tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-87530118734108545962024-03-13T04:13:49.689-05:00Adventures with the Lower LevelTrying to make the world a better place one teenager at a time.Tracie Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10237663751076265379noreply@blogger.comBlogger165125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8753011873410854596.post-2236173332475147132022-05-26T19:29:00.001-05:002022-05-26T19:29:03.267-05:00Kahlua Goes Well with Chai<p>Our last day of school was Tuesday. It didn't have that happy relief feeling to it that the end of school normally does. Apparently coming out on the backside of covid was much more difficult than actually going through it. It wasn't a terrible year, but it was rough and I don't think I am going to look back on too many parts of it fondly. </p><p>And that was before finding out about the latest school shooting. I've been trying to avoid it as much as I can because I simply don't have the bandwidth for it right now, but that has proved to be impossible. Stupid me went on facebook (why am I still there???) looking for a birthday and waded through a stream of hopelessness that I can't even fathom to be true.</p><p>I checked out today. Grades are done and my room is clean. When I got home, there was a living room full of teenagers playing a marathon game of How to Train Your Dragon. Not quite adults still hanging on to something they loved from their not too distant childhood. So I went up to my room and I just cried. Cried that my babies are growing up. Cried that I didn't give my best to this last year's students. Cried that I survived another year without having to protect my students from (or lose my students to) a terrorist. <br /></p><p>I live in a rural, red state. People I have known all my life, people I love, people I know to be hard-working and loving and compassionate, posting memes about "not taking my guns" right after professing to be "pro-life." So many calls to provide teacher and teenagers and toddlers with military level training that I just can't believe this is being offered up as a solution. If the only thing you have to offer is arming teachers, bulletproof backpacks, and Kevlar blankets you should just keep your mouth shut. That is some next level victim blaming bullshit and you are part of problem. I am simply stunned that so many people are just...okay...with this. </p><p>I have six years before I can retire. On so many levels, I hope I make it.<br /></p>Tracie Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10237663751076265379noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8753011873410854596.post-28555232383087259632022-02-16T21:16:00.002-06:002022-02-16T21:16:47.237-06:00The Circle of Grading<p>This year has been hard. I probably don't need to tell you that. I can't really put a finger on what exactly it is, but I think this has been the hardest stretch since the pandemic began. </p><p>It started to show about halfway through our first trimester. Around October, it became clear that my freshmen just...weren't. They weren't on level. They weren't able to school. They weren't interested. I had been using my standards based grading, and while it seemed to be going okay, it became clear that we were not, for various reasons, going to be able to cover near as much material as we had in previous years. This was a problem for my grading because I really rely on circling back around to earlier concepts so that relearning and retakes are built into the later assessments. </p><p>I always tend to have lower grades in my classes. Taking out homework and extra credit and only relying on what the kids know will do that. I have always been okay with it. But this year was different. This year a lot my kids just refused to do school. </p><p>As a compromise, I guess, I decided that in the second trimester I would go back to traditional grading and give students credit for work that we do in class. It was simple! Brilliant! Kids will pass!</p><p>Except they didn't. The structure of the class was the same as it has been. We do stuff in class, whiteboard the answers, and assess. When the work was complete, I would stamp it and record it as done. They didn't need to have it correct, although we went on and on and on about why we were whiteboarding the answers... They could have copied it from their partner. I didn't care, I was giving them free points. I was giving them a cushion so they didn't have to actually know ALL the physics. </p><p>Wanna guess what changed? Absolutely nothing. In fact, grades are WORSE than they were first tri with the added bonus of the rush of "can I still turn this in for credit" panic this last week of the grading period. </p><p>Today was the last day (thank goodness for winter storms) so I have the next few days to think about what to do going into this last part of the year. I'm leaning back towards SBG. I am modifying the computational part of my plans, so I think I can get back to a more realistic pace and be able to circle back around and re-emphasize the important points. </p>Tracie Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10237663751076265379noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8753011873410854596.post-54834584597270416712021-10-14T13:58:00.002-05:002021-10-14T13:58:54.290-05:00Constant Velocity with Computational Modeling<p> I spent 19 class days on this unit, far more than I ever have or even ever imagined having to. I know part of it is that I am learning the computational part along with them. I don't feel like I am clear on what the end goal is so that is something I will need to work on.</p><p>We had the test yesterday. I got through about six of them before I had to stop. It's hard to grade through tears. They were awful. I really need to go back and reteach some of this, but with only twenty days left in the trimester, I have no idea how I am going to get through the next couple of units in time. </p><p>I am concerned that so much time is spent focusing on the coding part that I am missing the forest for the trees. I can see the connection between the functions and the motions, but if it is fuzzy for me, who knows what to look for, I can totally believe that it is invisible for my kids.</p>Tracie Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10237663751076265379noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8753011873410854596.post-48218387453810516982021-10-08T09:07:00.002-05:002021-10-08T09:07:53.023-05:00Colliding Buggies with My Freshmen<p>Today was a weird one to observe. </p><p>Today we started wrapping up Constant Velocity with the Colliding Buggies Lab. Kids were given the problem and a slightly structured page to record their thinking and progress. We have been working through some problems with where buggies would meet on paper and in Pyret, and we had done the Buggy Lab at the beginning of the unit, so there was a lot of background for them to pull from.</p><p>First hour was off to a slow start, but that is not unusual. They aren't quite awake yet. It's pretty quiet, and getting them talking can be rather tedious (and at times, disheartening). Once they get going, they tend to do well. Every group eventually figured out a plan and was able to get enough data to start on solving the problem.</p><p>Second hour came in and when I gave them the problem a thousand questions rang through the air. All of them were along the lines of "how do we do this?". Now, second hour is packed with what you would call the "smart" kids. They are chasing A's, which is fine. It just seems to show in projects like this where there is more than one way to find the solution. Every group this hour ended up getting the data they needed, but didn't get much further.</p><p>My fifth hour is rough. Nearly all of my IEP and 504 kids are in that hour, so I am constantly on the move from one group to the next keeping them on task. After introducing the lab, they took off. It was so much fun to watch. There was some redirecting and they were as rowdy as they normally are, but every group came up with a plan right away. Everyone had data at the end of the day and most even worked out where their prediction was going to be. </p><p>I'm really excited to see how it all ends up on Monday, which is something I have not said in a LONG time!</p>Tracie Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10237663751076265379noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8753011873410854596.post-74615736634380494282017-05-23T14:18:00.001-05:002017-05-23T14:36:35.239-05:00The Escape Room FinalFor the last few years, I have had a comprehensive final test in my chemistry class, which was essentially a big retake on all of the targets for everyone. My kids hated it, and quite frankly, I was getting bored. My principal always refers to finals as a time to do some type of "cumulative activity", but I had yet to come up with an activity that covered all of my targets and still allowed for a retake situation. <br />
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A couple weeks ago, on a rare Sunday afternoon with nothing to do but ponder life, I had the idea that my final could take on the form of an Escape Room*. I said the words out loud, and my daughter, who happens to be in my chemistry class, was sitting across the room and loved the idea. And so it began. For the next 10 days, every spare minute was devoted to figuring out how to put something like this together. Because I had no idea.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_z5j_GvOIeeJtqWV8_juvOGaleTmWgRf3yrHFwG5UKRQdnYdTqOMklqXJKJs1gmN27_Hqc10zGkZhoBQkh8i78C2JPex4w6J5CQgGKVVWEdT7Htl1EL2gRubIE3LqgbLqKs6bNi-39LbA/s1600/IMG_20170517_164427.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_z5j_GvOIeeJtqWV8_juvOGaleTmWgRf3yrHFwG5UKRQdnYdTqOMklqXJKJs1gmN27_Hqc10zGkZhoBQkh8i78C2JPex4w6J5CQgGKVVWEdT7Htl1EL2gRubIE3LqgbLqKs6bNi-39LbA/s200/IMG_20170517_164427.jpg" width="150" /></a><br />
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First, I had to see if I could get some supplies. I sent an email out to every staff member in my district asking if anyone had any locks and/or boxes they would be willing to share. I hit the jackpot when the principal at our elementary school replied saying she had four sets from <a href="http://www.breakoutedu.com/" target="_blank">Breakout EDU</a>. I had found that company when I did my initial searching, but time and money were a factor that led to me crossing that off my list almost immediately. Although, in all honesty, I probably wouldn't have been able to pull this off if Heather hadn't have had the kits. <br />
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With supplies in hand, I started brainstorming what the whole thing might look like. I knew I wanted kids to do some type of experiment, so I decided on a precipitation reaction where they would need to create an exact amount of precipitate. This was similar to some things that we had done all year, so it wouldn't be a huge stretch for kids to be able to do it on their own. One big challenge was that I had two classes of 24 students during first and second hour. So no time to reset anything, and a lot of kids to put in motion. I decided that I didn't want each group to do the same experiment, mostly so that they wouldn't be able to just copy what the group next to them was doing. Based on the supplies on had, both chemical and physical, I ended up with four different reactions. In the end, I had four reactions with two different paths to each one so I could handle eight groups of kids in each hour. Basically everyone was solving for the same thing, but the clues were different and hidden in different places. I later learned that this is essential. I had one clue for two different groups hidden in the same place, and it became way too easy for one of the clues to get lost in the shuffle. Luckily, I had the foresight to color code each group. I would have gone insane had I not done that. It made everything so much easier to follow and the kids knew they had the right clue when they found the right colored paper.<br />
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At first, the end goal was for kids to mix up their own reactants, mix them together, isolate the precipitate, and determine the percent yield. I ended up writing down every step I would have done in setting up a lab and breaking that down into clues. Initially, I wanted kids to mix up both reactants, but in the interest of time, I decided to give them one already mixed. I also gave them the volume of the second reactant to mix up which just left them to figure out the mass to add in order to get the correct concentration.<br />
