Read the Procedures

Setting: High School Biology Class. Spring Semester. My first day back as their Student Teacher since before Winter Break.

Me: "After you turn in your starter, grab a lab packet and start reading for today's lab."

time passes

Me: "Can I have a volunteer to read the introduction to today's lab?"

Volunteer reads introduction

Me: "I'm very strict about labs. Paying attention during the pre-lab readings and reading the procedures before you begin is important to me. If I feel that you aren't prepared for the lab, you will not participate. Please read the procedures quietly - you may read to yourself or partner read."

Time passes.

Student: "Can't we just read it while we do it?"

Me: "Not really. The first instruction asks you to write a hypothesis, but without understanding what you'll do during the lab, you won't be able to guess what will happen."

Student: ...

Time passes. All eyes are off the packets.

Me: "Who can summarize the purpose of today's lab for me?"

Pause.

Student: "It's about natural selection of rabbits from genetics and alleles."

Me: "Yes. We'll be seeing how alleles are randomly mixed in populations, and how those genes that are not suited to the environment are selected against. Here's how it will go," picks up paper bag with beads, "In this bag, there are 100 beads, 50 of each color. When I shake it up, that's the bunnies 'breeding.' Then, I reach in and take out two beads. These two beads are a baby bunny that is born. If I draw two yellow beads, it has fur; if I draw a yellow and a red, it's a carrier for the furless gene, but it has fur and will survive; if I draw two red beads, the bunny is born furless and dies before it reproduces. Take the beads, make a tally mark for which kind of bunny it is, and put them in a pile. After all the beads have been taken out of the bag, set the double recessive bunnies aside, they've died. Count how many surviving alleles remain of each color and record the data. Return the beads to the bag, and repeat."

(Okay, to be fair, I meant to say all of that, but found that the students were not paying enough attention and I decided to give up around "put them in a pile.")

Me: "You will work with a partner. Find a lab station, and begin."

There are 7 lab tables, there were 16 stations for this activity. At each table, I repeated the following after seeing how students were progressing:

"There are three questions at the top of your worksheet, including the prompt for the hypothesis. Answer ALL of them before doing the lab."

"Don't count the beads from the bunnies that died. Only count the ones that survive to the next generation."

"Count INDIVIDUALS in one column, and ALLELES in the other column."

"You will always have 50 of the dominant allele - it can't be in a dead rabbit in this simulation."

"The instructions for calculating frequency are in the procedures."

"The procedures clearly said to write frequency as a decimal, not percentage."

How do we get students to read procedures? This was really an incredibly straight-forward lab, with well written instructions (borrowed from another source and I had tested it out several times). Labs are only effective if they find the purpose in them - unfortunately, the purpose is in the procedures, and the procedures are ignored.

Balance

I'm gearing up for my last term of Student Teaching and the return to a high school classroom. I spent the last 10 weeks in a 6th grade classroom teaching Science (Inquiry and Ecology) and a little Math too. Their energy, enthusiasm, and interest in anything "hands-on," made them perfect for my teaching style and experience.

But, I enrolled in this MAT program to get my certifications in High School Biology, so, back to the high school. The Fall went well, and I should be feeling more confident about my abilities with this task. But, I'm not.

Why am I worried? Because the units I'll be teaching are Cycles and Ecology/Populations (according to my cooperating teacher). I did not verify with him that "Cycles" meant biogeochemical cycles (which, I think he meant) or Cell cycles (which is totally possible since the lead-in unit is Mendelian Genetics). So, that's one reason I'm worried: he's not answering emails and I'm not sure what I'm teaching.

The second reason I'm worried is that, no matter which unit it is, there's a slight problem with the teaching style, classroom set up, etc, that I need to come to grips with. These students do not have their own textbooks - there's a classroom set. There are no computers in the classroom (let alone computers with internet). The plants we were supposed to get started in Fall/Winter haven't been started so that will set me back a bit. And interesting, hands-on discovery-type labs are not very plentiful for either cell or biogeochemical cycles. These are the features that have me feeling like the entire unit will be lecture and worksheets - and no engaged and active learning. In my world, classroom time is spent in labs - in DOING the science, not hearing about it. And, when reading and memorization and diagrams are necessary, there's got to be room for individual interests to drive the learning. That's significantly less possible when they don't have their own text books or when classroom time can't be handed over to them.

This means planning library days (if that's even possible) so they can do research on human impacts on biogeochemical cycles. Field trips to a park for the ecology lessons. And other "out of classroom" experiences that, as a Student Teacher, make me nervous. So, here I sit, torn between wanting my students to "own" their learning and wanting to plan things that will be successful and not cause additional unknown stresses on me (or my CT).

