The Lesson Behind the Lesson

The lab activity was designed to show the energy transformation from potential to kinetic and then back  to potential energy. There was a marble and a ramp involved, and the students flew through the main activity. They measured the speed of the marble at seven different locations along the ramp, and explained where the marble got the energy to move over each hill.

And then once the official lab activity was over, the unofficial experiments began. Some students decided to try adding more than one marble to the ramp. A group of boys created their own half-Newton's-Cradle-half-Jacks game. Another group decided to design their own Rube-Goldberg type of device, where they drop the ball off the highest point on the ramp, bounce it along a series of desks, and land it inside a trashcan fifteen feet away.

They continually remind me how much learning can happen when the other "official learning plan" gets out of the way.

And So It Begins...

After posting my last blog about rethinking the Science Fair, I decided to get brave and ask for some online interest in collaborating on an "Experiment Swap" on several of the Schoology groups I've joined.

The exciting part is that I am now in contact with five different teachers around the United States and Canada who are all interested in trying to do this in some way!

To get the ball rolling, we will need to nail down a few things:
1) A dependable form of technology that will allow our classes to interact. Ideally, I'd like the students to be able to comment on and reply to the work of other students. (A Schoology course or group? A Google doc or site?)

2) A lesson plan or experiment (or series of experiments) that would work between two different classes, and perhaps even two different grade levels.

3) A way to offer constructive peer feedback between students. Perhaps a checklist or rubric?

For new projects like this, perhaps the best place to start is with the end in mind. It's 4:30pm here in my classroom, and my brain is pretty much fried, but here's what I envision my students getting out of a project like this...

As a result of this collaboration activity, I would like students to be able to:
a. Recognize the importance of and hone their skills in writing a clearly written procedure
b. Understand and verbalize the importance of multiple trials in an experiment
c. Critically analyze another student lab report and give feedback about sources of error
d. See how science is a cyclical process of experimentation and revision which is dependent on many scientists validating the work of others.

Now to craft the collaboration so that my students (and perhaps other students around the continent) can actually master these objectives!!

Science Fair, Reimagined

We are knee-deep in eighth grade science fair projects at this point in the year, and students have been busy wrapping up their at-home experiments, writing a final draft of their lab report, and polishing their presentation boards. You know, those cardboard tri-folds we all used in school to display our construction paper lettering and store-bought borders. The same boards that have been used since... well, since as long ago as I can even remember.

Photo courtesy: St. Mary's Digital Archives

Every year about this time, I grapple with how effective this whole science fair behemoth really is for the students. As with any project, unless you design with the end in mind (the goals/objectives you want the students to meet), often times the projects themselves (and all the minutia involved with executing it successfully) become the focus, instead of the learning that should result along the way. 

I can't help but wonder whether the learning goals have gotten lost in this thing we call the science fair. As a result, we cling to the trappings. The instructions, the guidelines that we have always used. But why? "Well, because we've always done it that way." 

The quintessential science fair component seems to be the cardboard tri-fold display, and to me, this display has evolved into one of the biggest relics in science education. Each year that I do a science fair project with my students, I lose both in-class and out-of-class time because of these antiquated boards. Students spend days and weeks gluing, cutting, pasting and arranging. Not only that, but the boards themselves are horribly cumbersome and a downright pain to move around. Especially at the end of the year when I have a classroom full of unclaimed projects that inevitably meet their demise in the recycling bin. To me, this is such a horribly unfortunate end to all the science work the students have done. (I fear that what I'm inadvertently teaching them is that, in real life, science experiments just get abandoned and then tossed out with the garbage.) 

With this being my ninth year as a teacher, I continue to advocate for a transition to a digital version of these mammoth cardboard monsters. I have used Glogster's virtual poster program successfully in the past with 6th grade science projects, and have wanted desperately to expand their use in my class. However, there are always important concerns to consider: 

1) How will the students accurately present their projects from a tiny laptop screen? 

2) How will our school-wide Science Expo have the same feel without the large boards?

3) How will our students compete at a regional or state level without a board?

While these are all valid concerns, I've never been able to successfully address them until now. After reading Kevin Hodgson's blog post about the pro's and con's of a virtual science fair, I am more impassioned than ever to push these cardboard dinosaurs to their final extinction. 

Kevin does a great job of summarizing some of the pluses and minuses of going virtual, and part of his list is summarized below:

PROS:

Virtual projects are...

1. permanently archived (i.e., making science much less "disposable")

2. easily embeddable (hello, Google/Schoology!)

