I felt prepared to fulfill this standard in my classes. In my SPU classes, we talked a lot about each of the pieces of the standard. We even came up with our own lesson plans for different ways to fulfill this standard. I developed two different lesson plans over the summer that both fulfilled this standard.
One was a lesson on the characteristics of life, involving a debate on whether Lord Voldemort should be considered alive. I used written and oral communication and individual, paired and group work. I paired the students as best I could with similar ability levels, so that each student could feel that they had a chance to win the debate. Each of formative, summative and self-assessment was used, as students needed use the characteristics of life as evidence of their learning, which means they can check themselves to see if they remember them, the teacher can tell how much students have learned by listening to individual discussions and debates and then at the end of the class, the teacher can see how much the class has learned in the final discussion where the class has to come to a collective decision. I felt like this debate helped the students internalize how we view the characteristics of life and how we apply them to organism today. I think this lesson would also be fun for high school age kids because Harry Potter is very popular in that age group. I feel like this lesson would be one of those that students have a lot of fun, and do not really realize that they are applying their knowledge. Problems I foresee would be students getting off topic, and not using the characteristics of life, but I feel like this could be taken care of with careful direction.
The second was a lesson in which the students needed to discover why we classify living organisms in a specific way by creating their own classification system of one shoe from each class member. This lesson mostly uses self and formative assessments, because it is an introductory activity. The one piece of assessment that could be considered summative would be applying their knowledge from note-taking on each category of the Linnaeus classification system to their own shoe-classification scheme (see the lesson plan). I think this lesson would be accessible to all students, because it is dealing with shoes, which they wear every day. This lesson seemed very easy for the female students, as they probably think about the different aspects of shoes when getting dressed in the morning. I tried to use many instructional strategies, including individual, group and full class work. Because we were classifying shoes, I think every ability level and cultural background could understand this activity. Students with language barriers would be put in a group with at least one other student that they are familiar with to help them understand everything going on. When I entered the classroom this quarter, I found there was a similar activity, classifying household items, already built in to the curriculum which accomplished the same thing.
This quarter, I have seen many lessons built into our biology curriculum that are informed by standards based assessment, intentionally planned and influenced by multiple strategies. Our lessons in biology and chemistry start with a warm up, which is either a formative assessment to gauge what students know about a specific concept before we teach, or see how well they learned the material from the day before. We intentionally organize our lessons in a sequence that makes sense, and make small changes to accommodate all of our students and their needs. We use many strategies, including individual, pair and group work, written and oral work, and using sentences and pictures to convey a concept. The biggest change this quarter however, has been the amount I’ve learned about how to implement technology into the classroom from my educational technology class.
In our classrooms as Skyline, I have access to smart boards, document cameras, and computers, all of which we (my mentors and I) use in our lessons on a daily basis. Students are given the opportunity to see these technologies in use, as well as use them individually for presentations. We also have access to active voters (multiple choice remotes to check student understanding using multiple choice questions) but have not had the chance to use them yet. Through this class, I was able to see many other forms of technology in the classroom, including how to use blogging in the classroom, ideas for projects that collaborate with other classrooms, and how to incorporate technologies that students may need to know how to use in the later careers. I came up with some other ideas for helping students really internalize the skills and concepts they learn in the classroom, such as using computer games and podcasts to give students the means to apply their knowledge to see how well they understand the concepts and skill they have been taught. These new technologies may require use at home, which cannot always assume that students have access to these technologies. We can get around this by creating in class activities that teach students how to use these technologies, which we have done in my classrooms this quarter. Even giving students an option to use technology could help inform all students about technology, as the presentation would show students how the technology can be used. I had two projects, Organelle Commercial and Salting a Slug, that did this, and in both cases, only one group chose to use technology in their project.
Finally, in my technology class we needed to develop a website to help other teachers incorporate technology into their secondary math and science classrooms. We put up several ideas of tools to use in the classroom and example lessons using those tools for each for each component of Tech EALR 1: Integration: Students use technology within all content areas to collaborate, communicate, generate innovative ideas, investigate and solve problems. We also developed a digital narrative that discussed our view of technology incorporation in to the classroom. We had to develop a script and use technology to put pictures together that made sense with our script. I feel like I understand this standard a little better than over summer, especially in the technology component. I am constantly learning more ways to fulfill this standard from my mentors. I know that I will learn more as I go through the year and I hope to keep adding to my experience long after I graduate from this program.
I feel that I have made a good start on meeting this standard this quarter. I try to make all of my lessons content driven. When in class, students must solve problems in order to succeed in science and understand given curriculum standards, which may range from understanding concepts by explaining them in a different way to applying their knowledge to answer a question.