How can they "own" their learning in a room with limited resources? How can I plan projects that engage multiple intelligences and encourage creative thought, in a room where they've spent the last 6 months filing out lots of blanks on note-taking worksheets, watching movies, and not finding motivation to think outside the box? Do I want to work within the patterns they know and expect, or do I want to do things that will effect classroom management because they are so different from the norm?

And, how hard to I want to push myself, how many risks do I want to take? Is there is a significant advantage to planning those library and other field trips that I actually can't gain for my students in the classroom?

I think the answer to the last question is "YES!" Now, I need to convince myself of it and keep planning those units until they work - for ALL students, for my CT and the MAT program, and for ME.

Wordle

Here's how I got there..
dy/dan posted about Martin Krzywinski's use of Wordle to analyze the US Presidential/Vice Presidential debates.

So, I went to Wordle and ran an analysis on my latest Blackboard postings for Human Development and Cognitive Learning.

I like how this lets me analyze my homework. What was I really trying to say? I'm glad that "student(s)" were large, I want my posts to be about how I'll implement ideas in my classroom to help students. I'm glad "steps," "lab," and "behavior" were large because this unit was about behavioral learning and the steps we can use to affect students; and since I teach a lab science, it's in that lab that I need to affect their behavior. Yay, I was mostly on task.

I'm not happy about how large "may" is. My post must not have sounded very definite, like I don't really know what I'll do or how it will work or change things. Too vague, uncertain, and undefined. "I may" do this and "students may" react that way. I know I can't know what will happen, but shouldn't I be trying to take things out of the abstract realm and make it real? "I will" do this, and "I think students will respond" like this. I think that's the point the professor has been trying to make for the last 3 class meetings when he's been talking about how our writings aren't sounding like we know how we'll try implementing things in the classroom. He wants us to say what we will do, not what may happen when we try.

Reflecting on observations in the classroom

There was some miscommunication between the teacher who scheduled the Inquiry Outreach program for this week and the teachers participating in the program. So my schedule has me starting my last class of the day at 12:40. The teacher doesn't dismiss her 6th graders (the program is for the 5th graders while the 6th graders go do Social Studies with the other 6th grade teacher) until 12:50. And I always show up 5 minutes early so I can get my supplies organized without wasting any of my precious 75 minutes fumbling through my stuff. Which basically means I get 20 minutes to observe her 5th/6th grade class doing their math assignments.

As long as I'm not bothering her, I'm going to continue for the rest of the week, because here's a chance for me to observe how another teacher handles students, to take time and reflect on the behaviors I'm seeing, etc. When I'm teaching, I get really wrapped up in what I'm doing and my observations of how the students react and what things work/don't work get trapped in my subconscious, and I don't take time to think about how to change what I'm doing until something reaches a critical level. Also, it's hard for me to learn what works/doesn't work when I'm only able to observe my own teaching. What I'm looking for is what other people do, how they handle the same kids I'll be working with later that day. I don't have enough time in my 4 days to get to know the students, the unique needs each one has for assistance in writing, staying focused, or getting involved they have developed solutions for with their teacher. I like getting to observe this room. It also helps that I'm getting a chance to observe 6th grade. Though I plan on teaching high school, SOU's MAT program basically requires being certified for multiple levels, so I need to know how to work with middle school too.

One of the things I observed was the self-management techniques that are in place in the classroom. They're working with the Accelerated Math program, which uses the computer to score and generate assignments and tests for each math objective. I hadn't seen this program in use before, and I like the way it gives them more freedom to move through material at their own pace. The program can even generate extra exercises to work on skills they're consistently missing on the assignments. While students are working on the assignments, the teacher can then pull certain groups up to the front to work on new skills. Lots can get done in a day, hopefully.

Although separating groups for varied-level instruction is a technique mostly found in elementary and middle school, I don't know why it wouldn't work in a high school class as well. It even seems like this is the time to really get into it - it develops a greater sense of community and team work and it gives them a smaller group they may feel more comfortable in for discussion. There's often time when they may be working on some reading, group discussions for assignments, or a lab, when I could pull a group forward either because they're a group that needs some extra help with a section or they're a group that needs an extra challenge. If I set up a class with collaborative learning groups, 2 or 3 lab partner pairs working together in groups of 4-6, then those CLGs and I could meet in smaller groups, set goals closer to their needs, challenges that meet their interests, and check in with each other for more regular formative assessment throughout the year.

I'm glad I saw that in a classroom this week. I hadn't thought so much about using CLGs in my classes before, but I'm now really excited about the idea. I'll need to do more research on it.

There's more to Formative Assessment then meets the eye

To be honest, I wasn't paying much attention. I don't know what lead to the question in class, but I heard the professor say "Who knows the difference between formative and summative assessment?" No one responds.