3. multimedia rich (students can display their learning through multiple modalities)

and my personal favorite:

4. expanding the traditional idea of "audience." 

As far as I can tell, this last idea is the biggest obstacle in transitioning from a old-fashioned science fair to a virtual one. Traditionally, the audience is the students and faculty and parents who walk by the cardboard display during the one-day Science Expo. But after weeks (or perhaps months) of working on an extensive out-of-class science project, it hardly seems fair for only a handful of people to view the students' work, and an even smaller number (usually just one: the teacher) to critically analyze it for a grade. 

What if the audience became as wide and as broad as we wanted it to be? What if students could continue learning from the project, long after the original experiment had been done and the poster had been constructed?

A virtual poster would allow students to share their work with others in the school, in their city, and even around the world. Just a few of my ideas for a new kind of "science fair" are below:

1) Students create a virtual poster of their work, and posters are linked to the class Google site or Schoology page for all other students to see. Classmates are then tasked with completing one or two "Peer Reviews" in which they (either virtually or in person) make suggestions and ask questions about the experiments. (Perhaps we even begin a conversation here about what happens after a body of experimentation is published in a scientific journal, and use our class peer review process as a model for how science is really done.)

2) Students could also use their virtual posters to do an "Experiment Swap" with another group in class, or with students from another science class somewhere else in the world. They would be challenged to replicate an experiment done by another student in order to validate their findings, and then share their results in a follow-up review. (Again, reinforcing the idea of how science is actually done in the real world.)

3) Student virtual posters could essentially become working documents, (because isn't that what most real science is?) with students changing their independent and dependent variables over the course of time, depending on peer feedback, expert feedback (from both teachers and scientists from the community) and their own interests. These working documents could continue to collect reviews and opinions and praise over time from a wide audience, including family members. (Students can easily invite Grandma Louise from Kentucky to log on and view their projects online.) 

4) Students could easily reformat their virtual posters for submission into any of the emerging digital science fairs appearing each year, including the Google Science Fair, the ExploraVision competition and AEOP's eCybermission contest, just to name a few. (Perhaps students could even be given the choice of which contests to enter, increasing their buy-in and personal interest.) This way, schools can still gain recognition through their students' science achievements as well as encourage healthy competition among classmates. 

The take home message here:

Let's transform the science fair. From a cumbersome semester-long project that ends in a puny, one-day presentation in front of a piece of cardboard to a digital, collaborative, peer-reviewed process that more closely mirrors the way science is done in 2013. 

No, students won't necessarily have the same sort of "face time" that we are accustomed to with the cardboard displays, and our current model of a school-wide Expo might not look the same at all. But that's okay. If we want our students leaving our classrooms with a passion for SCIENCE (and not the classroomitized-compartmentalized-version of science that we often present) then our plan for the science fair project needs to look drastically different indeed.

(For an example of a virtual science poster that I created in Glogster, click here.)

Flying on a Jet Plane

I recently entered an essay contest for the National Science Teacher's Association. They were giving away 30 free plane tickets to their local conferences, and our science department was planning to attend the one in Charlotte on November 7-9. All I had to do was write a 150-word essay on what I wanted to learn most from the conference, and I won! Here's my entry.

"In Version 1.0 of my science classroom, I was relying heavily on a textbook and worksheets, with students passive for most of the class. In Version 2.0, I began to explore inquiry-based instruction, and had students trying experiments before we ever opened the book. The release of Version 3.0 has been jam-packed with improvements. I am using video tools and a YouTube channel to screencast lectures, explain lab procedures and even animate classroom supplies. Some of these videos have been part of “flipped units” where students pace their own learning according to what they need. At this year’s NSTA conference in Charlotte, I’m looking for ways to advance to Version 4.0. I’m envisioning a fully paperless classroom, synced with augmented reality, and gamified into a “Choose Your Own Adventure” experience for students. Version 4.0 is bold, uncharted, and just what my students need. Will you help me get there?"

Tired

Teaching is a job that is never finished. Each lesson could always be a bit more structured (or unstructured), each unit could be a little more student-guided (or more teacher-facilitated), and each year could always be restructured and reorganized. Couple that with the constant barrage of new technology, fancy 21st century teaching terms that are in style this year but may not be next year, along with my dearest 64 emotional and psychological preteen roller coasters who are just trying to find their place in the world, and it makes for an exciting, challenging career. 

For the most part, I am energized by this career. But today I am tired. 

Tired in my bones and in my brain. Today it feels like it doesn't matter what I try or don't try, what I do or don't do. It won't ever (in any of the countless iterations or improvements of my lessons or units or plans) be good enough.

