Jim’s Professional Teaching Blog

This week’s professional development achievement was getting observe by Michael during a great community lesson of evolution. On Tuesday I was doing my community lesson on the evidence for evolution. I had the students interview an adult in their lives by having them ask 4 questions related to their knowledge of evolution by natural selection and its evidence. The students needed to have it done by Tuesday so we could discuss their answers in class.

I began class with having the students hand in their labs from last class and get out their homework. We then went through the answers as I wrote them down on the overhead. The students had a copy of the overhead and had to write down what we put up on the overhead. I then introduce my CT’s evidence for evolution lab. I added one extra component to the lab by having the student not just discuss whale evolution and the fact that whale still have a pelvis even though they do not use them. The component was a video that I found on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2C-3PjNGok) that directly talks about whale evolution from the paleontologist who first discovered that whales evolved from canine like creatures.

Unfortunately I could not show the YouTube version because Arcadia blocks YouTube but you can use a Firefox plugin to download YouTube videos and then i used an online converter to convert the flx file to a mpeg file. I ended up buying a converter though because the online one produced a corrupted file.

Back to the lesson.  I ended up in my third period class showing the PBS version of the video to the students that was a little more expansive than the youtube video.  Go to http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/11/2/e_s_3.html to check it out.  The video started a great discussion on whale evolution and drove home the point of vestigial structures.  The students in my third period class actually finished the lab about 20 minutes early so i handed out their ticket out of class (a quiz).  They had to answer to content related question to assess their understanding of the lab and another question rating me and informing me of how i could improve my teaching.  With still ten minutes left I decided to have the students tell me what they thought of me and my teaching.  I got hugely positive results saying things like they think they have learned alot and that they actually have fun in this class.  I got such a high from hearing these assessments and from three fairly to really successful class with my third period class.  I think the main difference between my first and third period class besides having done the lesson before is that I actually act like myself (joking around, showing my interest in the content, trying to question them more deeply, not so worried about the time).  In my first period I think i end up playing the role of the traditional teacher and that doesn’t work for me.  I need to be myself more in my classes.

This week at STARS was our week to finish data collection, impress some VIPs, design the presentation for December 6th and to begin data analysis.  The girls finished the data collection by getting the remaining data points for ginseng so that we have 4 points per concentration of ginseng (we have 6 points per concentration in the caffeine table).  During the data collection we had the girls let our VIPs look into the microscopes and see the Daphnia and their hearts beating.  We then had the girls come up with ideas for how we would do our 2 minute “commercial” and how to set up the interactive poster.  The girls came up with several ideas for the commercial including a great idea of showing a movie of them running really fast after drinking a energy drink and then passing out due to the crash associated with drinks.  For the poster the girls want to have a microscope with the Daphnia on it and have people actually add the caffeine/ginseng to the slides and watch the heart beat.  The main sticking point that we need to figure out is how to present the actual data (ie: raw data vs. averages).

Next week we plan on have some of the girls work on graphing data while others work on getting things ready for the poster and all of us planning the “movie”
.

Well there was no STARS this week, but I did teach my first two real lessons (2 out of the 3 lessons). The lessons were based out of what my CT was already going to do but I tried to use the beginning of class for my own and alter the rest of the lesson a little so that we could incorporate what we learned from my section into what they were learning later on. The second class was better than the first I think mainly due to having done the lesson a second time and being able to see what worked and what didn’t work. Prior to doing the lesson I had my CT review my lesson plans and she did not like lesson because they didn’t align with what she had planned. We ended up on Monday going over her planned lesson and tried to fit in some of my ideas into her plan. She also had me organize my lesson plan into a chart with columns for the time each section would take, what the teacher would be doing, what the student would be doing and the materials that were necessary. This really helped me to organize my thoughts and ensure that the lesson was not too teacher driven as my previous lesson had been.

