Week 14

Week in Review

And we're off. Third quarter is officially in session. This week my science students are getting their hands dirty in an Earth Processes unit. Over the next 5 weeks we will study characteristics of rocks and minerals, parts of the earth and the theory of plate tectonics, and will finish off with a big glance backwards in geologic time.

Monday

Snow day.

Tuesday

Students dove into the minerals samples to begin the unit. Without a word of instruction I passed out boxes of minerals and students had to brainstorm characteristics of the minerals they saw. They then chose one characteristic and made groups according to that characteristic.  For example if their brainstorm was: color, texture, size, odor (some smelled of nasty egg), sparklies, magnetic, brittleness; they may have chose texture and made a pile of smooth minerals and a pile of rough minerals.  After grouping a few different times they came up with questions they wanted to learn about the minerals that unit.  

I love starting the unit in this manner because it gets kids hands dirty and causes them to start asking questions, rather than beginning by giving students answers before they have any questions.

Wednesday

Students were told they were going to have a mineral identification lab on Friday, therefore they needed to learn the lab vocabulary today.  Students were given an open ended note sheet with a list of the terms they needed to learn and then given the freedom to right down whatever phrases and pictures they needed in order to learn the material.

I like using an open-ended note sheet because it gives students a bit of ownership over their notes. They know they need to know the terms and it gives them the freedom to choose what to write and where to access the material. If they like the material from the textbook - great. If they would rather obtain the info off the web -great. The trick as a teacher is to continuously circling your room and making sure students are understanding what they're writing down.

Thursday

Google doc. Students completed a line on the My mineral is better than your mineral google doc for their classs period.  It seemed like students loved getting a chance to explore what minerals had to do with their life.  My favorite quotes were "You mean gold is a mineral?" and "My birthstone is a mineral?" and "Let's fireproof our cell phones."

Having a column where students vote is pretty clutch. Not only do students know their work is public, but they keep trying to one up each other by finding the coolest minerals.  High motivation and high capability for creativity.

Friday

Lab Day. Students worked in collaborative groups to identify 5 mystery samples using the vocabulary they learned on Wednesday.  This is the day we discovered how well students understood their notes from Wednesday and many students learned there is a head knowledge and a skill knowledge to science.  Though most students could tell me the concept of hardness was a mineral's ability to resist being scratched, most had difficulty actually performing the task.

At the end of the lab students, had to write one sentence reflections that began with "Today I learned...."  My favorites:

• Today I learned some minerals are REALLY HARD. They can scratch nails!
• Today I learned biotite is weird and flaky.
• Today I learned minerals can cut glass.
• Today I learned cleavage means "clean cut" and fragment is "funky fresh."
• Today I learned not to work with *****. He does nothing." 

Reflecting on Semester 1 goals

2013-14 Goals

Before beginning the 2013-14 school year I made three goals and I want to take a moment to reflect on my progress towards those goals. Those goals were (1) to administer pre-post surveys for each assessment, (2) to incorporate student spiral notebooks instead of binders and (3) to implement daily reflections for students at the end of every 42 minute period.  I want to process through what worked, what didn't work, and what moving forward looks like for second semester.

Goal 1: Pre-post surveys

I knew I wanted to collect more data on the degree to which my students were learning specific concepts in each unit; however, I was hesitant on full pre and post-tests. Back when I taught in Columbia, MO we administered full pre and post-tests every units and there developed a vibe for being tested to death. 

Therefore I created short, 5 question surveys administered at the beginning and end of every unit and made sure these questions were not identical to any test questions. I also made sure to use an automatic grading system (Google Forms and then later D2L quizzes) to grade the surveys so as not to burn myself out on grading the surveys alongside the much longer summative assessments students were taking at the same time.

What worked

1. Automatic grading.
2. Short length. Students never complained about doing them.
3. Reflecting over learning. I liked putting the results on a google spreadsheet at the end of each unit. It was a nice visual way to reflect on which concepts my team demonstrated the most growth in and which concepts experienced lesser growth.  It prompted great inner arguments about why some concepts demonstrated more growth than others.

What didn't work

Doing this on my own. Yes, it was great to have the inner monologue over my results. However, it would be much more powerful to have survey data from other cadre members so we could discover which teacher had the best gains and leverage their expertise for the rest of the team.  

Moving Forward

Since Deb Still and I are both FLIP classrooms I think I'll see if Deb would be willing to administer the same pre-post surveys on D2L for the second semester. Using the LOR I can share the surveys I create with her so it won't be any extra work on her behalf to create the surveys. If she's game, hopefully we can have some great collaborative discussion over what's working best for both of us.

Goal 2: Student Notebooks

I hate loose paper. HATE IT. At the end of most days I'll have random sheets of choir homework, last unit's practice, and math worksheets littering up my table tops and floor. And then there's the chronically disorganized student who's binder could be equally  misinterpreted as paper vomit or Pompeii after Mount Vesuvius erupts. Ugh. And nothing is worse than a pleading disorganized student who wants "just one more copy" of the assignment they didn't complete last week. Millions of miles of rain forests. Gone.

