Today was the last of my New York State certification exams (hopefully I passed!) and as I sit here mentally numb after 170 multiple choice questions and two essays, I remember and can relate to how our students must have felt this week, after long days of state testing. Zach shared a story about the students at his first placement that they, the students initiated a group prayer prior to their tests, hoping and praying that they would do well. I said a prayer today too, thanking God that I am done taking those tests. Unfortunately our kids still have tests to take next week. Good luck guys!

Also if you missed it there was some controversy regarding two questions on the NYS ELA exam, regarding a story about a Pineapple and a Hare. I’ve attached a link to the article below. Give it a read and let me know what you think!

The Pineapple and the Hare

I’m sure you remember my strong dislike for blogging at the start of the GRS program!

…And then I did an innovative unit and asked students to blog!

I finished part of my innovative unit analysis/ reflection yesterday and I wanted to share it with you because I have to say blogging isn’t bad, in fact it’s great and can do great things for your classroom! I would strongly encourage you to take a chance with it, you’ll be surprised with student work and how it can be used as a tool to build a strong classroom community.

Danielle’s Theoretical Framework
Fusco and Barton (2000) state “learners participate in knowledge building communities where meaning is co-constructed, discussion of new ideas and multiple modes of expression are fostered, and the culture of expert practice is created and maintained through collaborative problems solving” (p. 340).

Lisa’s Theoretical Framework
According to the hybridity theory, teachers and students will engage together in order to establish new forms of participation—this hybrid space not only allows motivation for students to learn but also the support that they need (Barton et al, 2008, Larson & Marsh, 2005; Vygotsky, 1978).

Creating learning community where knowledge is nurtured and accepted is an integral part in fostering an engaging classroom environment. This knowledge is not solely the teacher or students, rather teachers and students engage together in an investigation to create a hybrid space that encourages and motivates students and teachers alike. In order to support this section of our theoretical framework, we created a weblog page for each students and teachers, where we discussed our excavation days, our evolution research and how fossils help scientists explain the evolution of organisms throughout earth’s history.
A community of learns was created through, not only blogging about the excavation and the research, but through blog comments. The expectation was set, that students were reading their peers blogs, and providing positive as well as constructive criticism, in regards to how students could improve their blog. We also set the expectations that both students and teachers would be asking clarifying questions, such that the blogger could revisit and comment on their blog post in response to their peer’s comments, in which clarifying questions will be addressed. Giving students the opportunity to engage in online discussion through blogging was a powerful experience. It gave students the opportunity to participate as a community of scientists, in which they were sharing their ideas of evolution. Students took the lead here, it was really their blog where they were creating their own work and providing feedback that encouraged the growth and development of understanding in their peers, the power of authority was a shared experience between teachers and students in online blogging, as the students were providing equal caliber of commentary that we teachers were providing. Something that is worth noting in this section of putting theory into practice is in regards to our actual blogging, as class participants. Danielle posted blogs with pictures from the excavation days for each class, but rarely did we post our own blogs about our experience with excavation and research. We had a significant amount to offer students in blogging about our own experiences in the investigation, but we felt that we were walking a fine line here, we wanted students to be the owners of the blogging, relying less on what we were writing and more on what their peers had to offer. Therefore our lack blogging may have allowed for a varied form of authority and positionality in class, giving students the opportunity to teach each other, creating a community that was truly student-centered, with limited guidance or exemplars from us teachers.

…is blogging a bad thing? I guess I’ve started to change my tune

I had the start of a really great post written yesterday, but by the time I got home today and sat down to finish that post, I had no interest. Instead, all I really want to do is share some fun Easter things, so that’s what I’m going to do, I’ll share the meaningful post when I’m in the right frame of mind to finish it!

Happy Easter! and Enjoy

Naturally Dye Easter Eggs

Dancing Peeps

When I taught environmental education at Frost Valley, I would often-times start off the lesson by reading parts of The Lorax. Kids loved the book and it gave them food for thought as we were learning about environmental issues such as sustainability. I had forgotten how much I loved reading that book until the release of the movie a few weeks ago. My students reminded me of this as several of them had copies of The Lorax and were reading it in preperation for the movie. I didn’t read the book this time like my students, but I did get the opportunity to go and see the movie this weekend and it’s so good! For me, the beauty of nature always outshines anything man made. Thank you to my students for reminding me of this.

Also, no one is ever too old to read this book, so take some time to read it and use it as a tool for teaching and reflecting on not only environmental issues, but the issues that people care dearly about…because in the words of Dr. Seuss “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”

”

The past two weeks have been super busy at school as the kids move through the geological eras, excavate fossils and make connections between the fossil record they are uncovering and the evolution of organisms throughout the history of the Earth. Lisa and I have had our fair share of stressful moments worrying about the unit and most importantly making sure that our kids are learning everything they need to know about the evolution of life. Lisa and I were talking about it this morning and I think we’ve had done a pretty good job, the kids have made connections and dug so deep in understanding evolution, that they have exceeded our expectations! I’ve posted some pictures of the excavation and a few quotes from students blogging reflections. Enjoy!