This is a topic that I tend to think about a lot. I want to know if I'm getting through to my students before I have to grade them on it. I'm always hoping to do a better a job with formative assessments in my classrooms, so that I can feel like I've done every thing I can (in the 5 hours I'll see these students) to help them succeed on their work samples. So, I'm pretty familiar with the topic.

I raise my hand, and give a response: "Formative assessment is on-going. Its when you check in with your students during class and try to get a feel for what they're understanding or what you need to clarify. Summative assessments are at the end; the tests and papers that are graded to see what they retained." My definition wasn't complete enough for him, but he said it got an "A". That was his own formative assessment - he was telling me, you have the idea, but there's more to learn - pay attention.

So how else can I use formative assessments? Not just asking the students to answer a question or list the forces of flight and seeing who can recall it. What else can I do in my classroom now?

One of the activities that is usually part of my class is on the last day when students are finishing up their work samples. I have two or three of them come forward and read their Experiment Procedures. While they read what they've written in their rough draft, I mime their actions, setting up and doing the experiment exactly as they've described. This is a great tool when the first one or two are really bad. When they're good, its harder to use as a tool.

"Another distinction that underpins formative assessment is student involvement. If students are not involved in the assessment process, formative assessment is not practiced or implemented to its full effectiveness. Students need to be involved both as assessors of their own learning and as resources to other students." Catherine Garrison & Michael Ehringhaus, "Formative and Summative Assessments in the Classroom"

Are my students a tool I'm using (asking them questions and gauging their responses verse what I want/expect) or are they also benefiting from the assessments? During those demonstrations, they're helping each other, they can watch each other, listen to each other, and offer advice. It's a technique that works, it involves the student and it gives them a fair opportunity to review their draft before completing the assignment. What about other times in my lesson plans - do I offer more opportunities when they can assess themselves and each other, or do I wait for them to regurgitate information to see if it stuck?

"..[F]ormative assessment occurs when teachers feed information back to students in ways that enable the student to learn better, or when students can engage in a similar, self-reflective process." Staff, FairTest; "The value of formative assessment"

Not as easy as we want it to be.

El Paseo

Back in school for the first heavy-duty term of the Master's program. Of course, every term is supposed to be relatively light, so it can be worked around jobs, family obligations, etc, but this term will definitely be more work than last.

We started our Multicultural Education class with an interesting activity last night, an El Paseo "Circles of Identity" activity (click for link to pdf). It was a good way to integrate the basic "get to know your classmates" first day activity with the class' topic and a teaching tool that is relevant to the topic. The activity started with listing the categories of things that we consider part of a student's identity. What pieces fit together? Race, gender, socioeconomic status, religion, family environment... the list goes on. Then we needed to build our own web of identity. Using specific terms in place of the categories, what makes us who we are? What is our own identity? We then went around the room having one-on-one conversations to share reflections on those characteristics. We didn't stand there and list off what we wrote - we talked about why those things made us who we are. Using our identity web and our conversations, we should have a good start on our first assignment, writing an autobiography.

The "circles of identity" I came up with last night.

It wasn't until today that I realized the subtle work the professor did in bringing the standard first-day classroom introductions, the class content, our first homework assignment, and a useful teaching tool together in one activity. We're taking these classes to learn to be good teachers... how often do we notice the tools the teachers are using and recognize the ways they're demonstrating technique in addition to the content?

After drifting a bit for the last month, and falling behind on posts and reflections, getting back into class is motivating. A lot of it comes from the increased stimulation: reading assignments, discussions, class time, etc. I want to remember to reflect on this stuff, so that 'el paseo' (the road) to my Master's definitely won't end with the degree. It should all be part of the learning experience and the never-ending quest to improve my teaching strategies and abilities.

Trying to go Paperless

How do you take an Outreach science program and go paperless? This is the question I'm trying to answer. Classroom teachers have that advantage of knowing and controlling the assets their students have access to: PDAs, computers, programs, etc that can help them go paperless. Though budgets may be tight, when you can get those assets into the classroom and use them right, everyone benefits. But, when I go out to some of the more rural schools, I may be faced with classrooms where finding a sharpened pencil is a challenge, let alone having a computer each student can enter their data on.

If my programs were just a hands-on science experience, I could totally do it. My big challenge comes from the state: required work samples for all students grades 3-high school. They need to write out an entire scientific experiment, from question and hypothesis to data analysis and conclusion. Not a small task by any means, and certainly not one that can be done without paper.

I can still cut down though. Teachers used to receive a binder of information (additional lessons, background on the Science Inquiry Cycle, scoring guides, ideas for designing their own lesson) that they may or may not use. This year, they'll start receiving a CD with the same information that they may or may not use. (Personal goal: be able to dress up the CD so it's more than just a bunch of files).