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Now it was "just" a matter of breaking it down into steps. Each step was going to have a clue that would lead to the next step. So I started with the scenario. Our biology teacher is retiring this year, so I decided he was going to go mad and release a virus on the school. One of his favorite projects every year is to incubate chicken eggs, so the virus would turn everyone into baby chicken zombies. Oddly, every one of my students thought this was a totally plausible scenario. Being so close to his room, I, of course, have succumbed to the virus and am of no help to anyone. Luckily, I was able to determine the antidote before becoming a zombie and left clues hidden around the lab room for my amazing chemistry students to find. While kids were for the most part on their own here, I did give them two question cards per group, so if they felt like they were completely stuck, they could get a hint. But only two for the whole thing. Every group hoarded those until the very end and some didn't even use one. But I think it gave them some peace of mind to know they could ask if they needed to.<br />
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The first clue was a coded message on the initial handout. It was a series of atomic numbers that told kids to go find something out of place in the lab room. (As a side note, writing sentences using only chemical symbols is
HARD!) Around the room are manila envelopes in places that didn't make
sense: hanging in the back of the fume hood, in place of a picture on a
wall, behind an upside down periodic table.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMX3EAOE6brF94vlhyGP0REpQYRCaJLdoL_maPGFBcci_75DbPjnO21eyGfX_Um7TjTi76VxppqXEcAjEKFp16ewHDGGdUUeQljQdnSAzcluX5uATwGdZyNnjeEN7ECNID_x-ovOjBXXM1/s1600/20170518_075943.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="111" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMX3EAOE6brF94vlhyGP0REpQYRCaJLdoL_maPGFBcci_75DbPjnO21eyGfX_Um7TjTi76VxppqXEcAjEKFp16ewHDGGdUUeQljQdnSAzcluX5uATwGdZyNnjeEN7ECNID_x-ovOjBXXM1/s200/20170518_075943.jpg" width="200" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUtJyZTeRwBOV8GgXz9pCRrT9WT-VCbMRYx2zKRvX2BpGsyd2uPM7ASjRV1ia0chjjGlbbpkk2GFLnzca7mzU38mH_NkzBZhm7Fykbmlq2Iu_KOE145yMwjAgYQ9DhN5YTmgSlW11xtK7d/s1600/20170518_075953.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="111" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUtJyZTeRwBOV8GgXz9pCRrT9WT-VCbMRYx2zKRvX2BpGsyd2uPM7ASjRV1ia0chjjGlbbpkk2GFLnzca7mzU38mH_NkzBZhm7Fykbmlq2Iu_KOE145yMwjAgYQ9DhN5YTmgSlW11xtK7d/s200/20170518_075953.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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This turned out to be really difficult to find since they didn't really know what to look for, but once the first group found the envelope, the remaining groups picked up on it fairly quickly.<br />
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Inside the envelope was a quiz that had kids balancing chemical equations. One of the rules of the game was that if it's a clue, then it's a quiz. The quizzes were done individually and preserved the retake portion of the final. Once the quiz was graded, then they were allowed to work as a group. For the second clue, the coefficient of the first reactant in each equation was the same for each quiz. This was the combination for the lock on a box sitting on their lab table. The problem was that I only had four locks with number combinations. The other four had letters. So I rearranged the equations so that the first letter of each reactant was the same. Technically, they wouldn't have had to balance the equations correctly to get the combination, but they didn't know that so it all worked out.<br />
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Once they opened the box, there was another clue and a key. The clue (quiz) was to determine the number of protons, neutrons, or electrons in a given isotope. When put together, the numbers formed another coded message. This was a simple 123=ABC code, but nearly everyone tried the chemical symbols again. Upon decoding, a riddle was revealed as to what the key unlocked.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCrUQQrm_bZHXl3FRLOFJ64i_dnVEujJe1O3F8PPa4SOqxffOf2saG5hZsN4d5G5x3Ylt6mNyv6MXdF_r828dc03NXSQPM3v6wD_hSjX-EyzYY0QnvBOMDJ7YMpzmpzRYofuP1GuHjKd8B/s1600/IMG_20170519_102642.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCrUQQrm_bZHXl3FRLOFJ64i_dnVEujJe1O3F8PPa4SOqxffOf2saG5hZsN4d5G5x3Ylt6mNyv6MXdF_r828dc03NXSQPM3v6wD_hSjX-EyzYY0QnvBOMDJ7YMpzmpzRYofuP1GuHjKd8B/s320/IMG_20170519_102642.jpg" width="240" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJLeM0wtJUnwPKUX2oUH0qUkY62zfZgqTtpA0e5loNWacwchznuhNxrfVjPTlRa_uph_UHtyLtz-esKWydnjt3rBLNxKY18hpBexckY2LHLj30PQYkziSJe3CNQDq79EdTlJ7PM3eWqbzE/s1600/IMG_20170519_084006.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJLeM0wtJUnwPKUX2oUH0qUkY62zfZgqTtpA0e5loNWacwchznuhNxrfVjPTlRa_uph_UHtyLtz-esKWydnjt3rBLNxKY18hpBexckY2LHLj30PQYkziSJe3CNQDq79EdTlJ7PM3eWqbzE/s320/IMG_20170519_084006.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
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Unlocking the location, revealed an envelope and a locked bag. The envelope was some mass to mole conversions where the answer revealed the combination to the bag. Inside the bag was a paper torn into pieces. When put together, the pieces gave the final equation to produce the antidote. A couple of the pieces were missing, including the molarity of the second reactant.<br />
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From here, there is an optional fourth clue that solves the combination for a bag that contains a much more detailed procedure. Actually, at any point, kids could have started the experiment depending on how comfortable they were with doing so. I had a couple groups think about it, but no one wanted to take that chance.<br />
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By the time I thought of it and put it all together, the entire thing was allowed four days. I really had no idea when I started if kids would fly through the clues or if they would get stuck on the first one. If I were to do this exact one again, I would definitely give them at least five days because we ended up being really rushed at the end.<br />
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Surprisingly, I only had one major screw up and that was with the color coding. I ended up writing pink group's equation on blue paper and vice versa, which really confused them when the final products didn't match up with their initial antidote. But we got that straightened out once someone finally got up the nerve to give me one of their question cards. I also misjudged how much product would be made. I didn't really think that through since I was rushed for time. Next round, I am definitely cutting down on the amount of antidote they have to make.<br />
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All in all, this was a great project and the kids (and I) had a lot of fun. It's definitely something I will try again. <br />
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If you need a place to start, you are welcome to steal and edit and do what you will...<br />
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https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B3HuK_4D--2db1J0ZTdRa0dhQ3c?usp=sharing<br />
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*For those not familiar, an escape room is just what it sounds like. You
are locked in a room with a few of your friends and have an hour to put
the clues together and get out. Tracie Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10237663751076265379noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8753011873410854596.post-70440453348877164442017-02-24T13:55:00.001-06:002017-02-24T13:55:36.907-06:00The Great Grading DilemmaFor the last 10-ish years, I have used Standards Based Grading in my classroom. What this looks like has evolved over time, but overall, the same basic principle was at work. My classes are broken down into overarching ideas that span the entire grading period. Those ideas are each marked separately and repeatedly. Students are able to see the ideas in which they perform strongly and which ideas they need work on. The targets I have written for my classes are ones that we circle back to over and over throughout the trimester. We don't stop talking about conservation of mass because we had a test over that unit. We come back to it and apply it to new situations and explain why it is such a big deal. I have tweaked and perfected over the years, and I love how this system lays out my curriculum and my classroom. <br />
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But I'm tired. I am still the only teacher in my 7-12 building that uses this type of system. I have gotten an impressive amount of push back from a lot of people. Interestingly, that has only come about in the last few years since I have been teaching chemistry and now physics. It comes mostly from parents of "A" students who don't want to understand the differences. And those are only the parents I hear from. I know my principal (bless him) acts as a firewall for me and I do not hear most of what is said.*<br />
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He does a good job of communicating the concerns with me. The biggest criticism has been that a grade at any point in time before the end of the semester does not reflect the student's understanding of the material. In other words, if a particular target is going to be reassessed and that grade might change down the line, then why should their grade be so low right now? Why can't little Susie just have an A all trimester if I think she will end up with one at the end.** This has been tweaked so that there is less variation in the grading than I had before, but grades are typically still lower than what most parents find acceptable.<br />
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My <a href="http://adventureswiththelowerlevel.blogspot.com/2014/01/making-sense-of-assessmentmy-grading.html" target="_blank">grading philosophy</a> has not changed. I still believe that a student's grade in my class should only reflect what they know. I'm not bending on that point. I won't grade homework and I won't give participation grades. I hate how a percentage averages out so it's okay to not fully understand some topics. I have, however, given a bit on that one this year in a tweak I made to how scores factor into the final grade.<br />
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The irony*** here is that I have had so many students and parents place the blame for lower than desired scores on the system. This is not the reason. The reason is that I expect my kids to have a high level of understanding of the subject. But, of course, it is easier to put the blame on something they can't control. This argument is the main reason I am thinking about going back to a traditional system. Of course then I would just have to deal with all the complaining about the class being too difficult. <br />
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Today, my chemistry class had their first quiz of the trimester. So today or tomorrow, I am going to have to decide which grading road I am going to travel down. I know which one will make my life easier. <br />
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*This in itself is especially frustrating. Parents are always welcome to visit with me directly, but a few of the most outspoken won't and instead seem to want to apply pressure indirectly.<br />
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**Actual question from a parent...<br />
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***In other news, today in chemistry, we were discussing average atomic mass and how it was figured based on weighted averages. We do this by comparing it to weighted grades that some teachers use. Not a single one of my students knew how to figure their final grade using weighted averages. Some of them couldn't even explain a straight average. I just wanted to ask if you don't understand the traditional system, what difference does it make if I'm not using it??? Tracie Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10237663751076265379noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8753011873410854596.post-44386922186471136962017-02-08T13:27:00.000-06:002017-02-08T13:27:43.957-06:00A Change in the WindThe last year or so have brought about a lot of changes for me. But the biggest one is coming up next year.<br />
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Next year we are using the retirement of our other science teacher to completely restructure our science department. Our new motto is "all standards for all students". There are arguments for and against that philosophy, but we decided at this point it is the direction we wanted to go. In order to align more easily with NGSS standards, we are moving towards a Physics First sequence.<br />
