Student Teaching, Part I

The last 3 weeks, I've been in a Biology classroom in a local high school, learning through our MAT program's "September Experience" how to prep a classroom and all the other things that go along with getting off to a good start to the school year. I wish I had remembered to blog more while doing it, but I did manage to take some decent notes that I'll be able to use for the associated homework assignments, and might refer back to as I catch up here.

Though not exactly overwhelming, the amount of information from different sources and variety of different activities that were occurring all around me did provide me with lots of data to compile and analyze. The relationships between teachers, administration, and other staff; the ways different teachers prepped their rooms and curriculum for the year; the policies and behaviors that established the tone of staff meetings; and how all of that related to me and helped me establish my place in the classroom and school. Overwhelming - no. I'm too good at compartmentalizing, handling insanity, and blocking out everything that doesn't directly relate to me or what I need to accomplish. But, when I took time to look at the bigger pictures and think in larger terms (whenever I was thinking about how my new goals include wanting to not only teach, but write and publish about it), I could see the complexities and start to consider how the relationships and communication between peers could really set up the school year for success or failure. As someone used to working rather autonomously (being an outreach-teacher-on-the-road, who has to be ready to step into a classroom and take over, coordinates their own program, and all that), it was important for me to see that and consider how I need to adapt the individualism that makes it possible to run my classroom well to a team-work spirit that would help me work with the members of this school's staff and the staff at any school I find myself in in the future.

So, I sat through a week of staff meetings, working with my Cooperating Teacher (what the MAT program at SOU calls the established classroom teacher I'll be working with in my Student Teaching) to get materials and plan some of the first few classes, and mostly, not doing much. I didn't mind any of it, but found it confusing to be so calm before a set of classes. The week before I teach a camp, I'm running in circles making sure I've tested curriculum, collected more than the necessary materials, set up the room, labeled the materials, printed a dozen versions of the curriculum, etc etc. Same for any class I haven't done a hundred times and know I can do blindfolded with one hand tied behind my back. Here I was, not knowing what all the curriculum would be, not knowing exactly what my role would be. And I had almost nothing to do. Normally - this would freak me out. Somehow, that feeling held off. And now that I'm starting to ask enough questions and work my way around the information that my CT has put together for the curriculum and lesson plans, I'm feeling pretty good about the school year as a whole. Skipping that adrenaline-rush-insanity that usually comes before teaching seems strange, but good, on the whole. I've even managed to teach a day's worth of classes with the sub sitting in the office not doing much more than introducing herself so the class knew a 'real teacher' was around.

Now I've moved on from September Experience to Fall Term Practicum, which means being there for the first two classes of the day, 4 days a week (about 12 hours a week, since the school has a block-type schedule). So, Monday's are my work day. Today: cleaning up the house including getting my MAT & Student Teaching paperwork cleaned up and organized cuz it sorta got thrown everywhere in the last 3 weeks.

Looking forward to more.

Love technology

Mostly, love Google.

Just used Google Maps (satellite view) to measure the lengths of sidewalks and open space around the museum. Why? Because I had to decide what scale to use for the distance between planets for my Out of this World camp in July.

Yay.

Building Challenges - Curriculum Change

So, I'm getting rid of the "pick up the ball and put it on the table without touching it" challenge, and adding a full second day of Crickets. I haven't been getting as excited about Crickets as I should be - but maybe with this camp format will be better for it - more contact time to really get to play with the pieces and build on ideas to get them thinking creatively.

Or, it will bomb.

And I'm definitely going to do the solar ovens (or wind-powered cars if the sun doesn't cooperate) on Friday. I think it's fun to end with a "build your own snack" challenge. And it's a whole Renewable Energy is the Future concept to put on the last day.

I may still be short on projects - but I think I can make it work.

Building Challenges

Teaching a Spring Break camp next week (and working on the curriculum today .... shh! don't tell my boss!) and trying to figure out one more "Building Challenge" to add for the last day.

Here's what I have so far:

• Building towers & roller coasters to address the "How Big can you Build it?" question.
• Building airplanes & parachutes as introduction to the challenge of "Can you save our pilot, Egg-bert, from certain destruction (when I drop him off the top of the 12' ladder)?" More commonly called an "Egg Drop" challenge.
• Using the RAFT bin (named after Resource Area for Teachers but we always tell the kids it means 'Random Assortment of Fun Things' since it's just full of any reusable random materials I can get my hands on) to solve the challenge of "Can you move the ball from Point A to Point B without touching it?" Similar to this idea from PBS Design Squad, but with a PAJMZ-style twist, of course.
• Using the Crickets software for a "Build a Robot and Animate It" challenge

And here's where the problem starts. Camp is 5 full days (8 am - 2 pm). And I can make each of these challenges into at least a full day, but I need something for day 5.

One idea is doing a Solar Ovens challenge, and having them test their ovens with s'mores (and thermometers, of course). I'm a bit worried, because it's March and the weather can be temperamental. But if we do the challenge early enough in the week and can adjust the test time for whenever we get enough sun, it could be fine.

The second idea is having a "finish it up" day at the end of the week, where they can just work on making their designs better.

But I'm still trolling for a third idea. Any suggestions?

Outreach Adventures

Outreach science at its best.

This morning's commute...
Two hours and fifteen minutes of this... on a commute that should take about an hour and a half (still long, about 55 miles, but faster). It was gorgeous - if I hadn't been watching the minutes add up on the GPS telling me I wasn't going to make it to the school on time, I would have really enjoyed it.

