Week 13

Week in Review

Monday-Tuesday

On Monday and Tuesday we filmed the final runs of students' rube goldberg projects. The final run was part of their test grade for the unit and this was the day when the run needed to be perfect in order to be a candidate for the coveted Golden Mousetrap award. The golden mousetrap (yes, I actually spray painted a mouse trap gold) was given to the group in each class who performed a flawless final run and had the most creative and most numerous energy conversions in order to complete their final task.  You'll see most of the golden mousetrap winners in the YouTube highlight reel above.

Even though 7 instructional days are used for this project I don't plan on letting it go anytime soon for the following reasons:

• Interpersonal skills- I witnessed an impressive amount of growth in students' abilities to persevere with one another. If you watch my "Rube Goldberg In Process" video students will tell you they had to completely scrap original ideas and revise....over...and over....and over again.  This was a frustrating process and it was great watching them work through disagreements with two other people.
• Communication skills- The majority of the students grades come from their ability to (a) diagram out their projects and (b) describe the energy transfers before I videotape them.  Every student completed a diagram and I randomly chose students to describe each step. I like how this project force students to communicate their learning in pictures, in spoken word, and in a created form.
• Creativity- Every year I am shocked by students creativity. About 90% of students create fairly standard, straight-forward Rube goldbergs. But as you'll see in the Highlight Reel their is a 10% minority that makes you laugh with surprise every year.  Who would have thought to use a fan or a windup jack-in-the-box to pull a tissue out of a box?
• Problem-based learning - At the end of every year I have my students evaluate me as a teacher and provide feedback on what we do.  Inevitably around half of my students mention rube goldberg devices as one of the reasons they enjoyed science that year and are looking forward to more science next year. Nothing motivates learning as much as a few well-planned, fun, creative, collaborative projects.

Wednesday

Video Party of the different rube goldberg devices. Students wanted to see what the other classes did and we evaluated how the whole process went this year so I could make modifications for next year.

Thursday

Housecleaning activites for the end-of-semester. Students completed a post-survey for the end of the energy unit, provided feedback on my teaching for the first semester, and then we downloaded pictures of activities we did in science or in other Aces' team activities for the yearbook.

Here are my thoughts when looking at my pre-post data for my energy unit....

• Question 1: 24% is pretty good for question 1 since pre-survey numbers were already at 65%.
• Question 2: I'm a bit disappointed about the 50% growth for question 2 since energy transfers were the main focus of this unit. However, it is only 1 question worth of data points (and it was a tough question). Perhaps if I had asked 2-3 questions about transfers the number would be higher.
• Question 3: I'm all right with the mild growth of 20% on question question 3. Thought I want more than 50% of my students to understand endothermic and exothermic it was a minor focus in this unit and I think if I had spent more time the numbers would be higher.
• Question 4: I've very pleased with the growth in this question. 96% of students indicating they understand the laws of conservation of mass and energy.

Friday

Assembly day.  Happy break!

Lessons Learned

1. Computers Class: Bobbi Aschwanden and Jason Johnston are doing something right in their Computers class. On Tuesday I gave students an opportunity to edit the videos I took of them on their Rube Goldberg projects with Movie Maker. I said they could doctor it up however they wanted but I wouldn't have time to show them how.  Most responded, "No worries. We learned how to do this in Computers."  As I filmed the rest of their peers' final runs the rest of the groups messed around with their own videos.  That's why my highlight reel looks so good.  90% of the highlight reel's editing came from the students themselves.  Interdisciplinary cross connections.  Take that CCSS. Keep up the good work Johnston & Aschwanden!

Week 12

Week in Review

Mon-Fri

For my medium to high ability classes this has been Rube Goldberg week. Students worked in teams of three to devise a ridiculously complicated way to perform a simple task - all while using at least 5 different energy conversions and 3 different types of energy. 

Voting for the Final Task

Last year I allowed every group to perform whatever end task they chose. This year I wanted to up the ante and have every class compete to perform the same final task in a more creative manner than the other groups in their class. To allow them to vote I used a Google Doc (not a Google Form) survey.

The above picture is the Google Doc for my 6th period class. Students entered as many ideas as they liked but they could only vote (by writing their name) in the last column once. Students could change their vote as many times as they wanted before the timer went off and I turned off the editing capabilities of the Google Doc. 