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Freshmen coming in will take physics. Sophomores will follow with chemistry and biology will be a junior level class. There are other elective science courses that will be offered, including an advanced physics, engineering, anatomy and physiology, and a rotation of individual earth sciences. (Yes, all of this with just two teachers!)<br />
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I'm nervous. This is a big deal. The more I am put in front of people to talk about it, the more I realize how big of a deal it really is. You see, I sort of live in my isolated little bubble. When I leave my bubble, it tends to be when I go out to meet and learn with other science teachers. And the ones I hang out with tend to have the same philosophy that I do about rigor. To an awful lot of people "rigorous" when referring to a science class simply means "higher level math." While to some extent that is true, I do believe kids can learn and understand physics concepts without having had trig. (Or maybe I'm delusional and this is all going to go down in flames.)<br />
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I am also under no illusions that the success of this endeavor is all on me. Don't get me wrong, I have a lot of support in place. I know my administration has my back and will do everything they can to act as a firewall so I can do my thing, but I know that this will be watched very closely by a lot of people, some of whom who will look for any little chink in the armor to find a way to bring it down for no other reason than because it is different.<br />
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But I'm ready for it. And I am excited for it. And I truly think it's going to be a great thing for our kids.Tracie Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10237663751076265379noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8753011873410854596.post-61848450070127554532017-02-08T12:33:00.003-06:002017-02-08T12:33:33.994-06:00I Haven't Got It Right Yet...My boy is a fourth grader who hates school. He's good at it, but at this point in time, he wants to "be a youtuber" when he grows up, so he doesn't really see how long division fits into his plans.<br />
<br />
In yet another conference with his teacher, she was scolding him about how if he doesn't show his work she can't know whether or not he understands the concepts. She ended with a question,<br />
<br />
"How am I supposed to know if you understand it or not?"<br />
<br />
He looked at her, blinked, and said,<br />
<br />
"Well, I haven't gotten it right yet."<br />
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As a teacher, this hit me hard. I have students in my class right now that I KNOW aren't getting it. Sometimes I forget that part of my job is to make sure they are getting it right.<br />
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<br />Tracie Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10237663751076265379noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8753011873410854596.post-72639989183615541502015-03-06T15:11:00.000-06:002015-03-06T15:11:26.503-06:00Transforming Our Parent Teacher Conferences into Something Parents Want to AttendMany of us at the high school level know that parent teacher conferences are an exercise in futility. We have them. The doors are open. We even have cookies. But the parents are few and far between. And those few parents that do venture in are typically the ones that we really don't need to see.<br />
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A few years ago, my school made a series of decisions that changed that.*****<br />
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1. It all started with our seminar. Ours is 30 minutes every day. It is used for activity meetings, study hall, down time, college visits and getting help with class. We have transformed that time period to include an advisory portion for students.When students come in as a freshman, they are assigned to a seminar with other freshman. They will stay with that seminar teacher for the next four years. Depending on class size and how many teachers are available, this group ends up somewhere around 15 students.<br />
<br />
2. In the fall, a couple weeks after we settle into school I make my first call home. This call is an introduction of who I am and to explain that I am your child's official school contact point. If you have any questions and need to talk to someone at school, that is me. That is not to say that you cannot contact another teacher/nurse/counselor/principal directly, but if you don't really know where to start, I can help you with that. One thing we had discovered was that parents tend to be extremely intimidated by the high school building. All those teachers, all those rooms. It was just a scary, mysterious place to try and navigate if you hadn't already experienced it. Or, in the case of some parents, they HAD already experienced it and it was a terrible place to be. We are trying to remedy that version for them and make them feel welcome in our building.<br />
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3. A couple weeks later, we are into the midterm of our trimester. Our second call home is to update parents on grades and see if there are any concerns. We talk about homecoming and remind parents that there are a lot of things that their kids could be involved in. Are there concerns?<br />
<br />
4. Parent-Teacher Conferences are held a few weeks later. We call home the week or so before and personally invite each parent to come in and meet their child's seminar teacher. If they would like to talk to any of the other teachers, we can arrange that. If the scheduled time is inconvenient, we can absolutely find a time that works. I have also been known to have this conversation in the grocery store, so we are pretty flexible about how this can go down.<br />
<br />
5. Just before winter break, is another mid-term. Call home and keep parents updated on progress.<br />
<br />
6. Our elementary and middle schools have PT conferences in the middle of February. This coincides exactly with the end of our second trimester, so we do not hold conferences at this time. We schedule ours a few weeks later. It is not so much a PT conference (although, of course, we can talk about grades) as it is a pre-enrollment discussion for next year. Students are asked to request their classes for next year and bring their parent in to talk about it. We go through the kid's post secondary goals and what they think they want to do when they grow up. Then we talk about how we can get them there. We discuss Kansas Scholar, Board of Regents, ACT, AP ASVAB, SAT, you name it. Are dual credit college course for you? Would AP classes be better? Or do you think you should attend VoTech classes your junior year? This discussion has been HUGE for students and parents alike, because now, kids aren't just filling out some random classes to take next year, but really put some thought into how this gets them where they want to be.<br />
<br />
7. This is the spring trimester midterm. Another checkup on grades and answer any lingering enrollment questions.<br />
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That's it. It ends up being a situation where a parent is contacted a minimum of seven times over the course of the school year. Sometimes more, depending on whether or not the student is struggling.<br />
<br />
This one little experiment has completely transformed our communication with parents and had such a positive impact on our home-school relationships. And it gets parents into the building. Our last PT conference boasted a 75% attendance rate. No, that is not a typo. We had three quarters of our parents visiting with teachers.<br />
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*****Disclaimer: None of this was my idea. I have had several twitter chats lately where I have mentioned how we have transformed our conferences and it has been requested that I provide more information. Twitter is the least friendly platform to try to explain all the changes we made, so I am making a post to refer to. If you would like more information, you can talk to the man who designed it, but probably not on twitter. His name is Kelly McDiffett and he is the principal at Council Grove High School. He absolutely LOVES to talk about good things in education, so plan accordingly. <a href="mailto:kmcdif@cgrove417.org">kmcdif@cgrove417.org</a> .Tracie Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10237663751076265379noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8753011873410854596.post-32155909658285995422015-01-27T15:55:00.000-06:002015-01-27T15:55:03.298-06:00The Mistake Game in ReverseAs of late, my Chemistry class has been in kind of a whiteboarding rut. We are moving through Stoichiometry, so there is a lot of working of problems which results in a lot of whiteboarding of problems. This combined with the dreary winter weather makes us kind of complacent and we tend to zone out a little bit as our friends are up there going through the motions.<br />
<br />
Today we went through eight problems. I noticed that not many of the kids had completed the entire worksheet and I wasn't sure if it was out of boredom or lack of understanding. But even as we were going through the whiteboards, not many of them were even copying down what was being presented.<br />
<br />
So when we got to number five and there was a glaring mistake in the balancing of an equation, I didn't say anything. No one noticed. No one asked. So neither did I.<br />
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Three problems later, three more mistakes, but not three questions.<br />
<br />
So at the end, I had kids get out a piece of paper. I told them that on the eight whiteboards at the front of the room, there were four mistakes. Their quiz was to find and correct these mistakes.<br />
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Kids perked up. Kids panicked. Kids got to work and tried to figure out what had gone wrong. The best part was that those kids that had not finished their homework got it out and worked through the problems from the beginning.<br />
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This is probably not something I am going to hope for very often, mostly because whiteboarding is supposed to be about checking your thinking against someone else's. I just seemed to luck out in that it came to me on a day where we really needed some variety and a little change of pace.Tracie Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10237663751076265379noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8753011873410854596.post-8101395439989534542014-08-23T21:23:00.000-05:002014-08-23T21:23:06.677-05:00What the Ice Bucket Means to Me<div style="background-color: white; color: #141823; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.31999969482422px; margin-bottom: 6px;">
In case you didn't know, the Ice Bucket Challenge is all about raising awareness of ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease). When I asked some of my kids at school if they knew why they were participating, they mumbled something along the lines of "doing it for that cancer thingy."</div>
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I nearly cried. If you have ever known someone who has been afflicted, you know that this disease is one of the most horrible fates you could ever imagine. Your body shuts down. You are trapped inside knowing that you are unable to do anything about it.</div>
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Mr. Griffin was one of those teachers who could reach out and pull you in without you even realizing it. I had him for freshman PE and A&P my junior year. I vividly remember his tests; blank pages with a subject at the top. "Tell me everything you know about this" he would say. I also remember specific days in his class more than any other I have ever taken. He just had that way about him. Brandon Evans was his aide that year and they both spent the majority of their down time pranking Mrs. Potts.</div>
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Mr. Griffin started to die our freshman year. I can remember walking between buildings to go outside for PE and he would just be sort of shuffling along. At that point, a lot of us didn't really know what was wrong, just that he was having trouble walking. It became more apparent the next year when he came to school in his scooter. The next year, he couldn't use his hands and he was having trouble talking. Mr. Griffin left us over spring break my senior year. A group of us were loitering downtown when the ambulance went by and we all kind of knew when we saw which way it was headed.</div>
