Week 5

Week in Review

This was parent-teacher conferences week so students were only in class Mon-Wed, with parent-teacher conferences occuring Wed night and Thursday day. Friday was free for students and teachers alike.

Monday

On Monday we reviewed the Google Doc lesson on Friday by projecting the classes GDoc on the screen and having students giving thumbs up/down if they agreed with the the evaluation of each line.  It was pretty quick (5 min) and engaging.  Before I used GDocs we would be using a worksheet and I'll tell you class motivation/participation is greatly increased now, primarily because I think kids like seeing their own work and seeing the creativity of their peers. 

see the GDoc in full screen here

I particularly like Kathryn Lehman's comment (circled in red above) - "Wow! I never realized that the stuff puffing out of cars was chemical change. I learn something new every day!"  Nora's entry was also a great discussion piece over does melting a witch constitute a physical change (still a witch, just liquid witch) or a chemical chaneg (due to the smoke/vaport given off). As Lily Cota commented "I love this idea! It is such a fun way to transform learning! Really cool!"

On Monday I also began differentiating between classes. My team decided to ability group our students this quarter based on their 1st quarter performance and our evaluation of their abilities.  Following the success of our math classes which have a high (Algebra), medium (Algebra 1A), and low (Digits), we looked at our numbers and created a low ability class for each of our content areas at different hours.  

My low science class is during 8th period and has only 22 students. The rest of my classes have significantly higher numbers (for instance my 2nd period has 31 students); however, these periods tend not to be behaviors issues because I've been able to pick up the pace and give them more responsibility because they can handle it.  So here's how the rest of Monday panned out.

After reviewing the GDoc assignment, 3rd and 8th period spent the rest of the day practicing chemical and physical changes examples on white boards.  The rest of my periods moved on and took a practice quiz over the material they would be quizzing tomorrow. The practice quiz wass a lot of low-level review so when they took the higher-level-Bloom's quiz tomorrow they would have reviewed the vocabulary and basic concepts before.

Tuesday

3rd and 8th period took the practice quiz today.  The rest of my periods took Quiz 3.1 on D2L.  This was the first assessment I used on D2L and I was a bit nervous because I was sure there were buttons I hadn't clicked that was going to jinx it.  Fortunately it came off without a hitch.  Here's my evaluation of the online assessment component of D2L...

Cons

• Creation - Pain in the butt to make. Even knowing I would have this quiz for the entirety of D2L's tenure at Park Hill, I still found it annoying to have to make multiple clicks to input every question.
• Layout - cruddy layout. Questions are spread out, students have to scroll. Nothing close to my perfected Microsoft Word layouts where I have used text boxes, circles, font choices, and arrows with a master touch. However, I think could have changed the font size on the questions but it was already taking so long to create I didn't give it a go this time around.

Pros

• Grading - this is by far the most powerful feature of the assessment tool.  It automatically grades every matching, true/false, fill-in-the-blank, multiple choice for you.  In fact you can even set it so it shows a feedback box when they pick the wrong answer to help students better understand the wrong choice.
• Short Answer - I like how it puts all of the short answer responses on a single page that I can scroll down and manually grade. Beats flipping through 100+ pages of quizzes to grade and having to navigate poor student handwriting.
• Item Analysis - I like the "Statistics" screen where it shows you a grade distribution and class average.  Even more, I like the "Question Detail" screen where it breaks down every question and the percentage of students who chose each answer.  I projected this screen for the most commonly missed questions when we reviewed the quizzes. Created a great discussion in class.

Here's a screenshot of the Question Detail screen I was referring to

If you'd like to watch 6 minutes of me describing how to navigate the grading and the statistics section of the quizzes then you can watch my D2L Tutorial 3.

click here to watch

Wednesday

Periods 3 and 8 took Quiz 3.1 on Wednesday and the rest of my periods had a great time with an Oobleck lab.  Our next learning goal is reviewing states of matter so Oobleck is a fun way to start poking at the questions "What is a solid?" and "What is a liquid?" Which umbrella are we putting Oobleck under?

Lessons Learned

1. D2L Assessments: I think I'll continue using the assessment tool for its ease in grading and its ability to do item analysis.  If I become proficient enough at it I may make short 3-5 question quizzes the students can take on their own to practice material more regularly. I think if it was out there students would want to make use of non-graded quizzes for the quick feedback it would give them.
2. Google Docs: still going really strong. Kids continue to love the creativity and ownership of these assignments. Win!
3. Videos as Introductory Sets: After kids took Quiz 3.1, they finished the class by watching 4 YouTube videos I found on Oobleck.  This kept them quiet as kids were finishing their quizzes and, more importantly, generated some curiosity and excitement about Wednesdays lab. This is the first time I tried this and I think I'll use YouTube again to get the gears of excitement turning.