Oh the Joys of Technology!

When it works, it is GLORIOUS!

To refresh my students' memories of the scientific method and lab report writing, I gave them a simple question to test: How does the height of a dropped ball affect how high the ball bounces?

They brainstormed with their group, downloaded a simple (and mostly empty) lab report template from our class Schoology page, uploaded it to their Google docs account, and shared it with their group members. Each member was then easily able to type in the document at the same time from their own laptop, collaborate about each section of the lab write-up, and discuss how it should be written. (This was my first time really using the collaborative feature of Google docs, and I'm now officially HOOKED!)

Collecting data, WITHOUT PAPER!

When it came time to actually test the question, several groups decided to film the dropped ball using the built-in camera on their laptops, and play each trial back in slow motion using iMovie or PhotoBooth. Genius!

 

Students lining up the camera on the laptop to film the ball bounce.

Replaying the ball bounce in slow motion to more accurately measure height.

What amazed me most is that not only did the students accomplish the entire experiment in one class period (with no other guidelines except the starting question), but they effectively collaborated on all sections of the lab report, and even polished off properly labeled tables and graphs using Microsoft Excel, inserted them into the lab report, and uploaded their finished report to our class Schoology* page for me to grade digitally!

With the help of some fantastic technology, we accomplished in 50 minutes what it would have traditionally taken me to do in twice that time. Not only was I amazed at how much got done, but also at how the technology allowed their creativity, ingenuity, and fluency with the science concepts to shine. For the first time in my teaching career, I felt that I was no longer having to teach the technology alongside the science content. This time, the technology quietly slipped into the background, and the students' understanding (or lack of) the science became more clear to me than I could have seen it otherwise.

Here's to hoping the rest of the year's technology is as beautifully seamless as it was today!


*If you don't have Schoology, you should definitely check it out. It's like Facebook for school use, has fantastic gradebook functions, allows you to give tests and quizzes online, sends out assignment notifications, and enables great discussion thread features. The very best part? It's free!

Secret

I am not really a scientist. Just a nerdy teacher disguised as one. In my trusty lab coat and goggles, which at times feel more like props than safety equipment.

Is this somehow a detriment to me as a science educator?

In the core of my teacher-heart I am in love with pencils and paper and staples and folders. Flash cards and highlighters and black and white marble composition books. Multiple choice questions and white board markers and three-ring binders. Gold star stickers and "Way to Go" stamps and red felt tip pens. Cooperative learning and glue sticks and graphic organizers.

Am I more in love with "doing school" than "teaching science?"
(I worry this affects my ability to actually help students integrate new science information. Especially those students who aren't as naturally gifted at "doing school." *Swallowing hard...*)

Or perhaps have I just been teaching middle school too long?

Simulations

For my girls in 6-1, 6-2 and 6-3:

1)Click on the simulation below. Then on the right side, click "Mystery" button. Use the scale and the water to measure the densities of each block A-E, and compare them to known values in the table. Write down what you think each block is made of on your paper, and check your answers with a neighbor before going to the next simulation.

Click to Run

2) Click on the simulation below. Then click on the tab, "Micro" and shake some sodium chloride into the water. Answer the following questions in your composition book.

Click to Run

A. What does the sodium chloride look like before it enters the water?
B. What happens to the sodium chloride crystals after they enter the water?
C. What do the purple dots represent? What do the green dots represent?
D. What can you do to increase the concentration of the salt water? (Make it saltier?)
E. What can you do to decrease the concentration of the salt water? (Make it less salty?)
F. Click "remove solute" and change the solute to sucrose (a type of sugar similar to glucose). Describe what the sucrose looks like before it hits the water.
G. What happens to the sucrose molecules after it enters the water? How is this different from the sodium chloride?
H. Click on the tab "Water," and see what happens on a smaller scale when you add sodium chloride and sucrose to water. What colors represent the water molecules?
I. Why do the all the molecules seem to move around so much?
J. What do you think would happen to the speed of the molecules if we heated the water? Why do you think this?
K. Click back to the "Macro" tab and experiment with the conductivity device (the lightbult and battery). Talk to a classmate and come up with an explanation of why you think the salt solution will light the lightbulb but the sugar solution will not.

Check all your answers with a classmate before you finish. Turn in your paper when you are done.

Have fun!