On my side, instead of a dozen notebooks full of random notes, I'm now fully engulfed in using Evernote to carry my information and Toodledo to keep my to-do lists in order. Notes from meetings are typed, not hand written; websites I may need to find again are bookmarked (thanks to Foxmarks); I go nowhere without laptop and iPhone.

There are times my hand twitches and makes me feel like I can't focus without drawing out my plan for the day. But I take a deep breath, open up OmniGraffle and draw a flowchart of my ideas. I've upgraded my Toodledo to a Pro account so I can track subtasks and watch progress get made toward goals I've set, but it still didn't do the visual flowchart of ideas for me. OmniGraffle picked up that piece. And the only thing on my Christmas wish list at this point is a graphic pad (though a Kindle wouldn't be bad either). That should help me make that last push to just being done with paper, at least on a personal level.

Now, to implement as many ideas as I can for doing it at work too.

Evolution

On the projector, Mr. Campbell placed slides of the cartoon icon: one at his skinny genesis in 1928; one from his 1940 turn as the impish Sorcerer’s Apprentice; and another of the rounded, ingratiating charmer of Mouse Club fame.

“How,” he asked his students, “has Mickey changed?”

From "A Teacher on the Front Line as Faith and Science Clash" - New York Times, August 24, 2008

Teaching evolution in the classroom is not an easy task.

Even states that require teachers to cover the basics of evolution, like natural selection, rarely ask them to explain in any detail how humans, in particular, evolved from earlier life forms. That subject can be especially fraught for young people taught to believe that the basis for moral conduct lies in God’s having created man uniquely in his own image.

That's a perspective I never really considered. If you can reach them and have them understand that life evolves, how do you get them to understand they still have a responsibility to themselves and their community to act with a code of moral conduct, when the source of that had always been the God that created them?

I attended Catholic schools for 12 years. Fortunately, in an environment that was open to the idea of science and religion as two ways of looking at the same world, and believing in one did not mean that you were disbelieving of the other. I worry sometimes about how I would answer questions from students about evolution. I would need to follow my state's guidelines, the need for the students to pass the assessments, and my own personal choice to never lie to a student or mislead them, to give them the best information I can.

I like the response the teacher in this article has:

“Faith is not based on science,” Mr. Campbell said. “And science is not based on faith. I don’t expect you to ‘believe’ the scientific explanation of evolution that we’re going to talk about over the next few weeks.”

“But I do,” he added, “expect you to understand it.”

Sometimes I forget the debate is still going on in some states about whether or not evolution should be taught in a classroom. I'm glad I stumbled on this article, it's inspirational, and a great example of a teacher who deserves praise for courage and determination (as well as creativity in reaching students).

A Good Teacher or a Great One?

As I sit at my computer today, trying to gather thoughts and to-do lists into a more organized chaos to address as needed before my classes start in four weeks, I want to take five minutes to review a list of questions I found on Edutopia.org a few weeks ago "Pride of Profession: Striving to Become a Great Teacher".

Here are the seven questions the author, Ben Johnson, asks at the end of the article:

If I think of myself as at least a good teacher, what would I do differently in order to be a great teacher?

What student outcomes do great teachers achieve that I don't achieve?

What qualities does a great teacher possess?

What sacrifices would I have to make to become a great teacher? What am I willing to give up to become great?

What does a great teacher's classroom look like?

What kind of relationships do great teachers strive to create with fellow teachers and administrators?

What will be my first step toward greatness?

I'm going to answer just the first one and the third one today, because to me they work together: "If think of myself as a good teacher, what qualities do I want to develop to become a great teacher?"

I do think of myself as a good teacher. My students like my classes, parents share with me that their students come home excited and ready to go back for more, students learn something from it, and I generally have good control over a classroom. But I know of several things I wish I could improve on to become a great teacher.

• greater patience
• increased calm assertiveness to maintain/regain classroom control
• improved skills in communication and idea sharing to work with other teachers and the educational community

If I could improve those three things this year, it would be a great year.

The First Day

When the first day of school comes, will you be ready?

I have a 'first day' every week in my job. With every new school I visit, I have to create that image of who I am to my students (and their teachers!) so that they will trust me and be willing to learn from me for the next four days. I have minutes to gain their respect and control over the classroom if I want my five hours with them to be worthwhile for any of us. I take to heart a lot of what's written here: Teaching Secrets: Take Charge of Your Classroom. It's been my perspective for awhile now that I'm not there to be the students' friend, but to be their leader, a good role model, and mostly, to have them leave and say "I respect her and what she tried to teach me."

