Galina

In this post, I would like to share some of the things that my students have done for various projects. I have to say that I am very proud of the effort and creativity demonstrated in the final product. I have seen students who otherwise think that science is boring get excited to work on something of their choice (while still including all the relevant science content).

This past week some of us in the cohort attend TRD. I am really glad that we had the chance for mock interviews. I just wish that we would have had more time to reflect on talking points to be had with interviewer’s. After speaking with some of the other interviewee’s I realized that Warner really does an excellent job of preparing us to be teachers in our own classrooms (some of the methods are questionable though, as we all know). Perhaps one of its greatest strength is in creating a community of learners within and outside our classes. I would have liked to gain more classroom instructional strategies. As I go from class to class in the program, I keep searching for this same thing: classroom strategies and classroom management techniques. In our student teaching experiences we are encouraged to be creative and try different things. But I still have yet to find a place with all these wonderful techniques that we are supposed to use. There are some tools that we were introduced to, and that is exactly it, an introduction to techniques, which gets lost in all the other more demanding things we have to do. Just food for thought…

Reading David’s blogpost was like de ja vu for me. Working towards complete student engagement is a huge goal for me. I have also noticed that turning an activity into a competition really helps to get students involved. In my chemistry class, I did a demonstration using different solutions (of either ionic or covalent bonds) to light a light bulb. Before actually placing the conductivity probes into the solution, I asked the question: Who thinks this one will make the light bulb turn on? This way students formed their own predictions and then got to see whether or not their predictions were correct. Students were excited to find out if they were right to the point were some were jumping out of their seats! Soon thereafter it became a class competition where students who don’t usually talk so much became involved when their talkative neighbors wanted to know how many they had gotten correct. Overall, I’d say it was a success because all students made the connection between ionic bonds and electrical conductivity from this simple science demonstration. The only thing I would change is to really emphasize that it is the ionic bonds in the solution that generates an electric current which we see when the light bulb turns on. This is a big idea that I will use to open the next class lesson (and also my last day of student teaching).

My innovative unit focuses on the essential question: What stories do bonds tell? In class, we are looking the different ways that elements combine namely, ionic, covalent and metallic bonding. Being in the middle of my innovative unit, I realized that I was trying to move faster than students are ready for. I think that part of this has to do with giving out an assignment without spending enough time to assess student understanding of the assignment itself. One of the biggest take-away lessons for me is that as teachers, we need to be explicit in instructions and even then, students will still have questions/misconceptions. Taking all this into account, I decided that moving the presentation date would be most beneficial to student learning because it would give me another opportunity to assess where students are in terms of making sure that everyone understands what to do and can feel comfortable using their models to explain the bonding process in their own way. I cannot wait to see all the presentations next week!

I want to take this opportunity to respond to comments on my previous post on teacher collaboration. In my current student teaching experience, I learn what teachers from other disciplines outside of chemistry are doing with their students and try to incorporate some of those things into my own teaching. For instance, students were learning about the different forms of government and structures of the US government system in social studies. Meanwhile, I was teaching a unit on the periodic table with the same group of students. So in my lessons, I wanted to show how the periodic table arranges elements in a unique and specific pattern and connect this idea with the arrangement of government systems to help students see that this idea of organization is nothing new/foreign. From readings on learning theories, it has become clear that students are more willing to try (and persevere) when science is presented as something familiar rather than something new, strange and difficult. Making these kinds of interdisciplinary connections provides some sense of uniformity for students; it is similar to forming a skeleton framework where students can add new knowledge as they learn it (a form of accommodation). Another way that I have made inter-disciplinary connections rests in the idea of balance. Systems in government are in place to maintain a balance of power; similarly, chemical bonding requires that positive and negative ions balance each other out to form a new, stable compound with a neutral charge. In summary, what I have learned from my student teaching experience is that professional collaboration benefits students just as research suggests.

Through my student teaching service, I have experienced the benefits of having time to meet with other teachers in the same team/grade level. In our meetings, we discuss how our students are progressing, what are we doing to help students reach their potential and what is working (or not working).