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I know I am just one of many who was affected by his life and death. He is always one I cite when asked why I became a teacher. To this day, I donate blood because he told me it was important. Even after all this time, he is still remembered.</div>
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So I am taking the other option in this challenge. The check is in the mail.</div>
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<a href="http://www.alsa.org/fight-als/ice-bucket-challenge.html" rel="nofollow" style="color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">http://www.alsa.org/fight-als/ice-bucket-challenge.html</a></div>
Tracie Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10237663751076265379noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8753011873410854596.post-16937300915877286272014-04-20T19:50:00.002-05:002014-04-20T19:50:15.869-05:00A New Path to ReassessmentOne of my big hurdles for the last few years has been how to go about getting kids to be able to really show that they understand a topic. There are a lot of ways to do that, but usually, what it comes down to is the kid having to show that knowledge on a quiz or a test. One reason is that this is something concrete. You can point to a question and say, you got this (or not) based on the quality of the answer. Being able to prove a kid knows something based on what they are doing in a particular lab, however, seems to be more of a gray area and open to a lot more subjectivity.<br />
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When I started SBG and introduced the idea of reassessment, it quickly escalated into a mad rush of points collecting. So much so that in my chemistry classes, the targets are now written so that they are covered over and over on future assessments. Basically, reassessment is required and a student cannot come in and just retake a quiz on his own. I love this, but most of my chemistry targets are skills based and it didn't work so well with some of my other classes. It could be that my targets need rewritten (again), but I really like them right now so I am reluctant to do much adjustment there.<br />
<br />
So I am trying something.<br />
<br />
Every student in our district has a Google account and so my Ocean Science class is doing a lot of blogging this year. Lab analysis and critical thinking assignments are all written up. Pictures are good. If we draw on a map, we upload a picture to help describe it. Kids are taking pictures during labs so they have evidence of what went on. It is still in beta testing, so they aren't as polished as I would like. We also haven't made it quite as interactive or public as I am envisioning, but I think that might come later. Either way, this gives kids a way to talk about what they have learned in labs. These are not recorded for a score, but are commented on and kids are encouraged to edit in response to suggestions.<br />
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We still take tests. This is Phase I and actually, the path of least resistance for kids to show what they know is to really study for a test and do well there. I still give 0, 1, 2 as a score based on the covered targets and these get recorded into the grade book.<br />
<br />
Phase II is sort of a reflection on those scores. Each student has also created a site on their Google account specifically for this class. This is modeled after what <a href="https://twitter.com/chrisludwig" target="_blank">Chris</a> does in his <a href="http://see.ludwig.lajuntaschools.org/?tag=portfolios" target="_blank">classroom</a>. In my case, each unit has a page, so for example after we take the test on Waves, students create a new Waves page and add each target to that page. Then they take their test and talk about what it was that went well and what it was that did not go so well. What did you get correct and why do you think you understand it? Link to your blog. Which labs tie into that target and show how you really get the ideas? Why were you able to understand it in the lab but couldn't apply that knowledge to the questions on the test?<br />
<br />
As you might imagine, some kids do really well and some do really not well. We are really getting into that whole idea of metacognition here and that is not an easy thing for a lot of them to do. I get a lot of "I could have studied more" as a way to explain why they didn't do well. We are working on that. If students do an amazing job reflecting and can tell me exactly why something was misunderstood and how those ideas have changed, the scores can go up to reflect that. If not, there is one more thing they can do.<br />
<br />
Phase III is essentially a mini capstone. Design, carry out and present an activity that demonstrates your understanding of the target. This is also written up on their blog, but they also have to present it to the class. So far, I haven't had many takers on this one, mostly because I think it is a lot of work. I am okay with that. The ones that have gone through the process have been extremely creative and done a great job of showing that they do in fact know what is going on.<br />
<br />
So far, I like this. The feedback I have gotten has been mixed. I expected that. Everything from the predictable "it's too much work" to "can we just do the activity without taking the test?" I think I am doing a bit more work than usual, but then again, so are my kids. If kids are going to succeed in this type of activity, I really owe them thoughtful and constructive feedback.<br />
<br />
My biggest problem has been to allow a reasonable amount of time in class. There is a delicate balance between kids that will use every second I give them and those that still don't want to do anything.<br />
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There are some kinks to work out, of course, but overall, I think this is something I am going to integrate at least to some degree into my other classes.<br />
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Is there something I am missing? What other options could I offer kids?Tracie Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10237663751076265379noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8753011873410854596.post-3200140914602019952014-01-21T17:44:00.003-06:002014-10-23T16:22:27.768-05:00Making Sense of Assessment...My Grading PhilosophyAs many of you know, I have struggled to find good and valid ways to assess the kids in my classes. And if you have any twitter presence at all, you know that there has been quite possibly the most epic discussion ever held on that platform about Standards Based Grading*. If nothing else good comes from this twitter discussion, it has been an opportunity for me (and several others) to really reflect on what it is that makes assessment in my classroom authentic and not just some random number that gets translated into a grade.<br />
<br />
Warning: personal conjecture ahead...<br />
The thing about the grading and assessment that occurs in your class is that it is extremely personal.** It truly ties into what your teaching philosophy really is. Think back on your teacher preparation classes for just a second. Did ANY of you have ANY kind of instruction or even guidance as to how to grade the kids in your classes?? I didn't. I'm not sure I know anyone who has. Essentially, we were set loose with the assumption that we would figure it out. Now if you were anything like me, I just graded how I had been graded in the past. I kind of started with 100% tests. Now you realize in high school pretty quickly that that is probably a bad idea.*** So I made it something like 20% homework. Then I added in some participation points. And for the love of everything holy, I gave extra credit for bringing in kleenex. Hey, everyone had a cold that year.<br />
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And so over the years, it just kind of morphed into something that really reflected what I believed as a teacher was important. My guess is that you have probably followed a similar path to end up with whatever type of assessment regime you currently work under. It has taken me quite awhile and a good bit of trial and error, but I have finally arrived at a place where I really feel like the final grade that I assign to any given student is one that I feel good about.<br />
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So in the spirit of waxing philosophical, here is my personal grading philosophy...<br />
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1. I believe, in my heart of hearts, that a grade a student receives in my chemistry class should be a reflection of what he knows about chemistry. Period. Done. That's it. You're acting up in class today? Fine. I will deal with that, but not by reducing your grade. You want to bring cookies in for my birthday? Aw...I love you even more. But not enough to give you extra credit. For me, grades are NOT a classroom management tool. I don't hold points over your head to make sure you don't cause me any problems. In turn, I don't reward you with points for sucking up.<br />
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2. I am going to be as clear and concise as I possibly can as to what it is you need to know. I use Standards Based Grading in my classroom for a lot of reasons, but first and foremost I use it as a tool to describe exactly what skills and ideas you need to master in order to navigate through a specific class.<br />
<br />
3. I am not going to give you points for your homework. Probably the biggest argument I hear about this is that by not grading homework, we are not preparing kids for the "real world".**** I give homework about once a week. This is typically practice and an extension of what we have learned in class. Kids know they are expected to complete it (yes, I keep track) and they know that the next day we will whiteboard it in class. When I first started whiteboarding, I didn't realize what a powerful <i>formative </i>assessment tool this can be. As kids are preparing their boards, I wander around and answer questions and listen to the discussions. That right there gives me mountains of information about whether or not kids are getting it. Then those kids present their work. I have a group of kids this year who fight over who gets to present. Know why? Because it helps cement in their brains what it is we are doing. I have teachers who argue that this is a waste of class time. (Seriously.) They don't have time for kids to go over every single homework assignment. I just have to say that I do not agree. For me, if it is important enough to assign, it is important enough to go over with my kids. Amazingly enough, even though I am not bribing them with points, I have found that kids still do their homework. Can you guess why? Because they see the value in it. They understand that if I am going to give them the opportunity to practice those skills and give them feedback on their progress then they will be much more successful when it comes to test time.<br />
<br />
4. I don't do averages. This is a big one. I don't have too many standards that kids are expected to master in any of my classes. How you score on each target counts individually towards your final overall grade, but one does not override the other. This means that one target is no more important than another. You have to know them all. You can't do horrible on Conservation of Mass and balance that out by totally rocking Stoichiometry.<br />
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5. There will be lots of opportunities to reassess on something you didn't understand the first time around. I more or less have my targets set up in a way that allows me to circle back to each one over and over again throughout the year. For me, if I haven't assessed that target more than three times in the trimester, it is worth a look at rewriting. I really don't believe education is a one time shot. Listening to some of my colleagues and a surprising number of parents, this goes against everything they believe education should be. There is also a big debate on the whole retake thing. That is an individual preference and can be handled in a lot of ways. In general, a student cannot walk through my door and just get a retake. I have allowed that in some cases, but there is a lot of work on the student's part that must be done before I will let that happen.<br />
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6. I care that you are understanding what I am teaching. How that translates into a letter grade is a side concern of mine. All that letter does is give you an idea of where you stand in your mastery of the standards. Notice that I did NOT say where you stand in relation to your peers. Grades are not a competition in my room. If what you know rewards you an A, awesome. If you "only" get a B, awesome. You're getting an F? Um, you really aren't getting it. Get in here and let's see where you have gone off track.<br />