Infinite Source of Community

I'm still in awe of how many resources I'm discovering for teachers. Technologies that make it easy to create a community for sharing ideas and support.

In addition to those I've mentioned before (like Twitter, Edutopia) here's a few more:

• more blogs: as I search for new ideas, support for the upcoming school year, etc, I'm realizing that the blogs I may have overlooked before as unprofessional are actually good resources for feeling like I'm not alone out there when I'm in front of my class
  
  
• sites like About.com or Yahoo! Answers where strangers can read and respond to questions (here's an example with suggestions for taming unruly students)

I like this new perspective I'm developing on things I was taking for granted. I've been using the Internet to search for curriculum ideas and for hundreds of other things for years. But never for finding a new community to belong to. I think I had forgotten how much I still have to learn, and how much support teachers need from others who go through the same thing every day. Yes, lots of websites are poorly maintained, some blogs or sources may be too personal or unprofessional to consider as good sources, and we always have to be cautious of what we say and how we say it to protect ourselves and our students... but the Internet is a great way for teachers to come together as a community. And the more I explore it and set myself up to follow people who are good resources, the better prepared I am for my classroom.

GoogleLit

Google Lit Trips is a cool use of existing technology for the classroom. Free, easy, and, most importantly, interesting to the students who will use it.

Using Google Earth, which can be installed on almost any computer, students create virtual tours that follow the travels of their favorite literary characters. Each significant location in the book can be marked on the map, and includes notes and descriptions that are associated with that location. Use it to present a book report, or to encourage interest in a book in other students. Or, for better understanding of a book you're reading, you can follow along through a tour created by someone else, follow their links to background information, read their notes about the significance of that location to the storyline, or just get a better feel for the journey the character is taking.

For example, here's an image from the tour for Grapes of Wrath. It shows the journey they take across the US, and each of the cities mentioned along the way. You can learn more about any of these locations by clicking on them, and various quotes from the story that are directly associated to a location are also marked on the map.


Anyone who doesn't use this technology is missing out. It's simple, it's fun, and it encourages deeper, more meaningful learning while integrating different subjects and technologies. This is one way to reach those students whose strengths may lie outside of reading and literature, and get them interested in more reading.

Read a description/review of Google Lit on Edutopia.org here.

Using what you have to do more

Often, what intimidates classroom teachers is the fear that they aren't sure they have enough of the technology or experience to use technology in their classrooms. But, we can, and must, start somewhere.

In a July 29, 2008 article on Edutopia.org, Suzie Boss collects five great tips from educators about what simple steps we can take to start integrating now. The following 5 steps come from this article, "Overcoming Technology Barriers: How to Innovate Without Extra Money or Support"

     Step 1: Innovate with the Tools you already have

          Look around your classroom: what do you have that you can use for a different kind of project then you usually do?

     Step 2: Seek out Free, easy to use Digital Resources

          The internet is full of podcasts, free software, research, resources, and tools that can be used. You just need to find them.

     Step 3: Overcome your Fear of the Unknown

          This includes using peer learning groups to share ideas among educators in your school.

     Step 4: Start with Small, Fast projects that Enhance Learning

Education professor Mike Muir, who directs the Maine Center for Meaningful Engaged Learning, recommends introducing educators to an engaging task that's relatively easy. "Teachers need to be successful early," he says. "You want to start with something familiar and close to what they are already doing, but so different that it can be a portal to new possibilities. It's about paradigm shifting." Muir suggests starting with inquiry-oriented lessons called WebQuests. As part of the lesson, students use Internet resources (typically preselected by the teacher) to answer higher-order questions about a specific topic. "Find some that relate to what you are already teaching," Muir advises.

     Step 5: Learn with your Students

GenYES encourages teachers to learn about technology in the context of their own classroom, side-by-side with their students. Professional development that's embedded in the classroom has more staying power than one-shot workshops.

What else can we do with what we already have? Let the challenge to reach the students overcome the challenge of 'how'.

Play, Invent, Explore - Summary of Final Project

The last day of our Play, Invent, Explore (previous posts, Pico Crickets website) camp at ScienceWorks went really well. To assist in documenting the experience, we asked Dennis Dunleavy, Associate Professor of Communications at Southern Oregon University to come in and take some photos of the class (click here to see his blog, "The Big Picture").

(On a side note, thank you, SOU, for the loan of the laptops!)

Here are two of the kids in the class integrating their marble roller coasters with the Crickets software, and an example of the types of programs they were writing. In this one, the program requires a sound that is louder than "20" (on a scale of 0-100) to begin the program sequence. This represents the approximate volume of a ringing bell; therefore, when the marble rolls down the ramp and hits the bell, the bell rings, the requested sound plays and the light begins to flash randomly.