Reminiscient of schools in Finland where teacher collaboration is commonplace, this kind of collaboration is highly effective for a number of reasons. For one, we share the strategies attempted in class and what works or does not work so that we can move ahead without repeating the same strategies. We can bounce ideas off each other and co-construct an appropriate plan of action. For instance, a strategy was suggested to help a particular student become more actively engaged in the classroom. We all agreed to implement this strategy into our lessons with the idea that it will be more effective when it is used throughout all classes.

Being a part of this incredible professional collaboration makes me feel a part of the school community and gives me a better sense of student needs because I learn things I would not otherwise have seen just by being in the classroom.

Universal indicator demonstration
We are have been studying acids and indicators in class; I did a demonstration using the universal indicator solution to bring home the concepts we have been working with. Here are some things I learned from doing this demonstration and ways that I would change it:

Not surprisingly, I got different reactions with different classes; students lead the learning through the experiences they bring with them, examples, comments, connections formed and shared with the class. Ex. In the second class, a student commented how the stirrer solution is reminiscent of Dorothy in the land of Oz.

Let students participate by adding the alka-seltzer table, HCl dropwise, base while I supervise for safety.

Students loved the magnetic stirrer because that was something they had never seen before. Alluding back to Theresa’s post on innovation, this is a perfect example of how “innovation” has different meanings depending on who you ask.

I relearned the importance of knowing your students and knowing the entire curriculum. This allows you to help students make connections between big concepts, lab findings, etc. For example, students used alka-selzer tablets in a previous lab where they determined how much gas was produced (volume and density). Today, we used that previous experience to bring out the idea that CO2 gas is produced from the alka-selzer and reacts in the basic solution to form carbonic acid, which is responsible for the beautiful color change we get by using the universal indicator. Then I added HCl to produce another beautiful color change in the beaker solution and share my enthusiasm with students because you really cannot get bored with this color show. Even more importantly, eliciting an explanation from students and forming a discussion around the demonstration is key to getting the most learning out of a relatively short demonstration.

I came across this competition, The Intelligent Use of Water and wanted to share it with everyone. It might be a cool way to engage students in the scientific community. At the very least, it will give students that sort of exposure to the issues facing our world and what people are suggesting as solutions. It also brings home the message that we are in this together; by sharing ideas (collaboration) we have a better chance at success.

As I search for new ways to present material and engage students in the classroom, I realized that engaging students in the classroom depends in part on how students perceive the instruction and material. When students can make meaning from the material to their personal lives they are more likely to be interested in learning more about the material. As a student teacher, it is not immediately apparent that there are many ways to help students make the connections between the science content and their personal lives. In order to help students start thinking about this connection and as a way of learning about students prior knowledge and work ethic, I asked students to read a short piece on radioactive elements and write an essay on how science affects their lives. Reading through the essays, it was interesting to see that examples used by students. I could not help but notice that the essays were rich in multiple examples and science content. Interestingly, the personal connection piece was briefly mentioned.
Something else that I am considering is to have students find a news article related to the science content we are currently studying and explain its relevance to what we are studying in class. For example, in one of my classes we are studying the elements and how they were formed (nuclear fusion and gigantic supernova). I came across this video and realized how powerful it would be in showing students why it is important that we are studying the elements because they are related to the sun and this is how the sun affects us today and in the future.

I cannot begin to say how great it is having at least 2 of the same classes on the same day! I find myself improving from one class to another simply by having had the experience of teaching it once. I see where I can change things, add something different, take something out, restate an idea in a different way, etc. By teaching it once to a live audience I see where I can make changes in the way activities are set up (the logistics of teaching). I will use one lesson as an example, in my biggest classroom it would have made things go alot smoother by having students work in pairs completing elemental cards and then cutting them up. Another lesson learned is that as a teacher, I need to be clear and give explicit instructions on everything. This is something that I am working on and getting better with more practice.