I spent the day watching out the classroom windows, hoping that the snow would stop. It finally did, at least at the school. But when I got back up on the hill headed home, down roads that I know had been plowed earlier (since I was stuck behind the plow for awhile this morning), I found this:
Yup, more snow. Fresh. I got to create the first tracks through much of it. 40 miles of this... Now, with the added bonus of sun glaring off of it half the time (the other half of the time, the snow was falling too thickly to see the road).

But, I shouldn't complain. It's gorgeous. I get to see it every day as I go from Talent to Klamath Falls

View Larger Map

And, this week's school rocks - they have SMARTBOARDS! OMG! I want. I really really want. So, despite the commute, I'm having a good week. They're doing the Hot Stuff lesson, and I think it's going well. I wish I had known about the SmartBoards before going in - I would have had some awesome graphics ready for the heat stuff, to try and work with what they're used to and reap the benefits of the technology. But it's still cool. I like that a slide from 3 days ago is still there in the same notebook and I can refer back to it, sure that it's what I did in that classroom and that it will trigger some previous memories for them. One of the problems of teaching the same class 4 times in a day is that I forget what references I made in one room, and confuse the students when I bring up something that didn't happen in that room.

I'm also thrilled that I'll be able to ask them to email me what I've drawn/written for my portfolio. Yay.

Technology? What's that?

This week's outreach was three classrooms (2 3rd grades & 1 4th) just chuck full of ADD/ADHD kids. And overhead projectors that were fuzzy and unfocused. And no room to set up a computer/projector if I had even thought that it would help enough. Although, I really am leaning toward needing to prepare that to ACTUALLY work. At least one of the rooms had a projector I could have plugged my laptop into, if I had been prepared with the right presentation. Then, it would be easier for the kids to read - and I wouldn't have to worry if I'm writing my "e"s clearly enough for the 3rd graders to read/copy.

In the midst of my Language & Literacy class for the MAT program, I found myself highly concerned over vast differences in writing abilities in these classrooms. Some, the writing was small and neat, nicer than many middle schoolers'. Some, still large, messy, indistinguishable - worse than most 1st graders. How do we teach writing? These kid's need to learn it, but what do we do to teach it? To form words, to space them properly, to have a sentence that begins with a subject and ends with a predicate. They learn their pronouns ("it" "they" "them") and suddenly, they can't answer the question, "But what was 'it'? What did you measure in the experiment?" The sentence I try to get them to write - "My hypothesis was right because the circle magnet held more 3 more papers than the rectangle magnet" - becomes "I was right because it held more." Doesn't matter what grade either - they look for shortcuts and don't understand the importance of clarity of communication - no matter how many times we repeat and discuss and ask questions like "what did you do, how did you do it?" and "pretend I've never done this experiment."

How do we teach clarity of communication? Full thoughts and well-written sentences? How do we do it without making it more overwhelming then the content? How do we help the students who need it, without holding back the students who have the skills already? We learn to teach models of reading and writing. But how does that address the gap between students? And if I spend time with students who need extra help on the reading and writing, what are my students who don't need that help doing? Getting farther ahead in the content, while the 10% who need direct instruction and guided tutoring on the reading and writing fall father behind and the majority of the class, the average kids, have noticed that I'm distracted and take full advantage of it.

How do we, as teachers, fix it? How do we teach the content & the communication skills so that the students can learn more than how to copy a sentence off the board, so they can learn the content and explain their understanding of it?

I was planning on going a different direction with this post - more about how I need to develop the right materials to be able to use my computer & projectors instead of unreliable overheads - and how my video camera got its first uses this week - but I guess that the real story about Outreach this week wasn't the technology - it was the lack of a very basic skill amoung a very high percentage of students. How do I teach the content without leaving one half of the class behind, or the other half bored?

Redemption!

Made great progress with the Animal Adaptations class in the last two weeks. Took it to 2 schools, a total of 6 classrooms, grades 2 to 6. And it was a hit in every one. The students loved the chance to pretend to be birds. The teachers loved how excited their students were. And, here's the kicker, they learned something!

Evolution of the class:
Not much has changed since the first time. The one change was that there was no hands-on activity in day one. It was all thinking and discussion. The eating-like-birds gets a bit old after two days, so a third day seemed unnecessary. They get the chance to "observe" the tools and foods in day 2, before making their hypothesis, but I focus more on teaching them the vocabulary of Adaptations on day 1.

So we start by having them pick an animal they know really well. Preferably not a pet-like animal (no dogs, cats, etc) so that we can focus on their natural adaptations, not the adaptations they've made to live with humans. Or, more specifically, the adaptations we've bred them for.

We then list characteristics of the animal and of the habitat that the animal lives in. After we fill the board up with as many things as we can think of, we talk about how the characteristics listed on the left help the animal survive in the habitat. What helps the animal catch the food and eat it? What helps the animal stay warm (or cool)? What do they do, how do they do it? Is that how all animals that live in that habitat survive?

When I'm lucky, which I was in the first classroom, the animal they pick is a bird and the transition to adaptations of birds is smooth. When I'm less lucky, and the animal is a dolphin, I need to make the transition to get them thinking about birds: an animal they don't generally think about often. I found, after some hits and misses, that the way to do it was with different ways that animals move to hunt their food or run from predators. They can run, swim, dig, or fly. Then we can talk about the adaptations of animals that fly, birds. With their example animal, I write down anything they say, relevant or not. With the birds, now that they understand what an adaptation is, they need to tell me what the characteristic is and how it is an adaptation. Does it help them fly, why do they need to fly? Does it help them hide, why do they need to hide?

When the concept map is drawn, we can look at the 7 pictures of birds, and focus on the most important adaptation: the beak.

This conversation kept every student interested in every classroom for the entire hour. I was shocked. And thrilled.