The campers just loved this project. It was a great integration of a physical, creative process with a technology & software component. In order for their project to be most successful, they had to solve the problems of how to make their structure strong, how to keep the ball rolling down their ramps, and finally, where and how to integrate the Crickets to create the 'chain reaction' that was the project's goal. For some of them, those first two steps were more than enough of a challenge and they limited their Crickets integration to just turning on a light or a sound before dropping the ball down the ramp. I still viewed this as a huge success. In five days, they learned to create their own program, and they used valuable skills of problem solving to find ways to roll a ball down a track, test it, fix it, improve it. Some of the other campers went well above and beyond what I had anticipated, created incredible programs, built highly impressive roller coasters, and learned much more than I expected.

On the whole, this was a great experience in what much of the education technology research discusses about how to make technology in the classroom an effective tool. Over and over we find evidence that "improvements in student learning occur when technology is paired with instructional strategies like project-based instruction, which actively involves students in intellectually complex work that demands higher-order thinking and problem-solving skills" (Les Foltos, "Technology and Academic Achievement", newhorizons.org, December 2002)

How this tool could be used in a classroom is a difficult question to answer, however. There aren't really any direct links to the reading, writing, math or science goals that most states describe in their content standards. But the value as a tool in developing skills in problem-solving, creative thinking, and information technology cannot be measured. This is where the problem for most educators comes in, I believe. That we see great tools, and can't relate them to the content we're required to teach. So we fall back into our patterns of only minimal technology involvement for most things. The challenge to us is: use these tools that generate interest and learning in students in a way that we never would have thought to teach our content before - and the achievements our students reach will be incredible.

To Blog or Not to Blog...

That is the question posed by Professor Dunleavy for today's assignment.

I have always liked blogging. It's a great way to keep old friends updated on current life. But I find, more and more, that personal details have no place on the web. I try to remind myself anytime I post that someone else will see it in the future. So, all of my future blogging will be done with this in mind, and written from a professional or instructional perspective. I like the idea of it being something that benefits my students as much as it benefits me.

Reasons to be cautious:

- You don't know who's going to read it. Even if you protect it with passwords, they can be hacked, passwords can be shared, anyone can be reading over the shoulder of someone who's 'allowed', it can be copied and posted on public sites. You maintain no control over it, once it is posted, it is out of your hands.

- In not knowing who's reading it, you don't know who you'll offend with it. You risk offending the people you work with, the parents of your students, or your students themselves. Offending them can lead to losing respect, or worse.

Reasons to do it anyway (just be careful):

- Students in school today know more about computers than we can imagine. They're comfortable with it.

"[E]ven though the world of fifth grade may seem remote to educators in the college and university system, these students, when they enter postsecondary education, may have had more experience writing online for an audience than writing with a pen and paper for a teacher. Such students will bring with them a new set of skills and attitudes." - Stephen Downs, Educause.edu.

They understand, or need to learn, how to write for a global audience, because it is part of their lives.

- Tracking myself. I would like to believe I will keep a physical journal, notes about what works, doesn't work in a lesson plan. But if my lesson plans are electronic, it's easier for my notes to be too. And it should be shared with my students. Did they think it worked? What else did they need from me to learn the content more thoroughly?

- Encouraging learning outside the classroom. They'll be online at home anyway, why not let them use that time to check in with their classmates, their homework for tomorrow, hints for the homework tonight, links to further information?

- Promoting your school, your class, your students. You're doing good things, the world likes using the Internet to find good things - be one of those things!

Summer Camp - Play, Invent, Explore

We're 3/5ths of the way through our Play, Invent, Explore camp, and I'm still just making it up as I go. All of my camps follow the same general outline every day: some non-specific activity to get everyone into the room and excited about camp, 15-20 minutes talking about our plans/activities/the science behind what we'll be doing, activities for about an hour, snack, activities. This camp required a lot of talking the first 2 days in order for the students to learn some of the features of the software, and more "instructional" time then I really like for a camp. I tried to keep it limited, and make sure they had time to explore on their own, but I kept feeling the pull to show them (all, as a group) new pieces to the Cricket puzzle.

Background: This camp is for 8-10 year olds and is run at ScienceWorks. They're working on laptops on loan from Southern Oregon University. And some of the parents walked in, saw the computers, and expressed concern that they weren't too sure if their students were computer-literate enough.

Well, relax, your kid knows how to use the computer. They may not understand how to trouble-shoot all of it, but they are more than capable of learning to use (and create) programs with limited assistance and guidance.