Students in my classes use different methods to learn the given material. They listen to lectures and take notes, they complete practice problems, and they ask questions when they do not understand, which happens in most classrooms, such as in my mentors’ classrooms. I have added some components to help students show their understanding in different ways. Three particular assignments have stuck out this quarter in my classes. In chemistry, I came up with a poster activity, with the help of my mentor and a few other faculty members, to help the students with orbital notation and the periodic table. Students were assigned an element, and need to figure out how to represent the valence electrons in an illustration, and how to complete the orbital notation for their element, with only one explanation of how it worked the previous day. This activity is aligned with the physical science content standard 9-11 PS2A and helps students meet the standard. I think this poster helped them practice orbital notation without doing the usual lecture and worksheet. I think these kinds of activities help the students want to learn the material rather than having it forced down their throats.
In biology, I came up with an activity where students composed a poem, song or story about what happens when salt is poured on a slug, using specific vocabulary words we learned in class. Students showed their understanding of osmosis by composing a creative piece, which is different than normal assignments. This helped them internalize what osmosis is and how it works by asking them to relate it to their lives. This activity is aligned with the life science content standard 9-11 LS1D and helps them meet it. The writing in this assignment helped the students improve their writing, as well as allowing them to incorporate their interests into the stories (see the students work included in the above link).The students were also able to show their creativity in what kind of story they told. The final assignment was an established lab within the biology curriculum, Investigating Cell Variety, where the students needed to figure out what distinguishes a plant cell from an animal cell by looking at different cells and identifying similarities and differences between them. I think this activity helped the students tremendously in understanding plant and animal cell structure, much more so than any lecture might. This activity is aligned with the life science content standard 9-11 LS1C and helps the students meet this standard. This lab required students to use their reading and writing skills to understand the lab manual directions, and answer those questions presented in their lab manuals.
These are all things I have done in the classroom. Through my educational technology class, I found a few other ways to meet this standard. One of the ideas I have gotten through my studies is incorporation of computer games that help students improve their critical thinking and problem solving skills into the curriculum. Another idea is to create a lab that asks students to collaborate with another classroom across the globe. The students would each complete a similar comparative investigative lab that applies to each country’s environment. The students would post their findings in an organized fashion on a collaborative site, such as a blog, and then compare with those findings of the other classroom. They could learn the content they are supposed to, incorporate reading, writing and technology, and introduce students to a new culture.
I have learned a lot this past quarter about this standard and how to fulfill it in the classroom. I feel that I understand this standard much better than I did over the summer. It not only encompasses the concepts you must teach the students, but how you teach students these concepts, including relating the concepts to the students’ lives, and the other subjects they are learning. It also includes how you relate the content to their future lives and the skills they need to succeed once they graduate from high school. This standard means that you teach the students not only the concepts in the state standards, but also WHY they need to learn those concepts, and HOW to apply them to their daily and future lives. I feel that I am learning how to effectively accomplish all of these things in my classroom by watching how my mentors do it, and trying out different techniques and activities that I came up with. These are only the most prominent ways that I have fulfilled this standard in my classroom, and I hope to continue to learn more as I go through the rest of the year. I think that I can add much to my experience as the year goes on.
The ability to think critically and solve problems is extremely important for any person who wishes to be successful in the world today. Every job involves the employee somehow thinking critically. The world today is not perfect, and there are problems of every kind present in everyday life. For example, a building manager may be working on a large project, and one of his employees has a fever and must stay home. That employee’s part in the work today is not going to get completed and the deadline may need to be pushed off. The manager cannot just say, “oh well, I guess things are just going to be delayed”. He must figure out a way to either get the work done, or to keep on track for his deadline without the work being done. This situation asks him the think critically to solve a problem.
Managers are not the only ones with problems. Problems happen at many levels, even when work isn’t an issue. Let’s say a woman is driving to pick up some groceries to make that night’s dinner and her car breaks down in the middle of the road. First, she must figure out how to get off the road so she can exit her car safely and not cause an accident by her car being stopped in the road. Then, she must figure out how she is going to get her car fixed (let’s say she has no cell phone). Finally, she must figure out how she will get home and then what she is going to do for dinner. In each of these pieces, she must think critically to solve her current problem. If students are not taught how to solve problems, they will have a hard time getting through life.
In the reading, I really liked Meg Griffin’s Scenario D. It showed a very applicable way (for a science teacher) to incorporate problem solving into a relevant lesson. I especially liked the real-world application she incorporated into the end of the lesson. (NETS Implementation 2008) My goal is to have several of these types of lessons built into my curriculum, where students are given a problem and must design a procedure to explore and fix the problem. When a teacher relates relevant lessons to phenomena students see outside of school every day, I think they are much more interested and much more willing to complete the assignment. They may even have fun doing it.