Why I Teach, Vulcan Version

If you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." - Mr. Spock

I teach because science makes sense. It answers questions. When all is upside down and inside out from a heartbreak, a loss, an unexpected turn of events, science sets things right again. The predictability smooths out the rough edges of the rest of my life. I know that if I ask a question, make observations, and conduct a controlled experiment, then my results will either support or contradict my prediction. In this way, fears can be quelled, and renamed mere uncertainties. For example, a fear of the darkness is (at the risk of sounding like Spock) irrational.

Darkness is merely an absence of visible light. Darkness is the photoreptor cells in the back of my eyes not being stimulated, and in a way, resting. They are not busy distinguishing different wavelengths of light energy, and so my brain interprets this resting as darkness. In this way, life, when it is hard or scary or unpleasant, can be made manageable. Understanding, then, equates to clarity, which gives me (a sense of) control.

On a daily basis, I feel like I'm trying to impart this idea to my students: "Let not your heart be troubled. There is an explanation. For everything."

Yet, I sense there is a hefty trade-off here. In all my attempts to calm troubled minds, to answer the questions, to bridge the gap between a world off-kilter and one that makes sense, I remove the mystery. Without mystery, I fear there is no wonderment. No curiosity.

When a child is twelve years old (as most of my students are), how much of the balance should I be tipping toward the unknown then? My mind tells me that there will be plenty of time for mysteries as they grow and mature. Plenty of time for unanswered questions, for results that still don't address the heart of the problem, for ghosts and gut feelings and human fallibility. So I think, now must be the time for certainties.

My heart, however, reminds me that those same mysteries, if administered to the students in carefully measured doses (look at me, still trying to quantify and control!), can provide the impetus for not just a sixth grade love of science, but a lifetime of love for it. (*And oh, how the weight of this responsibility feels massive on my shoulders.)

Alas, what started as a statement of why I teach has somehow transformed itself into both a professional and personal challenge. One way (out of many) to become a better educator, and perhaps also a better human being. To embrace more of life's uncertainty and mystery, for myself. To stop trying to quantify those things which cannot be contained. To let go. For without the unknowns (things that are not known at the present moment) and the unknowables (things that can never be known), I risk sending my students out into the world believing that all questions do indeed have answers. That all of life is calculable, measurable, and perfectly logical. And that is probably the most detrimental scientific misconception I could ever propogate.

Butterflies

I can explain to you why the Moon has phases.
I can show you in the lab how temperature affects the solubility of a substance.
I can demonstrate why air is considered matter.
But when you ask me,
"Miss K, why do you have all these butterflies around your room?"

I am stopped in my tracks.

Like a clogged drain.
All the words get stuck in my throat
And my brain spins around
off-balance and awkwardly empty.

All I can manage to say
Is something cliche and pre-packaged
About how butterflies first begin their lives
As squishy, wandering caterpillars.
And that likewise, we all go through
strange
transformations
To become more capable,
More beautiful
Versions of ourselves.

Except I don't even say it as eloquently as that.
Because I fear your eleven-year-old minds
Won't understand what it means to have
Another version of who you are today.

There is a part of me that wants to say instead,
"Ask me in ten years."

It would be like asking a caterpillar
Why he couldn't stop staring at the butterflies
Above him in the air.
"I don't quite know," he would say.
"But something about them just feels so familiar."

Speak Not

I have a YouTube channel. On it, I store recordings of my voice, reading through and explaining the lessons we cover in class. To date, there are 51 of these uploads. In a month, I am going to present with a colleague at a state-wide tech conference about the various tools we use in our middle school science department. YouTube. Screencasting. Glogster. It is flattering, but I am not exactly pleased.

Don't get me wrong. I am excited to travel a bit, to share in front of others who signed up for our "session" and to sound like I have accomplished something in my teaching career. But I am not really very proud of my work. I am dabbling in the "flipped classroom" model by creating the YouTube channel, and by offering a lecture resource online that the students can access at home. But it's still lecture. It's me droning on about storms and air masses and viscosity and plate tectonics.

I am tired of hearing myself talk.

Lately I have been feeling the need to just stop talking altogether. To somehow conduct my daily classes in silence, using only pictures and gestures and the students themselves to teach. (Crazy teaching challenge, perhaps? The kids would love it, I'm sure.)

Today I read an amazing blog article by Susan Eckert (who was actually a guest blogger on one of my favorite teacher-blogger blogs "The Science Teacher"), and it perfectly captures the feeling I have. Her last line is the most telling. "Let our words not distract from their wonderment." (This phrase is now written in big green letters on a Post-It note that hangs from my computer screen.)

Not only do I need to stop talking so much because it tires me and my students, but also (and more importantly) because it hinders and kills their curiosity.