Lesson summary - Monday:
We talked about computer programs, focusing on how the computer doesn't think, it just follows the instructions we give it. The kids each selected a computer, and together we created our first, very simple, program. We turned on a light. Then we changed the color. We added in a few other pieces, one at a time. Each time, I need to draw in their attention and walk them through the step of putting the pieces together to run a new program. The more pieces they had, the harder it became. We added the ability to repeat, to use "random" so the computer would pick the color or brightness, we added the touch button and "wait until - touch" to run pieces of the program. The more I showed them, the more they started to grasp the pattern of how it would work. We made it through light, touch, light sensor, random. Then they had about 15 minutes before the end of camp (3 hours went FAST), and I gave them free reign. Most of them discovered that the speaker worked the same as the light, so it was pretty loud when the parents came in to pick up students.

Lesson summary - Tuesday:
My goal for Tuesday was to show them the similarities between the way the light program pieces worked and the way the sound program pieces worked. First though, we did a verbal review. I drew a short program on the board, exactly the way it would look on their screens, and asked them to tell me what the computer would do if I ran the program. They were stumped for a minute. This was what I was afraid of. They had figured out how to change numbers, move pieces around, use the speaker, etc, but they still didn't understand how to 'read' the program. But we figured it out together. Then they did the speaker. They were given the challenge to use their computer to write part of a song, and then work in groups to play a song together. Most of them figured it out, some stumbled through it, all of them had fun. This is a lesson that would work in an hour or so. After snack, I had them build a Lego 'motion module' - called the "up and down". It was really the only one all of them could build using the materials in their kits. Some of them had time to add bouncy toys on the top of them, some only had time to run it once or twice (and had to have their programs written for them while they finished building the module).

Lesson summary - Wednesday:
My goal today was to have them combine their skills from the first two days into one large project. They were asked to build an animal to go in our 'zoo', an idea I borrowed from the Playful Invention and Exploration website, which has lots of good ideas for the Crickets. I anticipated it taking the first half of camp, and that after snack we'd be able to learn how to collect data (brightness, loudness) and graph it, so that they would understand how the numbers related to reality. Some of them were still finishing their animals and setting them up in the zoo when their parents arrived at 4.

I'm now very nervous about my plan for tomorrow and Friday. It might still work... or I might need to have an 'easier option' for the less agile. We'll see.

On the Topic of: Multiple Intelligences

The following is a response to Concept to Classroom: Multiple Intelligences, a workshop on understanding and using the theory of Multiple Intelligences to improve classroom teaching.

No debate here. I've seen it in action too many times, that need to explain things in more than one way before everyone in the room understands what you're trying to say. I understand my own issues with it very well, I am generally a visual learner and understand things best when I see them, which includes preferring the written word over verbalized communication. In college it was very important to me to copy anything the professors wrote on the board, especially drawings, add drawings to my own notes on topics that were being discussed to help me remember what I visualized at the time of the discussion and copy down as much of the lecture as I could, since it would be remembered and learned in the very act of writing it, where listening went "in one ear and out the other."

Implementing it in the classroom is much tougher. You have a limited amount of time, and in our current educational system, too much to teach to get the students to pass the test. The effort to address each topic from a variety of perspectives in order to reach students of all learning styles is difficult, at best. But certainly not impossible, and definitely an effort that pays off and is necessary if you want to reach everyone and give them the best possible chance to learn the material.

For science, there are many ways to implement techniques for teaching to multiple intelligences. Most topics in a science class lend themselves to either the traditional written or multiple choice tests or for experimentation and presentation as ways to evaluate learning. Interpersonal and Intrapersonal intelligences are stimulated through lab work (generally a group activity) or report writing (an individual activity). Reading and discussion aids the verbal and linguistic intelligences, while diagramming a cell or the process of respiration brings home the message for the visual intelligences. What I love about science is the way it brings together so many subjects and can be a gathering point for people of many intelligences.

Learning centers are a common way of addressing the needs of multiple intelligences in a classroom. They are most popular in elementary and middle school; however, as a future high school science teacher, I can still consider ways that they can enrich learning in my own classroom. In a science classroom these can be places where various long-term experiments are taking place, where related research from other sources are available, where related experiments can be done by individuals or groups and conclusions can be drawn. Lab work is a common idea here, where the jobs of data collection, note taking, mechanical operations for the experiment, observation and discussion can be shared in a group, with each student taking the role that fits their intelligences best, but then in sharing the work and the results they all can learn from the experience.

Presentations are another great tool, and one that can be used for assessment. Here, students are motivated to learn the material because they know the test of the material will be on their own terms. The more visual or musically inclined will include those types of elements in their presentation. For the verbal intelligences, you may see more of a lecture-type presentation. Whatever they use to present the material, there's probably been a greater amount of research, work and effort made then there would be in preparation for a traditional test.