“Imagine living in a time

where animals killing each other wasn’t a crime.

There were big huge gigantic creatures.

There was no where to hide… definitely not bleachers.

There were forests and flowers.. it was wild!

Good thing we live now where its more..mild ” -J.R.

“THE SPECIES THAT HAD THE GREAT TRAITS DID NOT DIE BUT THE ONES THAT DIDN’T THEY DIED BECAUSE ALL OF THESE VIOLENT THINGS HAPPENED LIKE VOLCANOES ERUPTED UNCONTROLLABLY CONTINENTS BEGAN TO COLLIDE AND SHIFT AND ALSO CREATING DRY DESERTS.” -M.S.

“Some dinosaurs and mammals camouflaged against the different environment. They were most likely to survive. They were the natural selection. Others were hunted down easily by predators.” -A.P.

“Present-day birds are relatives to the “birds” of the Mesozoic Era because the birds of today are advanced versions of the ones from then. What we found in our Mesozoic Era dig relates to this Era because it shows the change over time, also known as the evolution of this time period.” -A.V.

“My experience as paleontologist was pretty fun. It was very interesting to dig up fossils out of sand. We found T-Rexs and tetrapods. None of these animals would survive into the next Era because of the fact that their natural selection would not help them anymore because the environment is no longer green so their skin would not help them.” -R.P.

“This was the best science class EVER!!” -A.V. and I.W.

Here are the pictures I promised of our fossil making adventure.

They turned out great!

To make the fossils, we used the following recipe-

Salt Dough
2 cups of brewed, cold coffee
4 cups of coffee grounds
4 cups of flour
2 cups of salt

Then we just used plastic toys we bought at the Dollar Store to make our imprints!

This Wednesday is the start of our 2 1/2 week innovative unit on evolution. We decided that we would turn students into Paleontologists for the unit and have them explore the history of the earth and evolution of species through a geological dig, research and online blogging of four major geological eras.

The ideas we have for this unit are awesome!…the work behind creating this learning environment for our students, so that they get the best out of extinction, evolution and the history of the earth is significant…

But hey my motto has always been- Go Big or Go Home! So lets end BIG!

March 3, 2012- Fossil Day- Time to get messy!

Fossils are expensive! but we need them, they are one of the key materials behind making this unit possible. Over the last two weeks, Lisa and I have search high and low for inexpensive fossils that are an actual representation of fossils students would find if they were at an actual dig site. Students will be digging these fossils out of big bins we have filled with sand, dirt and rocks, while taking pictures, recording data and eventually doing research and drawing conclusions on. Finding these inexpensive fossils has been a challenge! I managed to find a website that sells science education materials at a lower price Educational Innovations if anyone is curious, where I managed to find and purchase a 2lb. bag of fossils that covered two of the four geological eras. But covering the other two eras…difficult! We got some great fossils (and a Paleontologist tool belt from Mort, thanks Mort!) but we didn’t want there to be any chance of students digging and/or ruining any of these cool fossils, so we decided to use these fossils as pieces to show students on research days.

Back to the internet and our search lead us to making fossils! We bought a Dinosaur Mold kit that makes 10 different Dino bones all from the same Dinosaur and then decided that we would make fossil imprints using plastic leaves, flowers and other animals (of course putting a disclaimer at the beginning of each day that some of the fossils we will dig are not the actual size, but use this as a jumping off point and guiding question for students to look for during their research days, what is the fossil and how does what I found compare to other Paleontologists findings?)

Last night Lisa and I spent a significant amount of time at the dollar store and Jo Ann Fabrics picking up materials. Today is fossil making day…or the start of fossil making week! The molds need 24 hours to dry before we can remove them from the mold, so we’ll need to make a Dino a night so that we have enough bones for 6 groups/ bins.

Lets see how it went…Look for pictures to follow after we get messy this afternoon!

Since we have this week off from student teaching, I decided to peruse through one of my favorite places…National Geographic. This website is an excellent resource for us teachers and is just a cool place to visit, no matter your interest. They really offer everything for everyone!

When visiting this site I always start at the home tab on the top of my browser and make my way over, carefully skimming through everything they have added since the last time I was there (since it’s usually A LOT to get through, I usually only read the first ten articles before I move onto the next tab). Today the article, Miniature Chameleon Discovery caught my eye. Mainly because he’s so cute.

Here are some of the things the authors had to say-

“Scientists think the diminutive new chameleon species might represent extreme cases of island dwarfism, whereby organisms shrink in size due to limited resources on islands.”

“‘The extreme miniaturization of these dwarf reptiles might be accompanied by numerous specializations of the body plan, and this constitutes a promising field for future research,’ study leader Frank Glaw of Germany’s Zoological State Collection said in a statement.”

- Glaw, Kohler, Townsend and Vences, 2012 from National Geographic Daily News

After reading the brief description of this new species, it got me thinking about how I could incorporate something like this into my lesson planning and teaching, especially since we are just beginning our unit on evolution. I thought this could be an interesting organism that students could ponder, why is that chameleon so small…a question that scientists are currently studying.