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I think that pretty much sums it up! Now that I actually have it on paper and can look at each point individually, I really feel better about the decisions I have made to change my classroom assessment.<br />
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Our district has just started the conversation about how to move to a more transparent system of grading. I'm not sure how it is going to go. We spent nearly two hours debating the homework issue one day. This could get pretty interesting, so I will keep you posted on that one...<br />
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<br />
*This thing has raged on for weeks now, one THREAD has over 2,000 replies, and at this point is mostly at a point of last-worditis and not so veiled name-calling because <a href="https://twitter.com/fnoschese" target="_blank">Frank</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/bennettscience" target="_blank">Brian</a> and lots and lots of others realized you can't have a decent discussion when the other side refuses to even pretend you might know what you are talking about...good luck <a href="https://twitter.com/DataDiva" target="_blank">@DataDiva</a> :) And truly, this has morphed into something that isn't even really about grades any more.<br />
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**I am NOT saying that it should be, just that it is.<br />
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***Ironically, I am sort of back to that theory now...<br />
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****This. Right here. This is probably the worst argument I hear. Besides teaching, in what world are kids going to have three hours of homework every night to be turned in the next day??? In what job are kids going to get a reward for every. little. thing. they. do??Tracie Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10237663751076265379noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8753011873410854596.post-48157341654995686632013-12-31T16:19:00.001-06:002013-12-31T16:19:56.060-06:00Why I StartedSome of you know how this year has been a struggle for me. Just getting through all the new red tape this year is enough to crush anyone's spirit. Couple that with some health issues and I have been about as unmotivated as I can get.<br />
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A while back I got an email inviting me to apply for a research opportunity at Kansas University. Part of the application required me to write out my teaching philosophy in less than 250 words. Um, okay. To be honest, I haven't really thought much about my philosophy in recent years. It just seemed like something that was always kind of there at the periphery, but nothing really concrete.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWN2LFXA5sBkwLhNB6GF1TkXh1ItsdRQJi_NY61xbv0Hw6KKpCtBnsLHfj-a2a7e3TldaxoIY1zU70iBvXz1pN9CEnWAN3r-VCHoZMd662RnVZkLV3DeUnJkJ_7OXzd2tqO8ZkYE1njfEt/s1600/Remember-why-you-started.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWN2LFXA5sBkwLhNB6GF1TkXh1ItsdRQJi_NY61xbv0Hw6KKpCtBnsLHfj-a2a7e3TldaxoIY1zU70iBvXz1pN9CEnWAN3r-VCHoZMd662RnVZkLV3DeUnJkJ_7OXzd2tqO8ZkYE1njfEt/s320/Remember-why-you-started.jpg" /></a></div>
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So when I sat down to write this, I really wondered if my overall philosophy had changed much since I began. I can remember being incredibly naive and optimistic about what it took to inspire kids. Then, of course, reality set in and I began to really lose sight of why I was here. Mostly, I alternate between feeling like the greatest teacher ever to worrying that I am doing it all wrong.<br />
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But then again, the kids I have now are not the same kids I had a decade ago. Teaching is not the same. Society has changed. Education in general is not the same. So it stands to reason that I am not the same teacher.<br />
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Strangely enough, my philosophy hasn't shifted much from its original ideals. I still believe science is the greatest subject out there. I still believe that what I am doing is important. And I still believe in every kid. So here it is, my new and improved (and just under the 250 word limit) teaching philosophy.<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I believe a good number of my students are inherently interested
in science. Let’s face it, science is cool. On any given day I have at least
one reference to the Discovery channel or some really cool item that was heard
on the news. The trick is to get them to really look beyond the big picture and
see the details; get them to see the how and the why and the what if that comes
with true understanding.<br /> <br />I believe I have the power to either nurture or crush a
child. I can take their interest and feed it or bore them to death with the
mind-numbing details that I used to think were important. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I believe in challenging my kids. My classroom has shifted
over the years. I can now honestly say that my students are active learners. We
do labs and the data matters. We draw conclusions and present them to our
peers. We have to explain ideas in ways so others can understand them. This
sounds so easy on paper, but in reality, this is way out of the comfort zone of
so many of my students.<br /> <br />I believe in my kids as students, people and scientists.
There is something that makes every student tick. If you can find that and tie
into that passion, you've got them. I realize how jaded a teacher can become,
so after 16 years teaching, I am glad I still hold on to that belief. </blockquote>
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<o:p>Happy New Year, everyone, I truly hope it is the best yet.</o:p></div>
Tracie Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10237663751076265379noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8753011873410854596.post-79986910441762796812013-12-18T11:13:00.000-06:002013-12-31T15:39:09.100-06:00Stop the Insanity...Today I gave my chemistry class a fun page. There is an old Christmas story written by Bob Jacobs that has the names of elements scattered throughout. Some are obvious, some are not so obvious. The idea is to identify as many element names as you can.
My kids jumped in and were having a great time highlighting and laughing about the play on words.
Then it got hard. Someone found sixty three names and I told them that I know there are over one hundred and to keep looking.
And the Googling began.
Seriously?
This is not for a grade, not for extra credit. This is simply meant to be a fun activity and a break from what we were doing.
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NOTE: Because of the high demand for this particular activity, I am posting it here. The only thing I have changed is the name of the Ebneezers at the beginning. Have fun!<br />
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<p style=" margin: 12px auto 6px auto; font-family: Helvetica,Arial,Sans-serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 14px; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; -x-system-font: none; display: block;"> <a title="View Christmas Story on Scribd" href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/194903810/Christmas-Story" style="text-decoration: underline;" >Christmas Story</a></p><iframe class="scribd_iframe_embed" src="//www.scribd.com/embeds/194903810/content?start_page=1&view_mode=scroll&show_recommendations=true" data-auto-height="false" data-aspect-ratio="undefined" scrolling="no" id="doc_9497" width="100%" height="600" frameborder="0"></iframe>Tracie Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10237663751076265379noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8753011873410854596.post-55219556209303754812013-10-23T18:17:00.000-05:002013-10-23T18:17:08.594-05:00Participation RibbonsSo my Chemistry class had a long discussion about grades today.<br />
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I was trying to explain my position and I realized that kids don't seem to understand how someone so involved in education can <i><b>not</b></i> be obsessed with grades.<br />
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We got pretty philosophical about what it means to receive an A in any given class. For some, it means keeping your mouth shut and doing what you are told. For others, it means doing all the extra credit.<br />
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I was trying to explain that for me, it truly means they understand Chemistry.<br />
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And then someone pipes in..."so what you are saying is that an A in your class is not a participation ribbon."<br />
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I think that sums it up nicely, don't you?<br />
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<br />Tracie Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10237663751076265379noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8753011873410854596.post-27981965703209030162013-09-17T17:33:00.002-05:002013-09-17T17:33:37.025-05:00Insanity All AroundSo a "friend" of mine saw me at a ball game the other night. As we were leaving, she reminded me that I haven't been to the gym to work out lately and that she was going to be in an Insanity class the next morning at 5:30 and that I should be there*. I told myself that if I woke up in time without an alarm, I would go. Of course, my luck, I was wide awake, so I pull myself up and went to town. The first one was hard. The second one was worse. But the third one, I made it through with a bit of consciousness and actually heard the music in the background.<br />
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Now there is a certain track that goes along with these workouts. At first, it sounded just like any other music you might hear during a workout video, but as I listened, I noticed something.<br />
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Just as my brain was telling me how ridiculous it was to get out of bed for this, a voice came on and said "you can do it." It was subtle. If you weren't paying attention, or more likely if you were nearly unconscious, you would miss it. The words fit right in with the music.<br />
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So I listened more carefully. Sure enough, every time my brain tried to convince me I was an idiot, that voice, either as a shout or as part of the song itself, came back and encouraged me to push through.<br />
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As I lay staring at the ceiling, "cooling down", I thought about that voice. I wondered if there was some kind of deliberate plan to it. Did the creators of this horror do a bit of research and time it specifically so that there was encouragement when someone most needed it? The more I think about it, the more I have a hard time believing this was an accident. It was just too perfectly aligned with what I needed at the time.**<br />
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So it really got me thinking about my classroom. I teach a lot of things that push kids in directions they really do not want to go. They have to think. They have to participate. They have to learn.<br />
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They get frustrated. They want to quit. My job is to make sure they don't.<br />
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I never let them, but I wonder if I am giving them that encouragement when they most need it. Am I paying enough attention that I catch that frustration before it really sets in? When I yet again answer a question with a question, is that the last straw for one of them? Do they feel like I am just trying to make them fail?<br />
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I worry about things like this.<br />
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*There are so many things wrong with that sentence, I don't even know where to begin...<br />
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**If it WAS an accident, then it was a brilliant one.Tracie Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10237663751076265379noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8753011873410854596.post-37792469903462818942013-08-21T10:24:00.001-05:002013-09-15T10:43:47.329-05:00Just a Little FlipLike so many other teachers, I have heard a lot recently about how <a href="http://www.flippedclassroom.com/" target="_blank">flipping</a> your classroom is the <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/pascalemmanuelgobry/2012/12/11/what-is-the-flipped-classroom-model-and-why-is-it-amazing-with-infographic/" target="_blank">cool</a> thing to do. While I admire teachers who have the gumption to undertake that challenge, I never really gave it much thought or put it on my list of things to do.<br />