The way information is presented by the instructor (me) should also follow those ideas. A basic and traditional lecture won't be received by all students the same way. Using elements of each of the intelligences, even in a limited way, will help to trigger the learning process for each student and draw them into the topic, even if not all material is presented in the way that is best for them. This is part of the multiple intelligences theory, that we all contain the ability to learn through each way, we just have tendencies toward faster development in certain areas. Using those ideas to draw them into the topic, then stimulating another aspect of their intelligence is a way to further their all around growth.

In teaching to multiple intelligences, we risk not having taught students the skills and information they need to pass the standardized tests that are now mandatory in our classrooms. This is one of the fears and, along with the time-consumption involved in finding multiple ways to reinforce material, it's sure to be raise alarms with classroom teachers and critics alike. However, the ways that people minds function are certainly different, and the expansion of learning options that come from increasing technology and access to Internet and vast stores of knowledge means that we can't continue to ignore the obvious fact that some students will learn faster in some ways then others. The educational system needs at least some revision from the bottom up in order to make it possible to fully explore the options of teaching to multiple intelligences, so that the assessments and requirements are also fair to all, giving all students the opportunities they will most benefit from (not, "all the same opportunities"!) before they enter our ever-evolving society.

Developing my Philosophy of Teaching

As I was browsing through the required readings on Teaching Philosophy Statements to accompany my future portfolio, my thought process went from, "eh, this isn't so hard" to "geez, I don't think I can really define my whole philosophy yet, I mean, I know what I like, but it's in 4th & 5th grade classrooms... not high school biology labs... how do they relate?"

So, some day, I'm sure I'll need to write a whole Philosophy of Teaching. This is neither the time nor the place for it. But it's a good place to take some notes. One of the interesting things to consider about the philosophy statement is that it is both cause and effect, as well as ever-evolving. While refining ideas and committing them to paper, you start to really consider what actions you use that demonstrate (or don't) the things that you claim to believe in. In writing it, you can create the effect of working toward being the teacher you want to be. And as you experience more as a teacher, you develop and change your philosophy, defining it and re-defining it as the situation requires. Though, hopefully, your true philosophy, what you really believe to be true about how a student learns your subject, and how to reach students and aid them as they develop skills they need in your subject or in life as a whole, doesn't change to meet a new situation, just changes in the way it is implemented.

Which means that there must be some underlying ties between what I believe works for me in a classroom full of 4th graders, or will work for me in the future when faced with a room of high school sophomores. What, though? Where are the similarities, what will be the same?

First, every student has the ability to learn the basic skills to study science. They may not be able to memorize every chemical reaction in the steps of the Krebs Cycle (part of cellular respiration) but they can understand the role of the different cycles in the life cycle of the plant. They may not have any interest in knowing names of species of trees or insects, but they may find a connection to the study of ecology and the cycles therein. And biology is about the systems and how they work, from the large to the small. Understanding that any topic is about putting together the pieces to see the big picture of the system is a basic skill, and some students learn it best from the top down (how the system works and what small pieces it needs) and others from bottom up (what the chemicals are, what the pieces are, how they fit together to create a system). So any topic must be presented to show both. I teach whenever possible by explaining the big picture and narrowing in to some of the pieces. And I believe in testing on both equally. Can you tell me why the system is important? Can you identify the pieces?

I love working with students one-on-one. I tend to begin a majority of my classes with a brief introduction-lecture and then do an activity/assignment. In my current teaching, that's the hands-on activity that's more-or-less planned for them. In the future, it might be some reading, an experiment, a research project, or other assignment. During the activity, I work the room, looking for common questions (which help me know when there's something I should have/could have explained more fully, which things the majority may not have the prior experience to fully understand without further guidance, etc) and then know either what to do differently next time while I answer the questions in a personalized way, or know when to interrupt the class and bring them back to a discussion or further lecture/review from another perspective. What will help the majority, before I go back to the individualized guidance that will bring the perspective each student needs in order to learn the subject.

Which means that it's very important to me to know the content of my subject matter inside and out. Can I explain it from multiple perspectives, can I create activities that stimulate learners of any style (the visual processors, the verbal communicators, the artists, the engineers) to guide them into the topic? And, no matter how they've gotten to their question, will I be able to understand it to also guide them to the answer?

Guiding them (not leading them) to the answer is imperative to me. I'd rather they use a good, clear thought process, and get the wrong answer then have them use a muddy thought process or a simple guess and be right only because I gave them the answer too soon. Can they take their wrong answer and test it again? This is of course a best-practices tactic only on experiments and activities when testing the wrong answer doesn't become dangerous, but will lead them to see that they've obviously made a wrong turn somewhere. Then we can work together to backtrack to where their answer came derailed and try again.

I guess I had more to write then I thought. I hope my philosophy becomes better defined over time, but those seem like good ideas to start with.