Wednesday was my first lesson and was a nature of science lesson. The students were given a few minutes to read a primary article from early evolutionary theorists Lamarck, Wallace, and Darwin. While reading they had to highlight the important ideas from each of the theorists theories. They then had to break up into groups according to whose article they read and come up with a consensus answer. They would then form new groups based on the number at the top of their article and fill out a chart on poster paper what each of the theorists thought. I then asked what each of the theorists main ideas were. This was fairly successful but I think if I did this for each of my units they would increase their scientific literacy and allow them to understand better what they were reading (many had trouble even knowing what to look for and dealing with the language difference). The students were then going to open up their evolution packets and take notes on the evolution vocabulary words while I wrote them on the overhead. I later decided to have the definitions on the overhead prior to class and try to guide them to the answer through discussion and questioning. The students then had to create poster where they took the vocabulary words created from Darwin’s conclusions and used them to draw their own interpretations of what they learned. The then had to present what they drew. Finally they had to answer a two question quiz where they had to define 3 out of the 5 conclusion Darwin had and explain which of the three theorists had the strongest argument and why.

My CT thought the first class went all right and the second class was pretty good with very little corrections.

On Friday was my second class and was my inquiry lesson. My university supervisor was there for the first period class. The lesson began with a review of the learning objectives and a brief discussion of the phylogenetic tree of human evolution that I had on the board. The first class I had them in their seats and I briefly explained it to them and in the second class I had them come up to the board to see it and that seemed to work better. The added benefit of taking a little extra time to fully explain the tree was during the lesson they had far less questions on what they had to do. The students then had to read one page out of their packet that explained topics such as gradualism and divergent evolution. While reading they had to answer three brief questions to guide their thinking. The then had to fill in the blanks for an after reading assessment. The students then filled out their coversheets and I went over the lab. The lab consisted of the students cutting out “critters” and creating a logical organization of how these organisms could have evolved. They then had to answer learning objective questions and data analysis/conclusion questions. I added one extra component to get them thinking about time by asking them to predict how long they think the evolution would take to occur as I had done on the human tree. For homework the students were required to talk to an adult in the life (ie: parent or teacher) and ask them a series of questions concerning evolution by natural selection. I am using this to setup my community lesson on Tuesday.

The first class I completely bombed. The students were very hard to get them to answer questions, they had trouble understanding what they were doing, I had issues with classroom management, and we didn’t finish the lab as we were supposed to. It was really bad and quite embarrassing. After going for a talking with my CT and my supervisor and another teacher I went for a walk. The walk allowed me to calm down and try to fix what I had made mistakes on. I added a little more information to the human tree and made copies of it for each of the students to take home. I also planned to use the human tree as the centerpiece of the lesson instead of something that was simply there. The main problem I had with this lesson was classroom management as several kids (as in the previous class) were talking of topic and walking around the room. This is especially bad for one of my students whose disability causes him to have trouble focusing and hearing everything I say (normally he has a boom mic for me to wear so that he only hears me but he did have it on Friday).

My next lesson will be on evidence for evolution and will be combining what people found from their interviews with the evidence for evolution lab. WISH ME LUCK!

I don’t know if anyone is interested but check out Greece Central School District’s Living Environment curriculum pdf file at:

web001.greece.k12.ny.us/files/filesystem/LE%20Curriculum%206.10.pdf

I thought it might be useful. I has lab ideas and the standards associated with them.

This week’s professional development milestone was the attempt to create three innovative lessons to be taught beginning next week.  My community lesson was going to be a discussion of what a theory is in common use (ie:  in theory some could be true or I have a theory about that), what is a scientific theory and finally what do they know about evolution by natural selection.  The Nature of Science lesson would require the students to read three short excerpt from writing of evolutionary biologist Lamarck, Wallace and Darwin.  The would then have to assess the level of scientific compentance of their theories.  I got this lesson from a book April gave me called “Teaching About Evolution and the Nature of Science” by National Academy of Sciences.  The book has several activities that deal with teaching evolution by means of inquiry and nature of science.  The final lesson was built of my previous lesson plan using the Cosmic Calendar but I tried to alter it to make it more inquiry like as the students would be required to come up with completely with their own interests and not ones that interested me.  I am now working with my CT to try and improve my lesson plans as my CT thought my community lesson needed alot of work and she has not gotten back to me on the other two.

This week was the second week of data collection on our daphnia.  We were able to finish the caffeine study but were did not get a complete set of data for the ginseng.  We had our biggest group of girls in a long time (FIVE GIRLS!).  The girls from last week were very helpful in teaching the girls who have not been here.  The data that we have gotten from the experiment is very mixed and it might be difficult to derive any conclusions from it.  I think that daphnia’s heart rates were so fast the girls had trouble keep track even with the cell counters.  I think we should have increased the temperature of the water as Heather has said that actually slows their heart rates.  This would make it more possible to get accurate data.  Overall I am very happy with how the girls have done so far and I think they seem to be having a lot of fun doing the experiments.  The only real issue we had was with one of the girls who has not been at STARS for a while.  She did not seem to want to help collect data with the group but wanted to do her own thing.  We ended up getting her her own microscope and Alicia made sure to keep focused on the task at hand.  We came to the conclusion that since she had not been here in a while that she was intimidated by the girls who knew what was going on and what they were doing.