Week 4

Week in Review

This week was an interesting blend of tried-and-true sciene pedagogy mixed with student-centered tech pedagogy. Since ended 1st quarter last week, we a workday Monday and only four days of with students this week.  In addition I had a student council field trip on Friday so I really only had three days of face time with students.  That being said I think you'll be interested to see what I did on Friday to maximize what my students could do with a sub.

Monday

Teacher work day.

Tuesday

Coming off a 3 day weekend I decided to review vocabulary with students from last week by having them complete another GoogleDoc assignment.  One thing I modified this time around was having my 7th period students go back and comment on the previous periods Google Doc before they worked on their own line.

Click here to see the entire GDoc in context

I really liked this modification because students began at the top layers of Bloom' taxonomy and there was a lot of buy-in from students since they were able to evaluate their peer's work. Of course I had to first show them what the context and style  of the comments should be but that only took about 45 seconds.   And the next day 6th period was itching to revisit their GDoc because everyone knew that someone had reviewed their work.

Wednesday

Wednesday we spent the whole class doing a teacher-centered density demonstration....and I wouldn't change a thing. This lesson may be the top 5 lessons I teach the whole year because its as much a well-planned one-act play as it is a lesson.  The demo involves 3 separate elements, each one setting up the next.

Element 1: Coke vs Diet Coke

• Students are asked to predict what will happen when both cans are simultaneously dropped into the water. After writing the predictions down they all hold up their hands - left hand their "coke" hand and right hand their "diet coke" hand - at the same time to indicate their predictions. At a glance I can look around the room and see the room is split with some kids holding two hands high above their heads and others holding one hand high and one hand low. After the cans are dropped we learn the coke sinks because it has 39 more grams of mass (sugar) than the diet coke, hence its density just surpassed that of water.  Kids record in notebooks: The two cans have the same volume but coke had more mass and was heavier so it sunk. 

Element 2: Large block vs Small blook of wood

• Students are asked to predict what will happen when a LARGE and SMALL piece of wood is tossed into the water. I let a few kids hold the two pieces and ask them if one is heavier than the other, and they all reply the large one is definitely heavier. Students write their predictions down and hold up their hands in a similar fashion and I can see the room is split again - some students thinking the larger piece will sink because it is heavier (just like the coke can) and other remembering that wood floats no matter the size.  After the wood is tossed in and students record their observations they write in their notebooks: A substance's density remains the same regardless of size (ex: a tree floats as good as a pencil does).

Element 3: Clay vs Clay boat

• I then drop a block of clay in the water and students watch it sink.  I then hold up a clay boat made with the same amount of clay and ask them to predict what will happen when tossed in. Students write their predictions and raise their hands and I see again a split in the room - most thinking the boat will float but a good number also thinking it will sink (because they had just written down it doesn't matter what size an object is...if it sunk once, then it'll always sink).  After it is tossed in and it floats we talked about how stretching the clay into a boat didn't change the mass but it changed the volume and made it less than the density of water. Kids write in their notebooks: Heavy steel boats can float because they have a huge amount of volume which keeps their density less than the density of water.

In summary , I thought this lesson was a great example of how technology is another tool in the teacher tool box, not the tool box itself. I've come across several online simulations of how I could teach density - phet.colorado.edu for example - yet I have yet to find one that is equally fun and equally powerful in its ability to help kids experience density.  Today, old school wins.

 Thursday

We applied our knowledge of density from Wednesday and conducted a density lab where students made predictions over which mineral sample - Galena, Fluorite, and Quartz - had the highest density using the displacement method.  Fun, interactive, and busy, students were applying their inquiry method from unit one and were able to further enhance their understanding of density.

We did use a Google Spreadsheet on the projector to record group data. Students really liked seeing how their data matched up with other groups (and classes) and it led to a discussion of error, outliers, and consistency.  Not only that but I had a GSpreadsheet from last year and we could compare data from multiple years. Cool!

click here to view the spreadsheet

Friday

Friday I was on a field trip to William Jewell's Tucker Leadership Lab with Congress's student council and while I was away, the students completed their entire lesson on D2L.  This is what they saw after logging on.

According to the sub, students were well practice in getting their laptops as they came into class, and getting to work watching and recording their notes off YouTube.

You can watch the notes by clicking here.

Then they jumped onto their GDoc assignment and quickly got to work since they had practice making GDocs before.

click here to see the rest of the page.