There are many ways to integrate technology into problem solving and critical thinking, and I think that students have a lot of fun using these technologies. I don’t think they feel like they are learning anything, which makes it more like fun and less like school work. On my delicious tag this week, I mentioned several computer games that I feel incorporate critical thinking and problem solving into the fun of the game. Some of these games are Super Solvers © Gizmos and Gadgets, Cyan World’s Myst, The Learning Company’s The Oregon Trail and Moby Games Mixed-up Mother Goose. These are only a few of all the games out there that incorporate critical thinking and problem solving. One other website that one of my classmates found discussed interactive simulations that give students a scenario which they can interact with, see an issue, and then try to figure out why it is happening. This website had several simulations with science topics, and they are varied from physics to biology to chemistry to earth science. There are also a few simulations about graphing. I think these simulations could be used very effectively to help students explore new concepts and figure the concepts out on their own. Allowing students practical experience with critical thinking and problem solving is, I think, the most effective way to teach them how to think critically and how to hone their skills in this area.
References:
- NETS Implementation. (2008). Retrieved from NETS Implementation Wikispace: http://nets-implementation.iste.wikispaces.net/Critical+Thinking%2C+Problem+Solving%2C+and+Decision+Making.
- University of Colorado at Boulder. (2009). PhEt: Interactive Simulations. Retrieved from http://phet.colorado.edu/index.php.
Reading this article made me realize how many different interpretations of differentiation there can be. Before I read this article, differentiation meant the different practices and strategies teachers use in instruction. Although these are part of differentiation, this portion is not all that differentiation can mean. Differentiation can also refer to the flexibility a teacher has with his or her schedule. On Monday, for example, my students were having a lot of trouble with lipids. I had scheduled to begin cell membranes on Tuesday, but instead, I spent the entire period going over the worksheet I had given for homework on lipids, to make sure that the students understood the material. I think the basics of differentiation is simply the idea that teachers be flexible with their schedule and teaching strategies so that every student can learn to the best of their ability.
As I browsed through the readings and the delicious posts of this week, there were many different ideas about 21st century skills and how to implement them in the classroom. There are many skills that the articles deemed “21st century.” One of the skills the articles discuss is the different forms of technology that are used in the world today. Students need to be familiar with them when they graduate so they will be marketable employees. 21st Century Skills, Education and Competency Guide discusses how other countries are teaching their children the technologies required, which mean children of other countries will be more marketable for 21st century jobs than American children. If our children are not marketable once they graduate, then our country will slowly fall behind in the global market and economy, which is something no one wants (21st century skills 2008).
The job market today requires their employees to have a different skill set than past generations. Today, employers want their workers to be able to work out complex problems, both individually and in groups, communicate with others effectively, both locally and over long distances, and be able to efficiently manage information. All of these skills could require some type of recent technology, such as Skype, facebook.com, blogging tools (i.e. wordpress.com) or wikispaces (Nielson 2009). We need to prepare students for this essential skill set for their future.
In order to help students learn how to use these tools appropriately and effectively, we should work on incorporating these technologies into our lessons. For example, we could have students record a phone call on Skype at home, where they are using all the elements, including vocal communication, instant chatting, and sending documents, pictures or videos. They could collaborate on a project, each doing one part and then sending those parts to each other. They could keep a log of their collaboration (chat does this automatically) and record their vocal communication. In another project, students could collaborate on a wiki or blog to present a concept for their peers. The project could involve students creating their own website, viewing and commenting on their peers’ sites.
This idea has huge implications for education. If we want to ensure that the next generation of Americans is on par with the rest of the world, we may need to create laws and policies to guarantee that every classroom provides the technology training for the students. If policy dictates that we must provide this technology training, we must be provided with the resources to give students experience with these technologies. This will probably require a lot of money, and may not even be possible in the current economy. If we do not have the support money however, it will be very difficult to ensure that are students will graduate with the skills to operate some of these technologies. We need to do the best we can to introduce, and possibly demonstrate these technologies, even if we cannot provide students the opportunity to individually experience them.
References:
Nielsen, Lisa. (2009, August 14). Ten Ideas for Getting Started with 21st Century Teaching and Learning. Message posted to http://www.techlearning.com/
(2008). 21st century skills, education and competitiveness. Retrieved from http://www.21stcenturyskills.org/index.php
I would relate classroom teaching, especially during direct instruction, to a preacher and a congregation, or a presenter at a conference and an audience or even an actor and an audience. I think the biggest implication of these relations is the entertainment factor each of these scenarios provides. The preacher, presenter and actor all want to capture their audience’s attention, to suck their listeners in to what they are saying. The ability to be entertaining is an important quality of being a teacher. Every teacher wants their students to be engaged in the lesson, and excited about, or at least interested in, the material. If we can be entertaining while we are feeding students information, i.e. large gestures, funny voices, walking on tables, etc, there will be a better chance that students will remember what you are talking about. It is important to remember that if students are not engaged, they are probably not learning anything. There is a lot of content to get through in secondary science, especially in high school, and it is easy to get wrapped up just making sure they have all the material they need. Take the time to be funny, to tell bad jokes and to make weird faces at your students. They love it. The more they laugh in class, the more excited they will be to come. 