Let’s get our students involved! What will they learn, know and most importantly understand at the end of our evolution unit so that they too can weigh in on why they think this little guy is so small!

We did two cool genetics assignments this week. The first was a creative write. I gave students a two page reading that summed up the genetics information students had been introduced to the week before. Students then read the reading and pulled out words that were important to them when forming their own meaning of genetics. Then in groups of three students had to work together to take those words and phrases they pulled out in order to creatively re-write their genetics reading. We had some really great writing! One group of students used the Maury show as the story line. Another group wrote about Crunchy Peanut Butter and Smooth Peanut butter. The offspring was crunchy…he inherited the recessive genotype. I gave students five vocabulary words that they needed to include in their re-write and many of them chose many more!

The rest of the week we transformed the classroom into a Build-A-Bug workshop. Students flipped a coin in order to determine which gene a father and mother would pass to their offspring for a list of nine inherited traits. Then on the second day, students sat with preassigned partners, built their bugs and took a picture of both theirs and their partners, using their netbooks.

Here are some pictures of my busy bees and their bug workshop!

After students finished building their bugs, they traded their genotype and phenotype information with their partners. For homework they had to use their punnett square knowledge to determine the probability of inherited traits of their offspring, if their bug and their partners were to mate.

On Friday, students used their homework and the work they completed in the two days prior, to work on a power point that had guiding questions to help students move in the direction that encompassed the overall goals for this mini unit, as well as met the goals and objectives for the Build-A-Bug workshop, itself. This was the summative assessment for the mini genetics unit, so students were asked not only to discuss their experience throughout the Build-A-Bug workshop, but they were also asked to reflect on everything they had learned over the past two weeks.

…a glimpse into their responses and reflections…

“The two bugs had the same genotypes, traits. The bugs’ had homozygous traits, making them have 2 humps instead of 3. All the traits, besides the antennae, were dominant, the antennae were recessive genes. The eyes were round, Ee, meaning there was one dominant gene and one recessive, the dominant gene is dominant over the recessive so you can’t see the recessive one. The trait like the stinger, was Dominant, AA.” – R.S.

“Me and my partner have different traits because we had different genotype” – A.C.

“When making my bug and then seeing other mates bug, you learn why we all come out with different genetics, and why we came out the way we are…It is important to know why traits get passed on to you , because you might want to know what makes you and where you got certain traits from” -A.M.

Great work! My students were such hard workers and did amazing work!

In all of the science education classes we’ve taken at Warner we’ve never talked about where misconceptions come from. The answers seem obvious us, teachers, textbooks, society, etc. But we’ve never had a class devoted to looking at specific misconceptions in science, as well as the specific suggestions as to how we as teachers can help remedy the situation.

There are books that list students misconceptions in science (and buying one has been on my list of things to do!), but to be quite honest, I need someone to tell me a few of the big ones. What are the overarching misconceptions that students have in science? Let’s take one class period, somewhere in something that gives me a few! And let us work on developing solutions that will address and hopefully reshape these misconceptions into understanding of the actual issue or scientific content!

This past Thursday, I went to a STANYS workshop, whose keynote speaker developed a workshop based solely on this, highlighting certain science misconceptions and how we address them (although, I think we’ve devoted a large chunk of our education thus far to looking into how we can resolve these misconception, through the creation and teaching practice of a Big Idea). The workshop was a quick hour lecture/ interactive demonstration about misconceptions that students have in science and it was well worth the time! We only touched on a few misconceptions and their source, but I started reflecting on the different sources I’m bringing into my classroom, as a student teacher, and examining what misconceptions might be present.

There were SO many, misconceptions and ideas! I have the two that I took from this-
The two major sources of misconceptions the workshop highlighted were textbooks and pictures (both in and out of textbooks). The title of one of the slides ” A picture can be worth a 1000 lies?”…hhmm what were we going to be looking at on this slide? The presenter, Thomas O’Brien did a demonstration about how textbooks misrepresent the distance the lies between the moon and the earth, in textbooks,through pictures that are not scaled properly. Part of the demonstration was to have the audience raise their hands when they thought the two balls he had brought to represent the earth and moon, were at the correct distance from each other, to scale. It amazed me at how wrong we all were, what amazed me more was when O’Brien told us that textbooks publishers have the technology and skill to accurately scale this distance in their textbooks, diminishing misconception. However, this is not done and now we have students creating solar system models that are not accurately scaled, and as teachers (I’m sure not all!) let students complete solar system projects, without a consideration of scale. This seems obvious, but I had never thought of it!

The take away for me- I need to really look at specific misconceptions! (we do this in our lesson plans, but I’m thinking specific misconceptions that tie back to the Big Idea I have set for the class, what are Big Idea misconceptions?). Also I need to buy the presenters books and get that misconception book that’s been on my to do list!

Overall, I’m really glad I took the time to go to the presentation, it gave me a lot of practical things to think about, that have been in the back of my mind to do, but haven’t. Now they are in the forefront and I can start putting them into practice!