This week’s profession development story comes from my investigation for class of shadowing a student.  I chose to shadow one of my students by picking kid who i have a positive relationship with.  When I asked him he seemed to be a little wierded out and I could help being a little myself because I could imagine being in his shoes.  I went to his first period class which was global studies with a teacher that my brother had in his high school class.  The global studies class was loud but I was told they have a class average of 85% so the teacher does not force them to keep quite.  The teacher did a guided notes on world religiions for the lesson along with a Yoga session which he made it known that this was something he had to do.  My student was quite bored in class and still was wondering why I had to follow him around.  The only explaination I came up with was that I had to do it for my class.  The second period class was in my living environment class I normally have with him.  The kids had to do an online activity where they learned about cycling of various things such as water.  The final class I observed was his reading assistance class and he seemed really embarrassed to have me see this class.  The reason I think he was embarassed was that the students in the class are loud and very disrespecful to the teacher and each other.  The teacher actualy kicked out two kids out of the class out of a class of 10.  My student kept mouthing “sorry” and “i told you.”

As far as my professional development I think that the project forced me to go to other classes besides my CT’s class and see how not to run a classroom such as the reading class.  I also got to see how a teacher could still joke around with kids and allow for a little bit of chaos and still teach such as I saw in the global studies class.

This week was week one of two for collecting data to present on December 6th.  We chose to use a model organism, Daphnia or water flea, to study the effect of caffeine and other ingredients of energy drinks on the heart rate of an organism.  For the experiment the girls had to suck up a water flea using a transfer pipet and place it in a depression slide.  The girls then had to add a few strands of cotton from a cotton ball to immobilize the flea and allow for easy counting of the heart rate.  Prior to STARS, Heather made up various concentrations of caffeine and ginseng from a 1M stock.  The concentrations were 10%, 1%, 0.1% and 0.01% of the 1M stock.  The girls then added one drop of the caffeine of a given concentration to Daphnia in the depression slide.  The girls then used cell counters to keep track of the heart rate of the Daphnia.  They had to count the heart rate for a minute or 30 seconds and multiple the number of beats in 30 seconds by 2.  The data was recorded on a big sheet of poster paper.

When the girls got their first chance to see the Daphnia under 40X power they almost jumped out of their skin (some of the literally jumped back).  The were really getting into the experiment and alot of smiles were present.  We actually had one of our girls ask us if we could have STARS two times per week instead of one.  That was a really fulfilling question.  We were able to collect nearly 6 reading for each concentration of caffiene.  We will be collecting more data on the caffiene and begin work on collecting at least three readings per concentration of ginseng and maybe taurine (if there is time).  I think we are all really looking forward to next week and being able to collect more data and we should also be getting more girls too.

This week I didn’t have as interesting a professional development moment as I had in previous weeks.  This week my CT had me grade several assignments including a project that the students did.  The students had to do research and write a short essay on a specific organism of their choice.  There were several requirements in the rubric including explaining it habitat/niche, saying how it contribute to biodiversity, how humans have an effect on it and predict where it will be in 100 years.  I decided from the beginning instead of simply looking over their papers and giving a score I would provide intelligent feedback for them to think about.  I thought this was time consuming (i didn’t finish all of the paper or other assignments) but also highly valuable.  I hope that the students will read what I wrote and try to be more thoughtful during their next project which is to make a movie on human effect on the environment using Microsoft Movie Maker.

This week was alot of fun as we did an experiment to allow the girls to understand experimentation and the effect of caffiene on the heart.  The experiment was for the girls to drink either a diet coke or caffiene free diet coke and measure it effect on the heart rate.  We used the heart rate sensor from the probe kit to measure their heart rate before drinking the drink and after 30 minutes of drinking the drink.  While we were waiting for the drinks to take effect we had them discuss what a controlled experiment should look like, predict what the effect of caffiene would be on our bodies, and discussed model organisms and next week’s Daphnia experiment.