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It wasn't that I thought it was a bad idea, I just had a lot of reasons I didn't really think it was for me. (Some of these reasons, I realize are based on my own misconceptions of what flipping actually is. It happens.)<br />
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*If I were to describe my classroom, it is unapologetically based on constructivism. My kids learn by doing. This is not to say they are not guided in their discovery or are left alone in hopes that they somehow learn something, but we really focus on what it means to understand a concept and how to understand that concept based on your own knowledge and observations, not just because the textbook says it's true.<br />
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*In my mind, watching a video at home is no different than reading a textbook at home, you just get to say that you have incorporated some technology into your homework. We typically don't use textbooks unless we need to make a ramp, so this was a big hurdle for me.<br />
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*I'm really not sure what people mean when they say "it leaves class time open for all that cool stuff we wish we had time for."<br />
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*I had no idea how to make a video.<br />
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*Even if I figured out a way to make a video, I don't have time to do it. Plus, I don't really have the personality it takes to make a good one.<br />
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Then I went to a SIDLIT distance learning conference, where I sat in on a session by Aftab Merchant, who has flipped his anatomy lab at the Cleveland Chiropractic College. Since my entire existence as a teacher is based on lab experiences, it was the lab part that caught my eye, so out of curiosity, I went. It took about seven seconds, and I knew this was something I was going to try this year.<br />
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What he has done is to take every lab that he does and video the pre-lab. He walks students through the lab, shows them how to make the incisions, shows them where to find each structure and what it actually looks like. He makes sure those kids know exactly what will be expected of them when they walk through the door.<br />
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This is something I have struggled with in recent years. Kids are coming to me with an alarming lack of basic lab skills. For way too long, I had this assumption that they knew all of those things that should have been learned in the lab. What does a beaker look like? I know, but way too many do not. I know how frustrating it is for me, but it took me awhile to realize how frustrating it is for those kids.<br />
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So I tried it. Yesterday, I gave my chemistry class the assignment to watch the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZrKCIaeHtI" target="_blank">pre-lab video</a>* of our Mass and Change lab. They were to come in today with any questions they might have and be ready to head to the lab.<br />
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Now, I fully anticipated kids not doing their homework. Shocking, I know. So our librarian was expecting a good number of them come down if they had not watched the video. In my first section, only four of the twenty had watched it. So off they went to watch the video. The other four started on the lab. Some finished the lab some did not. Those who need to finish will be in here during seminar catching up. They are not happy, but my feelings aren't all that hurt over it. We had a little chat about how very little homework we get in this class and how important it is to actually get it done when it is assigned. Apparently, word got out because everyone in my second section had watched the video.<br />
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Not gonna lie. This lab went so smoothly I can't even believe it. Last year, I spent about twenty minutes (longer than the video) going through the pre-lab and answering questions. And more often than not, I forgot something in at least one section. This year, I showed them where the beakers were located.<br />
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It was amazing.<br />
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Even the kids thought it was a good idea. Some even got stuck on part of the lab and pulled the video up to watch it again.<br />
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I like it. I am going to keep it.<br />
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I hope. The first video I made took me most of a Saturday, so it's not something I can churn out at a very high rate, but I am thinking that I will get better at it. Now that I at least have an idea of how to set it up, the whole process should go a little more smoothly and with any luck I will be able to stay far enough ahead that I won't stress over it too much.<br />
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So what about you? Do any of you do anything like this? Or do you do something different?<br />
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*Don't laugh, this is a terrible video. Hopefully this will get better as I go along!Tracie Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10237663751076265379noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8753011873410854596.post-71756898839504713772013-08-13T13:52:00.000-05:002013-08-13T13:52:04.141-05:00Back to School Blues...I Mean, Buzz...I'm not gonna lie.<br />
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I'm not ready.<br />
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I'm not getting that feeling that I am supposed to be getting at this time of year. I'm trying, but if I am completely honest, I am dreading the day after tomorrow when kids come back.<br />
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Maybe it's because I don't feel like I had much of a break this summer. Between shuttling kids around, teaching a class and the five workshops I attended, I just do not feel refreshed in any way.<br />
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Maybe it's because an old storage room was cleaned out and every one of my lab tables is covered with stuff someone thought I might want.<br />
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Maybe it's because I have sat through three full days of meetings. Forget for just a minute that those meetings are brutal based solely on the fact that we have to sit and listen to someone talk for seven hours a day. The bigger issue is the content that may or may not have been heard over the snoring in the back. New ELA standards. New math standards. New science standards. New social studies standards (hey, one doesn't affect me directly!). New evaluation system. Crisis training. Blood Borne Pathogen Training. MTSS training. ESI training. I am pretty sure there was more "training" in there somewhere, but for the life of me I can't remember what it is.<br />
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I am trying, but I can't seem to get excited about the upcoming school year.<br />
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<br />Tracie Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10237663751076265379noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8753011873410854596.post-23835418592206571632013-08-07T18:31:00.001-05:002013-09-03T08:20:02.574-05:00Science and Inquiry...What is it Anyway?So <a href="http://fnoschese.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">Frank</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/fnoschese" target="_blank">tweeted</a> out a post by <a href="http://www.paul-bruno.com/" target="_blank">Paul</a>. Now, coming from Frank, I was expecting a link to some amazing new teacher with some great idea I could steal and implement into my classroom. This is, after all, why I have twitter. So I was quite surprised* to find an <a href="http://www.paul-bruno.com/2013/07/reform-math-vs-inquiry-science/" target="_blank">article</a> comparing scientific inquiry to reform math (whatever that is). My first reaction was not favorable, so I looked around to see if I could find out more about Paul. His page says he is a middle school science teacher, but I couldn't seem to find much of anything that lets me see inside his classroom. Maybe that isn't the point of his blog, and that is fine, but he doesn't seem to like science education all that much.<br />
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But that isn't really my point. I'm not really into bashing other people, but this post bothered me because it seems to reflect what a lot of science teachers (and administrators and parents and others) think inquiry really is.<br />
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Go ahead. Ask someone what an inquiry based classroom should look like. For the most part, you will get an answer along the lines of "kids are exploring whatever they want and calling it science." This misconception is why some science teachers "don't do inquiry."<br />
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I'm not sure how this perception of inquiry became so mainstream, however, if you actually read The 5 Essential Features of Inquiry described by the National Research Council (2000), you will find an explanation that it probably strays quite a bit from your definition.<br />
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<b>1. The learner engages in scientifically oriented questions.</b><br />
This does not mean they have to come up with their own questions. I can give them a question. I can even give them the procedure. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. The important part is that the activity is focused on a specific idea that I want kids to understand.<br />
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<b>2. The learner gives priority evidence in responding to questions.</b><br />
The key word here is "evidence." It is vital that we are using data to formulate the answer to our question. So we take data. Then we decide whether or not it is <a href="http://adventureswiththelowerlevel.blogspot.com/2013/02/lab-skills-8what-to-do-with-it.html" target="_blank">good</a> data. If it's not, then we <a href="http://adventureswiththelowerlevel.blogspot.com/2012/08/failures-mistakes-and-other-learning.html" target="_blank">get back in the lab</a> and figure out what we did that doesn't allow us to draw a conclusion.<br />
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<b>3. The learner formulates explanations based on evidence.</b><br />
This is the hard part. In most science classes, the data doesn't mean squat. We did a lab. It was fun, but I can answer all those conclusion questions by reading my textbook. Being able to truly <a href="http://adventureswiththelowerlevel.blogspot.com/2013/03/how-we-write-conclusionlab-skills-5.html" target="_blank">explain</a> what the data means and drawing those relationships is tough for a lot of kids. And adults.<br />
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<b>4. The learner connects explanations to scientific knowledge.</b><br />
So we have made it through the lab and have a conclusion based on our results. Now the big question is whether or not our conclusion stands up against what we already know. Does our data support the accepted theory or not? When you think about it, this is the whole point of science. Using new data to corroborate or not on a given theory and building our knowledge base allows us to question even more.<br />
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<b>5. The learner communicates and justifies explanations.</b><br />
Oh that communication piece. In my classroom, not only do students have to write conclusions that incorporate at least three different representations of their data, but they also have to present their results to the class. This is why I love the whiteboarding. Kids get up and explain to their peers what their data means and what their conclusions are. They have to really understand the ideas and be able to articulate them in a way that can be understood by others. Then they get to answer any questions that might get thrown their way and justify their conclusions.<br />
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A student-centered, inquiry-based classroom does NOT mean the students get free reign and control over their learning experience. If that were true, they wouldn't need me. Student centered means that those kids are not just writing down everything I say, filling out a worksheet and parroting it back to me on a test. That isn't learning. Plus, that is boring.<br />