Since when has my major job role been to constantly answer questions and babble on with big words they won't remember five minutes from now? (Mind you, I think answering questions is great. I am the teacher. I have all the answers. At least, that's what my sixth graders think. But it is really not as productive as letting the students discover the answers themselves.) Since when has it been appropriate to fill a room so full of my own words that the students have none left that they feel they can contribute? The self-absorbed nature of my own teaching suddenly hits me. And saddens me.

I want to get rid of my ridiculous Powerpoint notes. I want to redo the screencasts. Make them shorter, more intense, less wordy, and more interesting.

I want to stop talking so much, and start letting the science (the beauty and the mystery of it) speak for itself.

Build an Atom!

Click on the simulation below to discover a fun way to reinforce the basics of atomic structure.

Click to Run

This program was created by a team at the University of Colorado at Boulder through a program called "PhET." You can find their website here. Each free simulation (like the one above) can be run online (through their website) or downloaded locally to your computer. Categories of simulations range from biology (membrane channels, molecular motors, etc) to physics (circuits, buoyancy, etc) to chemistry (balancing equations, molarity, etc) and more! The website also includes teacher lesson ideas and downloadable worksheets. This is a wonderful resource!

(Students: At the end of the lesson, click here to take the exit poll!)

Visualizing Scale

Thanks to a wonderful friend of mine, Zero Dean, I recently learned of a fantastic website designed to illustrate the scale of objects in our world. From the tiniest atoms (and parts of atoms) to the largest stars in our universe, this magical little website is truly breath-taking! I've included a screenshot below, but you really must click on the link to truly appreciate it. Be sure the sound is turned up as well. The music is the icing on the cake.

Enjoy!

Scale of the Universe

Earth as a Peppercorn

It started with a pink bouncy ball. Eight inches in diameter, sitting in a bird bath in the school courtyard. Standing around it with my class, the girls and I marvel at our feeble representation of the Sun.

"This plastic ball represents the most important force in our solar system, and the reason we have life on our planet," I say, trying to impart a sense of importance to the round pink ball. We stand for a moment and look up at the real sun, letting it warm our faces in the chilly morning air.
"Who has Mercury?" I call out. Behind me, a voice pipes up,
"Here it is!" A student is holding a white index card with a tiny ink dot in the center.

"Alright, Mercury. According to our scale, if the Sun is here, then you are positioned ten paces that way." I point toward a clump of bushes. My little Mercurian princess takes ten large paces away from the Sun, then turns around to face us and holds up her index card proudly. We take a moment to admire how tiny Mercury looks on that index card, and then I lead the group to join her. From our spot at Mercury we look back at the Sun and I ask,
"What kinds of surface temperatures does Mercury have? Who researched Mercury for their planetary brochure last week?" Two girls jump up excitedly and call out, "We did! Mercury has temperatures over 400 degrees Celsius on the side facing the Sun!"
"Wow," I reply. "400 degrees seems really hot. Would you agree?" All the girls nod in agreement. "But look at this tiny dot." I point to the index card."Now look at the Sun way over there. How does Mercury have such high temperatures?" A few girls suggest, "Maybe it's because the planet is so small?" Another one adds, "And maybe because the Sun is soooo hot!" I reply with a simple, "Interesting," and let the suspense build as we continue on our trek.

I call out, "Who has Venus?"
"I do!" one of my students replies happily, holding up a tiny black peppercorn between her fingers.

"Good. Venus, you need to take nine paces from here in order to fit our scale." Venus marches away from us as we count off her paces one at a time. At nine, she stops, turns around and holds up the peppercorn. It is barely visible to us. I ask Mercury to stay put for a few minutes while the rest of us journey on to Venus' position. We stare at the tiny peppercorn, then to the tiny dot of Mercury, and then to the pink ball of the Sun.

"Who has Earth?" I ask.
"Me!" another girl says, holding a second peppercorn carefully between her fingers.

"Okay, Earth. From Venus, you will need to take 7 paces to find your place in the solar system." We excitedly count as she marches away from us, then turns and holds up the peppercorn. The group leaves Venus behind momentarily and joins Earth. I ask everyone to look up at the tiny peppercorn.

"This, girls, is our home. It is life as we know it. On this tiny bit of rock you wake and eat with your family, drive to school, grow and change and learn every day. There are seven billion other humans on this same rock with us." There is a collective silence as I say this, and a few hushed "woahs" pass over the group.

Next I ask, "How far away do you think our moon is from this peppercorn?"
Several girls point with oustretched arms and guess aloud, "About this far?" I tell everyone to hold up their thumb and look carefully at it's length.