KIDS LOVED IT! They would start voting for one idea, then see that someone posted something else cool and change their vote. Students began adding comments off to the side urging students to vote for their idea and in the final 60 seconds it was a mad house as students switched their names multiple times before I locked it down.

Construction Days
As Monday stretched to Friday students many lessons about working with their peers, recovering from setbacks, and being forced to find creative solutions to problems. Here are some of their thoughts with how the week went.

click HERE to see the video

Here are also a few pics of different devices.

Low-Ability Group

I've used this week to catch up my low ability group and they've now completed the same lessons, labs, and quizzes as the other classes. Unfortunately, we're struggling with reaching mastery of  the same learning goals in this class.  After our initial success the last 2 quizzes have been significantly lower than the other classes, even with differentiated instruction and slower pacing.

I'm a little bit at a loss at the end of the semester. I feel like my low ability class is composed of the "will-not's" and the "can-not's."  I'm starting to see some individual successes with the can-not students as they're slowly acquiring the missing skills and abilities they weren't able to obtain in a faster course. In fact, I'm proud to say two of them are graduating out of the low ability group at the end of 2nd quarter because they no longer need to be in there.

However, over 50% of this low ability class is composed of will-not's, students who will not put forth effort, but will put forth plenty of attitude, apathy, and general grumpiness. My team and I wish we had enough periods in the day where we could further separate the can-nots from the will-nots so the latter won't affect the former. It's a work in progress.

If anyone has any magic potions out there for the will-nots please let me know!

Week 11

Week in Review

Monday

We conducted an inquiry lab over conservation of mass today entitled Bag of Bubbles.  Students first massed a small amount of baking soda and a small beaker of vinegar inside a ziploc bag without mixing. 

 +  +  

Then students mixed the vinegar and baking soda without opening the bag and remassed everything.

Students then compare the initial mass of ingredients with the final mass of the bubbles-filled bag and analyzed the difference.  Most groups had bubbles-filled bag weighing an average of 0.5 grams less than it did before the ingredients were mixed.

The question they had to answer - "Did the bubbles come out of nowhere OR were the bubbles already hidden inside of the materials, waiting to be released?"

They had to use their mass data as evidence in their conclusion and we discussed our results on Tuesday.

Tuesday

Once again I forced my students to think today, and ohhhhhhhh how they groaned!

As a class we discussed our results from yesterday's lab and here were the common responses...

• "Bubbles came out of nowhere because they weren't there before." 
• To which I replied, "So you think you are a magician?"
• "Bubbles came out of the ingredients because if they appeared out of nothing they would have brought mass with them because air is made of atoms and the final mass wasn't heavier."
• To which I replied, "Excellent, evidence-based answer. However, your mass got lighter rather than stay the same, are you a magician too? Did you destroy something in your experiment?"
•  To which they replied. "The final mass was lighter because we made bubbles. Bubbles are lighter than liquids and solids so the overall mass was lighter."
• To which I replied. "You crazy people! Are you telling me carbon and oxygen are losing protons and neutrons left and right every time it changes state from solid to liquid to gas. Sounds like the world is coming apart! Have you forgotten everything you learned about atoms from Unit 2?"

**  I realize this is quickly become quite nerdy for all of you non-science readers. However, I wanted to give you a taste of the back-and-forth conversation we were having because I think you could picture the looks of frustration and consternation on students' faces as I kept poking holes in their ideas and challenged them to revise their answers based upon prior knowledge. **

Eventually we came to the realization that (a) the bubbles were "hidden inside the starting the materials" (or rather the atoms were rearranged to make the bubbles and (b) we lost mass because the ziploc baggies had poor seals and some of the pressurized air escaped out the seams.

What was the point of sharing this long conversation?

D2L can NOT replicate this experience. I think teachers/administrators need to be careful in thinking online learning platforms can seamlessly replicate the type of back-and-forth, didactic instruction that occurs in the classroom.  I detest discussion boards in Blackboard, D2L, Moodle, etc... because (in my experience) they provide a farce of the rich discussion that occurs in a face-to-face environment.  If you would have been in my class on Tuesday you would have felt the emotion, the tension, and the communal effort as a group of 14 year-olds strained together to reach resolution. It was awesome, it was beautiful, and it cannot be replicated online.