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I teach in an inquiry-based classroom and let me tell you, it takes a lot of work and careful construction to get kids where I need them to go. Even <a href="http://shawncornally.com/wordpress/?page_id=464" target="_blank">Shawn</a>, whose kids go off in the most amazing of directions, gives kids a lot more support than you might think. Again, inquiry is NOT about sending kids off on their own, hoping they come up with the "right" answer. It is about helping construct their own knowledge and make sense of the world around them. Without a textbook. Yes, it can be done.<br />
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I will also tell you that teaching using inquiry does NOT "lower the...bar for success." If all you are doing is having kids "do" science with out them learning any science, maybe science (or teaching in general) is not for you. I have mentioned before how good this way has been for "<a href="http://adventureswiththelowerlevel.blogspot.com/2011/10/teaching-those-kids.html" target="_blank">those</a>" <a href="http://adventureswiththelowerlevel.blogspot.com/2011/09/what-he-truly-believes.html" target="_blank">kids</a> in my classes and I believe you have heard me talk about how some of those "upper-level" kids <a href="http://adventureswiththelowerlevel.blogspot.com/2010/08/and-thunder-rolls.html" target="_blank">really</a> <a href="http://adventureswiththelowerlevel.blogspot.com/2010/09/mutiny.html" target="_blank">struggle</a> when it comes to actually thinking about the material.<br />
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Inquiry is an entire process that encompasses a whole lot more than just the procedure. When done correctly, it is a rich learning environment that involves active, student centered learning, communication and critical thinking.<br />
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Really, you should try it.<br />
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*Frank was really on a roll today with way out of character recommendations.Tracie Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10237663751076265379noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8753011873410854596.post-83825710359885559102013-06-25T17:00:00.000-05:002013-07-26T13:28:28.703-05:00Beyond TourismFor the last couple days, I have been trekking around the <a href="http://www.nps.gov/badl/index.htm" target="_blank">Badlands National Park</a> with <a href="https://twitter.com/dugganhaas" target="_blank">Don Duggan-Haas</a> as a part of the <a href="http://virtualfieldwork.org/Welcome.html" target="_blank">ReaL Earth Inquiry Project</a>. This is the second year that I have been lucky enough to be involved with this and have loved every minute of it. Not only do you get to hang out with amazing teachers, but we are creating what Don refers to as VFEs. This deserves its own post, so I will come back to that soon.<br />
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Today, we were at the Yellow Mounds and while I am over trying to figure out where the fault line actually ran, a tour bus pulled into the parking area. Out jumped a couple dozen people who on average walked about 15 steps away from the bus and took approximately 100 pictures of the "pretty rocks."<br />
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I watched them for a few minutes as they pivoted around, smiled, chatted and loaded back on the bus to travel on to their next stop. I couldn't help but think about how different our experiences were at this exact same place.<br />
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Yes, the Yellow Mound are gorgeous and deserve to be front and center in a landscape photo. But what really gets me is that so few people are truly concerned with WHY they are so gorgeous. How did they get there? For goodness sake, why are they yellow?<br />
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I thought about that for awhile and how I honestly cannot drive by a formation in any location any more without trying to figure out what it is and how it formed. While my family is usually pretty game, at some point I have to roll the window down and snap a picture on the go because they get annoyed when we have to stop more than five times on a trip to pick up rocks. I tried to think back to a time when I just looked at the rocks (or looked past the rocks) without trying to decode the history. And I couldn't.<br />
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This is my hope for my kids. When they take my geology class (or astronomy, meteorology, whatever) I hope they begin to appreciate how beautiful a world we live in and that there is so much we don't know about it.<br />
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I have had a couple instances where kids have apparently against their will really got into the actual learning. And I cannot tell you how that makes my heart sing.<br />
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Jesse came into my astronomy class one day and threw his books down and said, "Mrs. Schroeder, I hate this class." I was extremely confused by this because he seemed like he was really enjoying it. He said he was driving home with his family last night and started pointing out stars and constellations. "You have me talking to my mother and I don't like it."<br />
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This spring I overhead the baseball coach talking about kids in the outfield looking like they were staring at the sky during practice. I smiled the rest of the day when I realized they were in my meteorology class and were trying to figure out what types of clouds were out that day.<br />
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So it is possible. There is the chance that what I am doing is reaching through and sticking with some. Not as many as I would like, but I suppose I can start small.Tracie Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10237663751076265379noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8753011873410854596.post-42563629744814126632013-06-05T20:53:00.002-05:002013-06-05T21:00:45.828-05:00Graduation CardsSo the other day, my nephew graduated from <a href="http://www.fhtc.edu/" target="_blank">Flint Hills Technical College</a>. I was only planning on paying attention as he walked across because I didn't think I knew anyone else who was receiving that honor. But as we were waiting for the ceremony to begin, I skimmed through the program. At the bottom of the third page was a name I recognized, but never would have expected to see there.<br />
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And my heart just swelled.<br />
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Cory was a student of mine several years ago. He was a great kid, but came to us with a whole host of disadvantages. He was one of those that I wish I could have taken home and just given another chance.<br />
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I always feel so proud of my kids when they have accomplished something amazing like that. I never know how some of them are going to feel about it, so I try not to make too big of a deal about it, but when I got home, I sat down and wrote Cory a note. Just a short congratulations to let him know his accomplishment had not gone unnoticed. <br />
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The next day, I had the opportunity to watch my seniors walk across the stage. Mary and Garrett are two kids that I have loved watching grow over the last few years and I am going to miss them terribly.<br />
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Mary is one of those students we wish we could duplicate. She is brilliant, organized, driven and she loves learning. As her track coach I threatened to put her in the 3200 m so she would get bored running in circles and discover the cure for cancer. There has never been any doubt that she wouldn't make it through high school and there is no doubt that she will make it through college and graduate school.<br />
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Garrett holds a special place in my heart as well. As a freshman, he was awkward and more than a little bit annoying. As a sophomore, he was still awkward, but slightly less annoying. He never made it out of the slightly annoying phase, but really grew into his own person. He is unique in a lot of ways and I really believe that one of these days, he will discover his calling and find his niche.<br />
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I have tried to write notes to each of them, tried to express how much I learned and benefited from having them move through my life. I still haven't found the right words for either of their cards.<br />
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Sometimes they just don't come out right.Tracie Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10237663751076265379noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8753011873410854596.post-46282826904202587282013-04-23T19:44:00.001-05:002013-04-23T19:44:14.661-05:00Minecrafting My ClassSo there has been kind of a barrage of events in the last week or so that have really got me thinking about how my classroom (and school in general) is set up. I know I am doing it wrong, I am just having trouble figuring out how to get it right.<br />
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First, <a href="http://fnoschese.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">Frank</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/fnoschese" target="_blank">tweeted</a> a link to a place that takes your online class for you and somewhere around 17 seconds later, <a href="https://twitter.com/ThinkThankThunk" target="_blank">Shawn</a> posted his <a href="http://shawncornally.com/wordpress/?p=3669" target="_blank">thoughts</a> on it. "<span style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">We’ve bred an entire crop of people who think school is something to </span><em style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">finish</em><span style="background-color: white; color: #111111; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">. That learning is somehow terminable."</span><br />
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Later that day, our curriculum director sent us a link to an <a href="http://edudemic.com/2013/03/minecraft-in-education-pros-and-cons/?utm_source=Trading+Cards+and+the+Common+Core%3A+April+3%2C+2013&utm_campaign=Trading+Cards+and+the+Common+Core&utm_medium=email" target="_blank">edudemic</a> article discussing whether <a href="https://minecraft.net/" target="_blank">Minecraft</a> is the new "ultimate tool in education". Now, my eleven-year-old loves this game, but I have never played it, so maybe I am missing out on a golden educational opportunity. But I doubt it. I am always a little leery when someone starts using video games as a major avenue for their classroom. I can see where there might be a place for <a href="https://quantumprogress.wordpress.com/2011/02/17/why-you-should-wait-to-teach-projectile-motion-part-2-introducing-projectile-motion-using-angry-birds/" target="_blank">something</a> <a href="http://blog.peterkupfer.net/2011/03/05/angry-birds-physics/" target="_blank">like</a> <a href="http://fnoschese.wordpress.com/2011/06/16/angry-birds-in-the-physics-classroom/" target="_blank">Angry</a> <a href="http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/tag/angry-birds/" target="_blank">Birds</a> or <a href="https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/19EwoZufOY2bi1M26ea6R3huZOc3SWOh9zfSfJofBO8Q/edit#slide=id.i0" target="_blank">Endless</a> <a href="http://tbarrett.edublogs.org/2009/09/19/using-endless-ocean-wii-in-the-classroom-weeks-1-and-2-dive-and-discover/" target="_blank">Ocean</a> on a limited basis, but to set up your entire class around it? Just not my thing. What I do know about the game is that you pretty much start from scratch and build your own world. Now, that is a good idea.<br />
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And then there was Monica, her hexagonal bubbles and an accidental <a href="http://adventureswiththelowerlevel.blogspot.com/2012/09/chemistry-capstonesoknow-you-can-freak.html" target="_blank">capstone</a>. It all started one morning with a failed attempt at paper mache. One of the girls who visits me every morning was looking at her friend's project. A balloon had been coated in tacky glue the day before and it was not sticking like all had hoped. So Monica was given permission to peel the glue off the balloon. This was kind of cool in itself because it all came off in a big sheet. So she wadded it up and played with it for awhile. Then came the questions. How does glue work? How can it be a liquid in the bottle but a solid outside? Can we make it a liquid again?<br />