"That is about the distance from the Earth to our Moon." After the shock passes through the group, I add, "And that is the farthest human beings have ever physically traveled in a spaceship!"

We look back at Venus and Mercury, whose places didn't, until this very moment, seem so far away at all. The girls are now completely stunned.

While we stand at Earth we reflect on the temperatures on our planet, how they compare to Venus and Mercury, and we even venture to think on how strong the pull of the Sun's gravity must be to hold all these tiny objects in orbits so far away. Little minds are expanding as we discuss these ideas, and in this moment, it seems my science teacher heart has never felt so proud of these girls.

"Where's Mars?" I say loudly now over the commotion.

"Here it is!" and a girl holds up a white index card with an ink dot drawn in the center.

"Alright, Mars. You will need to take fourteen paces to reach your place in the solar system. Let's all count with her as she goes!" Mars takes off marching, and we count excitedly to fourteen. We leave Earth behind for a moment and walk over to the little white index card.

"Look at this tiny dot. Then look back at Earth, then Venus, then Mercury, and then the Sun. These are the inner, rocky planets of our solar system. Who wants to guess how many paces we need to get to the next planet in line, Jupiter?"

The girls blurt out various numbers, ranging from around 10 to 20. I ask the girls who have been modeling Mercury, Venus and Earth to rejoin our group before I continue.

"Jupiter, where are you?" I ask, and one girl holds up a small pebble above her head and replies, "Right here!"
"Alright, Jupiter, you need to take... 95 paces to get to your place in the solar system!" The girls gasp, and then laughter erupts.

"Don't waste time, girls, let's get counting!" and we take off together, some of us joined arm in arm, counting aloud, all the way to Jupiter. When we arrive, we are a bit winded but all smiles. We have had to bend our solar system path around the sidewalk and are now on the other side of the main building. We cannot see the Sun anymore. I ask our Jupiter girl to hold up her pebble.

"This, girls, is mighty Jupiter! The largest planet in our solar system!" The girls are giggling again. I point back toward the Sun and then ask, "What kinds of temperatures do you think exist on Jupiter?"
"Very cold temperatures!"
"And what makes you say that?" I ask.
"Because look how far away from the Sun we are!" one girl blurts out excitedly.
"Exactly! Imagine how tiny the Sun is right now, sitting in that bird bath in the courtyard." We pause for a moment to marvel at the scale we are creating.

"On to Saturn, girls! How many paces do you think we need to take to get there?" The guesses are wildly extravagant now, and I quiet them down to announce, "We will need to take... 112 paces to get to Saturn!" The girls shriek in amazement and feigned exhaustion, and we take off together across the parking lot toward the soccer field.

This pattern continues with each successive planet. With each announcement of distance, the girls are amazed and entertained all at the same time.
112 paces to Saturn.
249 paces to Uranus.
281 paces to Neptune.
242 paces to Pluto.

At each stop along the way, I remind the girls to look back and picture that pink ball, our Sun, sitting in the bird bath in the courtyard. We have had to turn our solar system model in on itself several times for the sake of space, and within the hour we have wound around and made our way back to the courtyard.

I gather the girls, all of them panting heavily from our trek, around the pink ball in the bird bath. We return to the Sun. I congratulate them on creating a life-size model of our solar system, and we gather the ball, the index cards, the peppercorns, the pebbles of various sizes, then head for the classroom.

Once there, I place in front of them another, more familiar, model of the solar system.

I ask them: How is this model different from the one we made in the courtyard? How is this model both less useful and more useful than the one we made in the courtyard? If you had to define the term "model" based on our activities today, what would you say it is?

Finally, I ask them, "What other things did you learn today?" and the answers that pour from them far outnumber the answers I could ever have taught them in a lecture with a Powerpoint presentation.

(To check out the resource I used to create this class activity, click here.)

Poll Everywhere!

So, I just discovered another quick and easy way to get my class started: instant online polls! I use the free website Poll Everywhere to create quick multiple choice questions for the girls to answer as they come in.

Not only does it save paper, but it gives me immediate feedback and allows us a concise way to discuss a science concept. The website only allows each user to vote once, so data is an accurate representation of your class. You can also keep and reuse your polls as many times as you need!

Technology? Check!
Instant assessment? Check!
Fun for students? Check!

Try it in your classroom today!