I also believe the more a student has to construct a product, the more likely he/she will gain ownership of the task. For example, rather than answer questions, write out questions and answers; instead of filling in graphic organizers, draw the graphic organizer first; before blindly following directions, copy the lab directions down before beginning.Though the transfer of questions, organizers, and instructions appears to be mindless there are a thousand small decisions occurring (How many lines for the for the organizer?...How could I summarize this instruction to save room?...) that brings focus to the task.

What worked

1. Binders. Before I was given a set of FLiP laptopss I made classroom sets of binders with the sheets I would normally pass out. The only papers students physically touched was a unit road map (which they stapled to the front of their binders) and assessments. Once I had the laptops I uploaded worksheets online.
2. Extra copies. What happens if a student needs to finish an assignment for homework and they don't have computer access? I ended up making about 30 extra copies of every paper. Students took my class home, wrote in their notebooks, and then  brought the class copy back the next day.
3. Cleanliness. After seven years of teaching I've never had my room so uncluttered by paper debris.

What didn't work

1. Time. Sometimes you just want students to dive into a certain activity and not setup how their paper is going to look. It's the opportunity cost of not passing out pre-formatted sheets. However, I've found the times it takes to setup a notebook page has been greatly reduced since the start of the year. That's our bellringer most days.
2. Cure for disorganization. Disorganized students are still disorganized. Now it just manifests itself as leaving their notebook in their locker or writing on the wrong pages.

Moving Forward

1. Grid composition books. A lot of my students are telling me their pages are starting to rip out of their spiral notebooks. And since we use rulers to make a lot of tables and graphs I'm going to have students buy composition books with grid lines to help with those two issues.

Goal 3: Daily Reflections

Is this teacher nightmare familiar to you?

You just finish a spectacularly scripted lesson on density where you performed a variety of demos complete with wild antics and brilliant explanatory drawings on the white board and you are convinced the majority of your class is walking away with a challenging concept they have never been exposed to previously.  Feeling satisfied, you ask one of them on the way to the door....

"Johnnie, what was the point of class today?"
"Oh man, I learned a lot today, Mr. Mabrey. Science is awesome."
"Uh, great. But what was the point of class today?"
"Umm....that wood floats?"
"But you alread knew that!"
"Oh, right!...well you showed us that diet coke floats and coke sinks. That's pretty cool."
"But that was just an example!"

And as the students file out the door you have this horrible sinking sensation in your gut that you have no idea whether they focused in on the learning goal or if they were daydreaming about daisies. 

What worked

1. Sentence Starters. Having students complete "Today I learned...." as their daily reflection the last 5 minutes of every class. Sometimes I would switch up the sentence starters with "My lab went well/poorly because...." or "The answer today's driving question is...."
2. Kitchen Timer. Starting a timer on my whiteboard that would go off with 5 minutes left in class to always leave space for the daily reflection.
3. Accountability. I hate exit slips (more little pieces of paper), but didn't want to collect notebooks every night (how would they complete homework?). Therefore, I had students hold up their notebooks as soon as they wrote it so I could read it their reflection. I stood in the middle of the room and would make students re-write a reflection if it was substandard.
4. First quarter reflections. I had students review their daily reflections before PT conferences and create one page summaries of what they had learned in science.  It was cool to see their thoughts on paper and have them share those with their parents. See Lauren's example below.

What didn't work

Laziness. I got lazy and forgot to set the timer by the end of November. Once the timer stopped being set we stopped doing them for November and December.

Moving Forward

Blogging. I think it could be cool to have students publish their daily reflections through blogging and I do have one laptop per student in my room. However, my hesitations are (a) we don't always use computers every day (b) I'm worried the substance of the reflection will be left to the wayside as students overly focus on making their entry cool - font choice, color, etc... (c) I don't want them to publish junk. In other words, I want them to get in the habit of publishing work that they are proud of, not something they are hurriedly pecking on their keyboards the last few minutes remaining in class.

Perhaps I could meet myself in the middle and have them publish the reflections on a unit by unit basis?  

Like I did with their first quarter reflections, students could choose their top 5 daily reflections from their unit and then publish them on their own blogs. That could be something cool to share with parents (maybe?).  What do you think? Have any ideas, suggestions for me?

In Summary

I'm pretty happy with the progress towards my three goals.  I hope to recruit Deb for collaboration on pre-post surveys and to perhaps pilot the unit reflection summaries on blogs this semester. I'm thinking the blogs could also be cool repositories where students could upload videos and pics of themselves they take in science labs as well as a space where they could write about the major projects they'll complete 2nd semester - a time travel brochure, frog dissection, etc...