Wednesday

Students complete a Practice Quiz to review and make sure they've understood the main ideas before taking a quiz over the last 2 weeks activities and learning goal.  They completed the practice quiz, then showed it to me and checked their answers with a key.  If they didn't finish in class they could check the key on D2L at home.  

Thursday

Students took Quiz 4.2 on D2L then began brainstorming in project groups for their 2 week long Rube Goldberg Project beginning next week. I'll be writing extensively about that project next post so I'll leave it be for now.

Friday

Aces Field Trip.

Week 9

Week in Review

Monday

Acuity tests all day. Boring....

Tuesday

For this unit's final project, my students will work in collaborative teams to make rube goldberg devices.  In order to get them pumped up and to give them some ideas we started class this week watching Audri's rube goldberg device (see below). 

Every day this week I'll start class with a different video, some from YouTube and others from exemplar student projects from last year. These videos help the students stay focused on the long-term project in the midst of the daily grind and prevent "Why do I have to learn this stuff?" questions from popping out. "Why? Because you're going to make an awesome, ridiculously complicated machine in 2.5 weeks. That's why."

After the video we started practicing how to diagram out energy transformations from several objects around the room. Good times.

Wednesday

We started class with another Rube Goldberg video and then filled out another google doc with creative ideas we could use for our end-of-unit project. I like using GoogleDocs instead of worksheets because students are coming up with the examples instead of myself. I also like having them comment on each other's works because I think it keeps them from entering junk work because they know their peers will be reading it as well as me.

see whole document here

Thursday

Today was one of the student's favorite labs of the year - the burning chip lab! We analyzed caloric content of chips by burning cheetos, fritos, and lays chips under cans of water and recording differences in water temperature.

Guess who was busted on lab safety?

"Oh, I see. That's why they call them flaming hot cheetos."

What I liked more than the lab was the ensuing discussion on our zany results the next day.

Friday

Here's a look at our class data for periods 2 and 3.

When looking at Fritos for period 2 you can see there is quite a range in temperature differences - 8 degrees for one group, 21 for another, and 16 for a third.  Same with cheetos in period 3.  

Therefore we spent the first half of Friday discussing the following: "Is there a high enough degree of difference between data points that we should simply throw out the data and label it unreliable, or do we need to just label a few data points as outliers and determine the trend." I projected the google doc shown above on the whiteboard and forced the entire class to discuss.

They were really timid at first, but I kept throwing the question back at them and demanded an answer. Students began offering weak responses and I kept (gently) throwing their responses back to them, pointing out inconsistencies with Socratic questioning.  Eventually some hard-nosed students started taking the bait and began using some logical reasoning and evidence to back up there responses and we eventually decided to throw out the data as generally unreliable.

It wasn't about a right or wrong answer but it was about using evidence to back up your assertion. I told them this was a real-world, authentic experience and that an untold number of occupations - from finance to education to marketing to scientific research - conducted this sort of data analysis every day.

The rest of the period we spent constructing a list of potential sources of errors. I was proud that my students generated the robust list seen below.

Potential Sources of Error:

• Chip size
• Burn technique - are you letting the flame lick up the chip (good idea!) or letting it smolder at the top (bad idea)]
• Curn distance - are you roasting the can by holding it immediately underneath or are you giving lots of space between can and chip)
• Can temperature - between each trial students put in fresh water, but the can has now been preheated. 
• Pyros - did some groups hold the lighter under the can and continue to burn the chip even as it was lit on fire? (Anecdotal evidence suggests yes)
• Thermometer- did students give enough time for the thermometer to accurately read the temperature or did they drop it in, read it quickly, then change the water for the next trial.
• User Error - mismeasurements in regards to amount of water, thermometer reading, etc...

Closing comment one students made - "Ugh, my head hurts Mr. Mabrey. Why did you make us think so much today."  Mission accomplished.

Lessons Learned

1. Lab data on Google Spreadsheets - I can't imagine not doing this for every lab. I love how students instinctively assess their data against other classes to determine validity. Validity is a concept that is becoming implicit with every lab and is getting to the point I dont' have to explicitly harp on it any more thanks to this tool.