UPSIDAISIUM

Red Hot Chili Peppers – Hard To Concentrate

One week down and the exhaustion is rolling up over me. It has been such a great week though educationally. I have been able to compare the patterns of planning between my two cooperating teachers, experience a new type of programming, experience a different school environment and staff team, and learn about the delicate control and purposefulness behind planning for different course levels. The only downside is that I have been working straight since Monday. I wake up in the morning, head in to school, have one period off (2nd period) and have classes straight through the rest of the day. Then I either spend time planning and creating activities or I have class and classwork to do. The days are long and the hours of sleep are short. It makes it hard to concentrate in my long days at school.

So, what’s the solution? How do you manage all these things, and even manage additional things that do not relate to Warner or teaching? With the schedule that Orlando and I have, there really is no time during the day to work on planning, as our free period(s) are set to work on any important preparation for the days lessons or the next days lessons. As a result, all our planning is done outside of school and as we are trying to keep our planning a week or two in advance we have a lot to talk about and think over. Plus I have a tremendous amount of work to get done, both Warner and non-Warner related. There isn’t much time to take any breaks in this schedule.

The Beatles – I’ve Got A Feeling

In the spirit of being a critical thinker I was reading this week’s articles for EDU 448 and couldn’t help but question the practice of questioning. The big idea of the articles seemed to convey science as a way of thinking about and acting in accordance with the world. In this sense a person who is really tackling an understanding of the world will be asking big questions that try to provoke thought that facilitates this understanding. I’ve been thinking about the subject of questioning for awhile as it is a technique I am trying to improve on in my teaching instruction. There are many types of questions we can ask, and for me I found most of my questions possessed answers that required facts and knowledge that did not provoke much thought or connection between the material. I presented a linear direction of thinking. This lead me to think about two things: 1. What is learning? and 2. What does questioning do?

First, when thinking about what is learning I asked myself why do we learn and how do we learn. The main reason I figured we learn is to survive and provide a chance of survival for other generations. In how we learn I thought of many things, including relating things, describing things, observing interactions of things, and finally questioning things.  This is a good transition into my next question, what does questioning do? I am questioning the purpose of questioning and the consequences of questioning. Is questioning conditioning a way of thinking??

It does seem that as teachers when we question students we are prescribing an outcome, and this outcome is a way of thinking. In a sense then we are changing a mind! I don’t know how others react to this, but when I think about this I get a feeling of uneasiness. How do I know that what I am “conditioning” in regards to a way of thinking is the right way of thinking?? I have goals of course for each students education, but how do I know those goals are the best ones? I could just as easily be conditioning a pattern of thought in another way. My point is that as teachers we all have a tremendous amount of influence, both on the minds of our students and their futures. Questioning shouldn’t be about content, but should be more focused on building something useful for each student in their future. What is useful? Is critical thinking the thing that will be useful? Having a deep understanding of the world and how things connect within it? Having the ability to accomplish inductive, deductive, logical, and inferential reasoning? It would be pretty interesting if the greatest understanding you can have is that you do not really understand anything, because when I think like this I get that feeling.

In case anyone is interested, or knows of anyone who is an undergraduate Physics major and might be interested here is a link to internship programs at FermiLab. FermiLab involves a particle accelerator that collides high energy particles (ie. protons, neutrons, etc.) into each other to try and discover smaller particles that are produced due to the collision. These smaller particles can teach us a lot about energy and mass, and can help to explain the origin of the universe, create a link between the four fundamental forces (gravity, em, strong, weak), and build new models of atomic physics. I find it pretty cool because it can help explain Dark Energy and Dark Matter, which is a Cosmic mystery. Check it out if you are interested.

Everything we have been doing in Warner has been repeating over itself again and again. Reflections upon reflections of the same issues. Educational theory seems to be deeply rooted in philosophy, psychology, cognition, and many other disciplines and it is continuously seeking to improve its practice, which I am a big fan of and will be a strong advocate for. However, I’m at a stage now where I feel progress has slowed. We have hit the peak of the curve and it is evening out. I don’t know if this is because I have learned most of what there is to learn, or if it is because there is nothing around to push it that step further. Most things are stuck on trying to understand the purpose and theory of practice, but the practice seems to be secondary. Being a Physics major, I definitely love theory and can usually understand it fairly well, but the one thing about Physics that is missing from all this pedagogical theory is reality. The reality I guess will come in our teaching placements, but why couldn’t it have come along with the theory? Yes, you can count camp and STARS as real practice, we did teach, but they were also outside the context of real schooling. The scaffolding of our teaching education has been good, I just am curious whether this is the only way to do it? Is it the best way to teach teacher’s? I don’t mean to say it is bad in anyway, but I like to reflect on other possibilities. Just as there are probably a million ways to teach a classroom on one topic, there are probably several ways to train teacher’s. I think there has been a lot of focus on reflecting on theory to try and ground a conceptually strong argument in us for succeeding, but we won’t succeed without the practice. You only become a better teacher through experience, making “mistakes” and changing them (our arrows).