Today was the second day of the 20 minute lesson plans. Everyone did a really great job presenting their lessons. I especially liked Kurt’s lesson, because he did a great job presenting a confusing topic. I really liked that he asked two students to demonstrate by having one student run as fast as they can around the room and shout out when their stopwatch reaches twenty seconds, and have a stationary student do the same. Then, when a students pointed out that this would not work because the student could not run fast enough, he turned to the student and said, “you don’t think you could reach the speed of light? Oh well, I guess it won’t work then. You guys can sit down.” It made the whole class laugh, and I think the “activity” would stick in the students’ minds, even though they did not do anything. I also really liked Gloria’s lesson, and how she related stoichiometry to ratios we already use everyday, like 1 dozen is equal to 12 pieces. It made stoichiometry much less confusing (from a student’s point of view) and I will definitely use that in my teaching. Over both days, I saw a number of interesting ways to present different topics, and all the lessons gave me ideas of activities, questions, and phrases to use in my classroom.
I thought the lesson went well, other than the fact that I had nothing for students who finished early. I just didn’t realize that one group would get done so much faster than the others. It might have had something to do with the fact that we were classifying shoes and one group was all girls and one group was all guys. I think girls think about shoes much more than guys on a daily basis. One thing I could have done was to ask them to do another classification system, and try to use as many different categories as possible. During the lesson, I thought I might also make-up crossword puzzles for each unit, just so students have something to work on if they finish early in any activity. But I think asking them to create another system would be more applicable to the lesson. Some other changes I might make would be to ask students to further explain why they used the type of organization they did. For example, if they used a hierarchy system, why did they use that, as opposed to various groups on the same level? I may not tell them to start with two groups, so that I do not give away the idea of using a hierarchy system.
One of the misconceptions students have in classification is they do not readily use a hierarchy system without being asked to do so. If I do not ask them, or hint to them, to use a hierarchy system, I will be able to judge how much the students already know or guess about classification, which was my goal in this lesson. I really used the whole lesson as a formative assessment, though I could have done a better job explaining that idea in the beginning.
In addition, I thought I could have added more student contribution in the final discussion. I could have asked if any of the students had heard of the Linnaeus classification system, and if they could explain it. I could have even asked students for the taxonomy levels, because they probably would be able to get most of them (at least kingdom and species) without my help. Then we could have gone more in depth with an example relating the systems they devised to a system in place, like a dog versus a cat, and the flow of their taxonomy levels. Even in that discussion, students could be asked to contribute also. They would probably know the species of dog is canine and cat is feline. They may also know that both belong to the animal kingdom, and may know that mammal is one of the levels. One student may even be smart and check their textbook (the levels for a dog are in the book I will be using at Skyline).
I think I did fairly well on the RTOP criteria. The only section I thought was severely lacking was the preconceptions and prior knowledge. I think this part was a problem because I planned a journal entry about why they thought scientists classified organisms, and what they thought those systems looked like, and there was not time for this to be included in the lesson I presented. I thought the activity covered this portion as well, but not as well as I would have liked. I gave the students a hint about using a hierarchy system, which I think I will not do next time. I also need to have more explicit criteria for the presentations so I can hear students’ thinking on why they used the type of system they did. Maybe I could even say something like, “think about how scientists classify animals while you are classifying your shoes” or something of that sort at the beginning of the activity.
I engaged the students as members of a learning community by having them create a classification system by working together and discussing their ideas on why they wanted to structure their system in a specific way. Student exploration exceeded formal presentation, because they were creating the system and then discussing their thinking, rather than having me lecture on how systems are structured. I thought the lesson encouraged students to seek alternative modes of investigation because they were using ideas from biology to create a system using their shoes, rather than animals. We could have done many other things to look at classification, but this way, they needed to look outside the box, and understand classification by performing it in a different manner. This section may have been a little weak because they really only had one mode of investigation open to them. I thought there was a high proportion of student to student talk. I tried not to help the students until they really needed it, at the end of the lesson, for example, when the boys were taking too long to decide what categories to use.
All in all, I thought this lesson was a very good learning experience for me. I did manage to do the one thing I have been working on in the classroom. I gave out all the directions and papers before splitting them into groups, and did not talk over the students as they were getting into groups. This was something I did every time I presented a lesson, so I was happy that I finally fixed this issue.