Lessons Learned

Technology has its proper place. Some days it is forefront, like on Friday when I had a sub. Then students could receive comparable instruction to my being there, since on that particular set of notes there was little I could add to in person versus watching on YouTube. However on Wednesday it made little sense to use technology since it would have added anything to the lesson.  Thursday was a day when it enhanced the lesson, but it was not center stage.  Every day different.

Week 3

Week 3 in Review

Monday began my full transition to Desire to Learn (D2L) from my Google class site. There's definitely a give-and-take when giving up control from your site to D2L. On my former site I had complete control over the look-and-feel of the site and I miss being able to design a one-stop-shop unit page where my students could see at a glance what we were doing every day for the entire unit and could access any assignment with a single click.

That being said it looks like D2L offers some powerful abilities for automated grading and item analysis for assessments. I can also see where its nice to have a single platform for students to visits for all their classes, rather than having to seek out a variety of webpages for separate teachers.

I've decided to produce some screencast tutorials with Screencast-o-matic to show how I've set up my D2L site and the features I've found most useful this first week.  This is by no means the "right" way to do it; in fact, I'm hoping others reading this can send me their tips and tricks for utilizing D2L. I'm simply hoping to share my journey of finding useful features for D2L.

• Tutorial 1: Organizing
• Tutorial 2: News tool
• Tutorial 3: Automatic grading (coming soon!)

Monday 

Returned Unit 2 tests and students took a 5 question post-survey over Unit 2.  You can see the results here. I'm pretty stoked about the gains from pre to post survey. I've been using Google Forms to administer a pre-post survey and its been pretty easy to collect the data. However, I think D2L's assessment features will take me 1-2 steps further in item analysis by allowing me to drill down and see not just the percent of kids who missed the question, but the specific wrong answer they chose. This will hopefully evolve the conversation from "Why don't my students get this?" to "Why did the majority of students who missed the problem choose answer A?"

We started a new assignment called 1st Quarter Reflections in preparation for parent teacher conferences. At the end of most periods I make students write down a 1-2 sentence reflection on what they learned that day. Students also do this when they get an assessment back and reflect on what the assessment tells them.  For this assignment students had to review their daily reflections from 1st quarter and pick the 5 they were most proud of and explain why they chose them.

I really liked this assignment because (a) it made students be introspective, (b) there was a high degree of creativity and artistic freedom, and (c) because it can serve as a great conversation piece between students and parents on what they've been learning and enjoying in science this year. Here are two examples of student work.

click here to read

click here to read

Tuesday

Finished working on 1st quarter reflections.

Wednesday

Students watched YouTube notes on the Properties of Materials. They first copied the graphic organizer into their notebook from D2L. Then they watched my Part 1 and Part 2 notes off YouTube. I told them we were learning this vocabulary to set them up for the in-class activity tomorrow, where we were going to analyze random objects they'd be bringing from home (which a suprisingly high percentage of them remembered to do).

Why do I sometimes put my notes on YouTube?  (a) student focus tends to be improved because they put headphones on and are zoned in (b) students can pause and rewatch if need be (c) standing and delivering didn't add anything to this particular set of direction instruction (d) absent kids receive a comparable experience. (e) kids who finished early were able to move onto Friday's self-directed assignment and put a bit more time/effort into it.

Do you always do notes on YouTube? Nope. Only when it makes sense to do so.

Thursday

Students brought in random objects and rotated around the room analyzing the objects using vocabulary learned from yesterday's direct instruction. They worked in collaborative groups and moved every 4 minutes in accordance with the beeping sound from my kitchen timer on the board.  It was highly interactive, engaging, and funny to watch.  Students tried asking me, "Mr. Mabrey would you consider this object to be malleable? How about thermal expansions, etc..."  I just smiled at them and said "What does your group think?"

Friday

We processed the results from yesterday and had a class discussion about the trickier objects. Then students opened up a Google docs assignment called Properties Grid.  They're only halfway through and its pretty cool.  Check them out below:

• Properties Grid (Period 2)
• Properties Grid (Period 3)
• Properties Grid (Period 6)
• Properties Grid (Period 7)
• Properties Grid (Period 8)

Lessons Learned

1. D2L isn't scary once you receive some hot tips from someone. Thanks Jill and Lee for getting me rolling.
2. Students really get into creative writing assignments. I was impressed with how many kids loved the freedom I gave them with the 1st quarter reflections project. They seemed pretty proud of the final product.

