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!