The box

How do I teach them that we are but tiny dancing dots on a spinning ball of rock in the middle of a vast universe of gases and fusion and gravity? How do I teach them that the shadows that follow them on the hopscotch game grow and change not because the sun rises and falls in the sky, but because this giant ball of rock we are stuck to is twirling on its axis at over a thousand miles per hour? And not only that, but we are also hurtling around the Sun at a face-peeling speed of over 66,000 miles an hour. At any given moment, the sun's position in the sky never changes. It is our place in space that is changing.

This is an effort in opening up the box they have sealed so tightly around their heads. The box that tells them, and has always told them, that the sun appears and then disappears every day like a puppet rising into view, dancing a jig and then disappearing beneath the stage.

Today I am a box tapper.

Some days I am content to let them live and breath and speak muffled science to me through their closed boxes. Other days, like today, I give their boxes a little tap. "Hey. Consider this," I prod. "What about this idea?" I suggest. I let the tap echo inside their box and wait patiently to see what the brain inside will do in response. And on some very special days, I get to be a box poker. I carry a pointy-ended stick that I use to punch a little hole in the bottom of their box. It is a small hole, and I am careful never to harm the thinker inside. But it is also a happy, sometimes anxious hole, that makes the thinker think a bit harder, look a bit farther and consider a bit bigger.

Today, I watch my little boxes reverberate the tap I tapped today. They buzz and bounce and a few brave ones even tap back, from the inside.

This is why I teach.




*Photo taken from: http://www.incrediblethings.com/home/come-up-with-a-million-dollar-idea-with-thought-box/

A bad day

It is thoroughly disheartening to realize that you can spend sixty minutes doing a great hands-on laboratory activity and then at the end of those sixty minutes your students don't leave with anything more than they came in with.

"But they are getting their hands dirty," you reason. "They are having much more fun than if I was just standing up in front of the room blabbing on about something."

THAT has got to count for something, doesn't it?

Yet, a word keeps rattling around in your head.
Relevance. Relevance. RELEVANCE!

These girls need to be walking out of my room on a daily basis with more skills, more practice, or more experience than they walked in with. Otherwise I am not doing my job.

Today was just a very bad day.

*Lightbulb*
Am I making the girls guess what it is they should be learning about in my class? Have I lost track of my daily objectives? Of course *I* know what they are. I'm the one teaching. But I think I've forgotten to make sure the girls are clear on them. (*Smacking palm on forehead repeatedly*)

I need to investigate the whole "exit card" system that some teachers use. And I need to get back to posting the objectives on the board for the girls.

The Relevance Monster

A snapshot of today's lesson: The girls begin their warm up. Read the lab procedure in your textbook, summarize it in steps on your paper. Ten minutes later we discuss what we will be doing in the lab exercise, with me modeling the steps with the materials at one of the lab stations. Tie one end of a string to a flashlight and the other to a board. Use binder clips to secure a "Tracking Shadows" poster to the board. Place a pencil upright in the pre-drilled hole in the board. Use the flashlight to create a shadow of the pencil on the poster. Measure the height of the flashlight above the table for each shadow on the poster. Record your measurements on the data table. Plot the data on a line graph.

The lights went out, and the girls got to work. Several realizations occurred to me as I supervised the shadow lab.

1) Initially the girls did not understand that their shadow of the pencil needed to be completely within the premarked outline on the poster.
2) Several girls found it difficult to manuever the flashlight to even create a shadow. Many would be staring hard at the dark line cast on the poster and say they couldn't make it move. Others would fail to notice that they no longer had the flashlight pointed directly at the pencil at all.

I did not anticipate these difficulties.

Also, the overall goal of this exercise was for the girls to understand that
1) The position of the sun in the sky is different in winter than it is in the summer.
2) The higher the position of the sun, the shorter the shadow. The lower the sun, the longer the shadow.
3) The sun is higher in the sky during the summer and lower in the sky during the winter.
4) The position of the sun in the sky appears to change over the course of a year because the tilt of the earth changes as the earth revolves around the sun.

We have already learned that the Earth has a continual tilt of 23.5 degrees in relation to the sun, and that this tilt is responsible for the different seasons we experience on Earth. We have discussed the term "apparent motion" and talked about how the sun "appears" to move across the sky, but in actuality, it is us on Earth who are moving.

But we haven't made the connection between the apparent height of the sun in the sky and how that translates to the position and orientation of the Earth in space. (Ah, yet another place to help the girls learn valuable spatial skills that I have squandered.)

At the end of our sixty minute class period, several thoughts occur to me. This lab is currently an isolated, irrelevant set of measurements for the girls. They have no prior knowledge to which they can attach this activity. No understanding of what the flashlight represents, what the pencil represents, or even what the different lines on their new graph mean.