Week 2

Week 2 in Review

This was the final week in our Chemical Interactions Unit. Therefore, though our test was on Friday we had a quiz at the beginning of the week over our third and final learning goal, and I'm glad we did! This was the first quiz of the year that quite a few students found difficult.  The team averages on the previous two quizzes had been remarkably high - 90% on Quiz 2.1 and 85% on Quiz 2.2; however, on this quiz, Quiz 2.3, the team average was 77%.

(Quick aside on nomenclature. I title my quizzes based on the unit and learning goal. The first number corresponds to the unit and the number after the decimal corresponds to the learning goal. Quiz 2.1 is over unit 2, learning goal 1; Quiz 2.2 over unit 2, learning goal 2; etc....)

When I passed back Quiz 2.3 on I stressed the end of first quarter is October 11th and the test on Friday is weighted so that it affects there grade more than all of the quizzes from the unit. Whether it was my speech or the fear of parents seeing a report card, I had more students voluntarily choosing to reassess Quiz 2.3 the day before the test then any other quiz I've given before and many of them turned a D or F into an A.  More importantly, they discovered their misconceptions, addressed them, which prepared them to show off their knowledge on test day.  Team average on Chemical Interactions Test: 84%.  Not too shabby.

Monday 

Students began a Google Doc assignment called Everyday Compounds.  Its an assignment I scraped later in the week so students could focus on reassessing and finishing a study guide; however, I'd like to make room for it next year. In it students pick out a compound from their everyday life, research its elemental components, and marvel at how random elements come together to make something totally different. You can check out there work - Period 2, Period 3, Period, 6, Period 7, Period 8.  (If things look a bit unfinished it's because we ended up dropping the assignment to focus on reassessing Quiz 2.3 and Friday's test. However there are some entries that are complete and look great.)

One thing I really liked about the assignment is I made kids link their content to the web source they obtained it from. Then, at the begining and end of each period I scrolled through the class's Google Doc on the screen in front of the room and clicked on students' work and we had discussions about reputable and unreputable sources. Kids were into it and I could see the light bulb going off that Answer.com shouldn't be a go-to location for information.

Tuesday 

Students took a paper-and-pencil quiz on Learning Goal 3 - Period Table Organization. Then they continued working on the Everyday Compound assignment. I enjoyed watching them struggle with finding a website that broke down the chemical formula of their item. Many students discovered they had to first find the components, then search for chemical formulas. For instance, some girls chose a volleyball and discovered they had to research independently the bladder, then the lacing, then the leather making up the ball.

Wednesday

Students received their quizzes back and received my pep talk. Every began working on a study guide for Friday's test. Majority of them finished it for homework.

Thursday

Students had a checklist of options that looked like this:

• Show Mr. Mabrey your completed study guide
• Check study guide with a key
• Reassess quiz (if you want to)
• Pair up and review / make notecards
• Play Zondle review game.

This was a great day of self-directed learning. If you walked in my room it looked a bit like a zoo, but it was well-orchestrated chaos (at least from my perspective). Kids were strewn around the room working on study guides, checking study guides, quizzing wherever they found a quiet location, or playing review games on Zondle. Speaking of Zondle, I love that program. Completely free. Kids can sign up for an account (I have them use their Student ID and Lunch code as passwords), and teachers can make question banks that students can play review games from.

What was especially cool with today's lesson was I had the highest performing kids in my second period login with my credentials and they created the question bank the rest of the kids used that day.  In other words, they did the work for me!  Not only that, but I let them add goofy questions in addition to the content questions and they thought that was a riot.  Will definitely continue using Zondle in subsequent units.

Friday

Test day. Students took their Unit 2 tests then completed a short 5 question post-survey on the unit. The 5 question post-survey is the same 5 questions they took after the Unit 1 test. I use these questions to help determine my teaching effectiveness for the unit and try to limit the questions to 4-5 so as not to overwhelm the students with filling in bubbles. We had a shortened schedule due to an author assembly in the afternoon so all the students didn't complete the post-survey. Looking forward to sharing the results when I get them.

Lessons Learned

1. I have a cool group of mentors for being a FLiP teacher. I met Lee and Jill this week and they helped me troubleshoot some parts of Desire 2 Learn (D2L), our district's new LMS.  My goal is too start shifting my online platform from my google.site to D2L this unit and to start using the quiz and test features of D2L.
2. The cow is working!  I started putting this cow magnet on the board as an indicator to students when we're using laptops.  When students come into the room they now know they should grab the laptops out of the C.O.W. (computers on wheels) if the magnet is on the board and immediately begin logging in. No cow, no laptops today.  This routine is a huge timesaver.