This leads me into two more points that I have been struggling with. First, the whole concept of master/mentor teachers. I do understand that they have experience and an extensive amount of time teaching these subjects, but how can you actually define someone as such? My thought is that one teacher may experience a lot of things in their teaching career, but how are they continuing their original practices and how are they adapting to the new generations. Every teacher we have had talk to us seems to have opinions on what is most important to them. Each enjoys discussing these topics. However, I’m sure there is disagreement across these teachers and I’m almost certain their classrooms would be different. So, I just don’t like the idea of labeling someone a master teacher. They can give me advice and criticism and support to help me become a great teacher, but they also have to realize I need to develop into the teacher I am going to be, which may not be them. Also, allowing us to make some of those “mistakes” every now and then can be a good thing for us. At least let us learn through experience as you have.

Finally, it is great that we are learning from each other and educating each other about science education. However, it would be great to focus us at some point along our disciplines. By this I mean, let the Earth Science teachers, the Biology teachers, etc. sit down and talk out things with focus on their discipline. I love the idea of integrating science and talking about it globally across all aspects and interrelations, but I also think there are different dynamics in these disciplinary classrooms that we need to learn about and struggle through with each other.

I’d like to share my files that I used to introduce and teach Newton’s Laws of Motion. The first document is a POE that focuses on Newton’s first law of motion and inertia demonstrations. The second document is a homework assignment I handed out to the students. The third document is a Newton Lab that contains three activities, each respectively focusing on one of Newton’s three laws of motion. And finally, the last document is a review sheet of Newton’s first law that students could complete if they ever had spare time from completing an assignment or lab.

1. 20091116_POE-Inertia(Newton)_Turkett

2. 20091116_HomeworkAssignment(Newton)_Turkett

3. 20091121-Newton’sLawsOfMotionLab(ShortVersion)-BTurkett

4. 20091122-Law1Review-Turkett

Here are some materials and resources to use if you ever teach about light. It is a cool lab that Michael, Toya, and I made and taught. It has four stations, two reflect on Electromagnetic spectrum talking about historical experiments of Newton and Herschel, one on refraction through different mediums, and one on spectral emissions.

Light Lab Stations

Light Lab StudentHandout

Light Lab Teacher Guide

Station Keeping

Station Feedback

The girls did video assessments today! We let the girls choose the questions they wanted to answer from a list we gave them. Each question was made to answer a specific or multiple objectives of our unit plan. This helped us ensure we were covering all our needs during the assessments. Here is the sheet we used:

20091119-STARSQswithObjective

The assessments went really well. The girls showed a strong knowledge of pH, which is awesome because they had never seen it before we introduced it to them! I think the many demonstrations that we did helped to reinforce this thought, the use of the pH probes and predictions they made about our chemical solutions, and the making of the graph as a two-line graph with pH on the x-axis and plant growth on the y-axis. It was great to hear the girls answers to why they loved STARS (mainly the sexy demos) and how they view themselves as scientists. I can just see the transformation that has happened in them and it is very rewarding.

We prepared the girls for our video assessments today. We had them fill out a STARS-AssessmentWorksheet that went through and revisited everything we have done, our question, their hypothesis, the independent and dependent variables, our results, etc. We also let them look at the rubric they would be evaluating themselves on. The girls also made a general list of ideas to include in our summative video. Here is a picture of this list:

Today was our data analysis and graph making day. The girls made a fantastic bar graph that incorporated the pH scale on the x-axis:

The graph has three bars, representing our three plants for that chemical, coming off of one value of pH, the pH of our diluted solutions. We saw that comet cleanser was most acidic and the plant growth was the lowest, suggesting that comet can be harmful to the environment and plant growth. The rest of the data and graph did not show any other significant information we could conclude from. Here is a picture of our data chart:

To include something fun into the day’s activities and still have an educational purpose, we did two demonstrations that revolved around pH. Tie-Dyed Milk is found below and Battery Blue has a link and video below that:

Tie-Dyed Milk
Introduction
Liquids like water and milk have a property known as surface tension, due to the cohesive forces of the liquid’s molecules. Look closely (you can use a magnifying glass) at the edge of the surface of water in a clear glass. Do you notice how the very edge of the water appears to rise up the side of the glass? That’s because the surface tension of the water is actually pulling the water away from the glass inward toward the center of the surface. Soap will reduce this surface tension. Let’s see what happens!
•
Directions
· Pour a layer of milk in the dish about 1/2″ (1 cm) deep. Room temperature milk works better than cold milk, if you have the patience to let it sit for a while.
· Carefully put one drop of each of the four food colors onto the surface of the milk, widely separated, and not in the center of the dish. Something like this:
· Get ready to watch what happens! Very carefully drop one drop of dish soap onto the surface of the milk in the center of the dish. (Be careful not to add the soap directly on top of the food coloring. You may want to dip a toothpick in the dish soap so that a small drop of soap remains on the end of the toothpick, then touch the drop to the surface of the milk.)
·
Observations
· What happens to the food coloring when you first put it on the milk? Why do you think that is?
· What happens when you add the drop of soap?
· What direction does the food color move when you first add the drop of soap?
· What direction does the food color move after the experiment has been running for a while?
· Does the movement go on forever? What happens?
· What happens if you add another drop of soap after the colors have stopped moving?
·
What’s Happening?!?
You probably first noticed that the drops of food coloring just sat on the surface where you placed them. That’s because food coloring is less dense than milk, so it floats on the surface, and the colors do not mix because you didn’t stir the milk.
Then the action began with a drop of soap! The soap reduces the surface tension of the milk by dissolving the fat molecules, which is why fattier milk works better. The surface of the milk outside the soap drop has a higher surface tension, so it pulls the surface away from that spot. The food coloring moves with the surface, streaming away from the soap drop. Due to the convection that results from the moving surface, the food coloring may be drawn down into the liquid, only to appear rising again somewhere else. That’s why it’s best to use a clear bowl so you can see what’s happening.
As the soap becomes evenly mixed with the milk, the action slows down and eventually stops. Addition of another drop of soap will start the process again.

Battery Blue

Happy Halloween! Today in STARS was fun, the girls made their measurement and watered our plants, and then we moved on to some fun activities with candy and pumpkins. Our girls made the final measurement of our plants. They found that the plants watered with comet cleanser were dying and not growing. Also, the plants watered with bleach were turning brown and were very weak and thin. The rest of the plants (water, regular detergent, and eco-friendly detergent) seemed to be growing and looking normal still. After these observations and measurements the girls put on their safety goggles and gloves and went to adding 5 mL of each chemical solution to the corresponding plants.

The girls then moved on to the fun activities that were an extension of our investigation. They were an extension to include pH as well as a connection to Halloween. The girls took some acidic candy (candy that is sour or very sweet) and placed them in cups of water to see what happens. The girls then added baking soda to cause a reaction. The very acidic candies could be heard sizzling when the baking soda was added. Upon completing this, we asked the girls “so what do you think these candies would do to your teeth when you eat all your halloween candy” which got a response from one of the girls “I know why you did this!”

We left this demo and moved on to doing some fun pumpkin puking with elephant toothpaste. We had a carved pumpkin and we let the girls place our elephant toothpaste recipe into the pumpkin and watch it puke out some green foam. The girls loved it! They wanted to feel it, so we let them put on gloves and they felt the foam, which was “hot.”

Below is the acid candy sheet we gave them to accompany the activity:

The Power of Sour on Your Teeth (TM)

Acid Levels in Popular Sour Candies

Acid (pH)

Low = Bad

Water (neutral) 7.0

Loss of tooth enamel 4.0

Spree® 3.0

Sweetarts® 3.0

Big Stuff Pacifier® Sucker 3.0

Sour Gummi Bears® 3.0

X-treme Airheads® 3.0

Sour Punch Straws® 2.5

Shockers® 2.5

Skittles® 2.5

Baby Bottle Pop® Powder 2.5

Brach’s Gummi Bears® 2.5

Sqwigglies Gummi Worms® 2.5

Wonka Laffy Taffy® 2.5

Starburst® 2.4

Sweet Tarts Shock® 2.4

Lemon Heads® 2.4

Mentos® Fruit Chew 2.4

WarHeads® Sour Rips Roll 2.3

Lollipop Paint Shop® 2.2

Zours® 2.2

Sour Skittles® 2.2

Airheads® Cherry Chew 2.0

Wonka Nerds® Grape 2.0

Now and Later® Cherry Chew 1.9

Too Tart Extra Sour Goo® 1.9

Wonka Pixy Stix® Powder 1.9

Altoids Mango Sours® 1.9

Wonka Fun Dip® Powder 1.8

WarHeads Sour Spray® 1.6

Battery acid 1.0

Data courtesy of Dr. John Ruby, University of Alabama Birmingham School of

Dentistry, 2007.

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