Why did I think this lab could be done cold turkey, without a lot of prior knowledge cultivation? How did I miss the necessity of explaining the concept of our setup as a model?

Tomorrow I am going to have the class stand in the hallway with a big, blank wall, a lamp and a two liter bottle of soda. I'm going to recreate the winter and summer shadows that they measured on their posters, and have them mark the height of the lamp along the wall. It will be a giant wall version of the graph they made today. We will discuss how the height of the sun in the sky relates to the length of shadows. Maybe this will help them understand why we used a pencil and a flashlight yesterday.

Where is their more value? Getting them to take data they don't understand and then explaining it later? Or explaining it first and making them take data that they already expect?

Five Fantastic Websites You Should Use NOW!

1. Teaching Channel
This is a store house of teaching inspiration! Watch video clips of other teachers reflecting on their practice, passing along helpful hints, and explaining their thoughtfully crafted lesson plans. This site completely revived in me a desire to better my skills in the classroom!

2. Glogster EDU
This online poster-making website has completely reshaped the way we do science fair here at school! Instead of the traditional trifold boards and boring, glued-on letters, Glogster allows students to create interactive, animated, and fun virtual displays of their projects. Students can embed videos, add music, attach documents, and layer predesigned graphics to create splashy, yet content-rich posters to show their work. The interface is incredibly user-friendly, and it took my girls less than a week to become completely fluent with the site. Glogster also provides built-in rubrics to help you grade the students' work!

3. Rubistar
An absolute must for lab reports, science fair components and other projects. Rubistar lets you customize a rubric as much as you want, or use a prefilled template of your choice. Perfect for accurately and consistently grading projects that you may have never done with the students before!

4. Screencast-O-Matic
This website has completely changed my teaching this year. I use it to make screencasts of my powerpoint lessons, and then upload them to my YouTube channel for the students to view any time. Totally free, and completely easy to use.

5. Poll Everywhere
A quick way to get immediate student feedback! Create a poll, and students can vote using their computer or cell phone. Results can be displayed on screen in real time, so not only do you get a quick snapshot of what your students know, but you can immediately identify where students are making mistakes and then reteach the necessary material. Super easy and completely free!

Teaching with YouTube & Screencast-O-Matic

This year I have been so excited to start using YouTube more regularly in my classroom. As a science teacher, I feel the abundance of video resources online are incredibly useful for reinforcing concepts I teach the girls. However, it can feel a bit overwhelming with so many videos available. Being new to the YouTube scene, I decided to start small. I created a "6th Grade Science" channel and then I made several playlists that corresponded to the units we cover.

One of the great things about creating your own channel is the use of playlists. Students can safely navigate to your page and click on only the videos you want them to watch (ones that you have previewed and deemed worthwhile), without the distractions of other (perhaps more questionable) channels and videos. Students do not need an account or password to view the channel. Simply an internet connection. 

Also, you have the option of uploading your own videos. While this may seem daunting at first, it is an incredibly useful tool. I create my own recordings of lecture topics using the free website Screencast-O-Matic. Through this site you can easily record your voice (and your face, if you have a webcam) while displaying a screen (such as Microsoft Powerpoint or Word). Your mouse movements, keystrokes, and window transitions are all recorded. It's like having a video camera over your shoulder while you work on your computer! Click here for instructions on how to create your own screencast of a Powerpoint presentation. (Coming soon!)

These recordings, called screencasts, have completely transformed the way I teach. It has allowed me to provide the girls with an additional resource when they are at home and not able to consult me for help. Since my lectures are organized by the lesson numbers in our textbook, I create a screencast for each lesson (typically they are between 5-10 minutes long) and upload them to our class YouTube channel. The girls are able to watch them whenever, wherever. Many of my girls (and parents) have commented on how helpful it is when they are studying for a test in my class. If they need clarification on a topic, they can find the appropriate screencast recording, and BAM! Suddenly it's as if I am standing in their room explaining it to them just like I did in class!

Check out one of my screencasts below:

I've also used this screencast technique to make a recording of a review game we play in class, then post it on our channel that afternoon so the girls can watch (and play it) again as they study for the upcoming test. 

Finally, as if you needed another reason why a class YouTube channel and screencasting were amazing, both are obviously super-helpful to those students who have to miss class due to doctor's appointments or sickness, etc. So far this year my girls have said that it is far easier to catch up after being absent in my class (as opposed to other classes) because of the resources I keep on our class YouTube channel!