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To be honest, I have no idea how glue works. The thought had never even occurred to me, so I told her she could heat it up if she would like to see if it would melt again. She did, and eventually discovered that this was not a physical change.* But then someone suggested that adding water would restore the liquid state. So she tried that. Nope, but the water boils up around the ball of glue in thousands of tiny hexagon bubbles. Now that is cool.<br />
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This started an entire chain of questions that just keeps getting longer. On the third day, I finally suggested that this could be a capstone if she were to write it up.<br />
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Then she got nervous.<br />
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Because she didn't have an answer that she thought was "correct." How in the world was she supposed to get points** for something when she didn't really know what it was. So we had a really good discussion that sometimes it isn't about what you know for sure, but what you <i>don't </i>know for sure. Because, really, she now has a whole list of things that she knows this type of glue is NOT. Sometimes, dear children, that is how science works.<br />
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This really got me to thinking about how I could make my classes a lot more like those before school projects. I know <a href="http://101studiostreet.com/wordpress/?p=1038" target="_blank">Shawn</a> does an amazing job with this, and ultimately, I would like to move in that direction. I want to find out what I can do to get kids interested again; to make them curious about the things around them, and to not just turn to Google for a quick answer. I realize I am fighting an uphill battle, but I want them to realize that learning is beautiful and it really, truly is never ending.<br />
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*I cannot express my joy at her using those actual words.<br />
**Grrrrrrr.....Tracie Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10237663751076265379noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8753011873410854596.post-91461182984378708152013-03-23T13:59:00.001-05:002013-03-23T13:59:07.014-05:00How We Write a Conclusion...Lab Skills 5<span style="font-family: inherit;">So what does that data mean???</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">That's always the big question isn't it? We take the measurements, make the mess, graph the data and then....</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">What?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Well, traditionally, we answer an overly structured set of "right there" questions that really have nothing to do with the data, but perfectly mirror the textbook definitions that we want our kids to parrot back to us on standardized tests. Because, surely, if they can repeat the definition and maybe even remember the formula, then they understand the concept, right? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Right??</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">To be honest, for the longest time, I thought that was okay. I didn't realize that even though my kids could spit out the correct words, they probably weren't really getting to the heart of the concept. I had learned about density from a textbook and I understood it just fine, thank you, so surely everyone else could as well. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">When I asked kids to write a conclusion, I was really just looking to see that they could write a coherent paragraph that somehow worked in the definition of whatever idea we were trying to cover. I rarely, if ever, asked them to explain how their data described that definition. One reason for that was because I knew they hadn't taken <a href="http://adventureswiththelowerlevel.blogspot.com/2013/02/lab-skills-8what-to-do-with-it.html" target="_blank">very good data</a>, but another reason was simply that I myself didn't really know how to analyze data. </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">This is actually something that I have always struggled with. For one, I am not very good at writing in general, but mostly because I didn't know how to explain what my data meant. This goes back to the fact that I didn't NEED the data (thank you, conclusion questions). In fact, for the longest time, I didn't even realize it had a purpose. </span>Looking back, I am pretty hard pressed to pinpoint a time when I truly had to write a decent analysis. <span style="font-family: inherit;">So I really struggled with how to explain to my kids about the importance of summarizing their data.* One of the first assessed targets I wrote was <b>Lab Skills 5:</b></span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; line-height: 18px;"><b> I can analyze laboratory data in order to clarify the questions, hypotheses or methods of an experiment.</b> I knew I wanted my kids to be able to do this, but it feels like it has taken me forever to actually get a handle on how to, you know, assess it.</span><br />
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Several years ago, I realized I was doing it wrong and started trying to change how I taught my kids to write that paragraph at the end of the lab. And for years I struggled to get them where I wanted them to go. This year, I had sort of an epiphany when I had a chance to sit down and really look at what I was teaching my kids.<br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">I know I keep referring back to this, but the <a href="http://modeling.asu.edu/" target="_blank">Modeling</a> has been so good for me in so many ways. I also know I am a little slow on the uptake here, but </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">this year, I realized that it breaks down a conclusion into four parts**. Now, many of you modelers will recognize these four different representations of data. We use words, numbers, mathematics and pictures to show what our data means. So this year, I have hit my kids pretty hard with writing good conclusions.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">First, we summarize our data in words. Basically, we want to answer the lab's original question. What IS the purpose of our data? What are we trying to find? </span>What is the relationship between the variables? <span style="font-family: inherit;">I have a poster on my wall that shows how kids should begin their conclusion. And until we get the hang of it, all conclusions begin with the words "</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">According to our data..."***</span><br />
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I have a lot of kids that want to try to simply summarize their procedure. They seem to believe that putting lots of words on paper will make it appear like they know what they are talking about. This might work if I didn't actually read the words, so sometimes I have to do a bit of steering towards why we did what we did. Our first lab in chemistry is a six part Conservation of Mass series, so we do a lot of walking through the entire lab write-up during the first few parts. I gradually take that support away and by the last couple parts, they are on their own.<br />
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A mathematical description of the data typically comes in the form of the slope equation. Algebra is a prerequisite for chemistry and our kids spend an awful lot of time with y = mx + b. This is a perfect example of being able to spit out the "correct" answer but having no clue what to do with it. We talk about "x" and "y" being generic <b><i>variables </i></b>that can represent anything. We also talk about how we have independent and dependent <b><i>variables </i></b>in our experiment and we can substitute these <b><i>variables </i></b>in for "x" and "y". It never ceases to amaze me how long it takes for kids to realize that the term <b><i>variable </i></b>means the same in math as it does in science. In chemistry, we don't always have a mathematical relationship, as these are usually derived from graphs, but kids have to be able to recognize when it does not apply and that is apparently a lot harder than it might seem on the surface.<br />
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Assigning a number value, however, is done for almost every lab. Whether that number comes in the form of a ratio determining an empirical formula, a slope value giving us a density or an amount of recovered product, we can usually describe our data with a specific value in some form or another. In some cases, there can be more than one number to report, often in the form of the original data and then in percent error.<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">The last part of our conclusion is a particle diagram. Until I did the Modeling, it had never really occurred to me to have kids draw picture representations of what happened in the lab. Modeling is big on particle diagrams, whether it be the chemistry or the physics, and for some kids, this is no problem. For a lot more than I would have predicted, this is a huge problem. Because this is hard. You are looking at a whole new level of understanding when you require someone to draw a particle diagram of a chemical reaction. I have an amazing number of kids who can balance a chemical equation without being able to explain it in terms of the particles involved. This is really another example of being able to get the right answer without understanding the underlying concept.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">About half way through the first trimester, I typed up some basic posters to stick on my wall. For some kids, I STILL have to point to each one in turn and remind them what needs to be included.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">These were my rough drafts that I did on a whim. I plan on editing them a little bit when I get a chance, but that isn't too high on my priority list for this year. </span><br />
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I have done a decent job of sticking with assessing these four parts this year. I like, and I think the kids appreciate, the structure involved with it. If nothing else, it gives us a starting place. I am somewhat surprised I haven't changed it up at all. It is by no means perfect, but so far it has really done what I want it to. ****<br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">*It has suddenly occurred to me that I did this backwards. No wonder my kids were struggling with conclusions...we weren't focused on the data...</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">**In my defense, Modeling workshops are extremely intense! You cover an entire years worth of material in 2-3 weeks. I am <i>still </i>trying to digest it all! I KNEW this in the back of my mind, it just didn't click until this fall.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">***Or in Mary's case, "The lab data suggests..." Whatever, she got what I was asking.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">****See, terrible conclusion...</span>Tracie Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10237663751076265379noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8753011873410854596.post-37602572002765208832013-02-21T20:50:00.000-06:002013-02-21T20:50:03.849-06:00Lab Skills 8...What to Do with It...<span style="font-family: inherit;">I have never understood how someone could teach science without including labs as a part of that teaching. I mean, really, isn't that the whole point???</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Now, I will be the first to admit that I have not always done my kids justice when it comes to the labs. Like so many others, I "did labs" without clear goals in mind. With any luck, kids could get some decent results and probably be able to decode the conclusion questions at the end. The lab didn't really mean much other than they would maybe get a better visual of the book description and I wouldn't have to talk all day.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">In the last couple years, my focus on labs has shifted. A large part of that shift is a direct result of the <a href="http://modeling.asu.edu/" target="_blank">Modeling</a>. Here, labs are vital. This is where we get our information. We don't read out of a textbook that density is mass per unit of volume, we actually measure that relationship and define it later on. So if Group 4 doesn't get a graph that is at least somewhat linear, we can't see that relationship, and therefore, can't define it. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Taking good data has become <a href="http://adventureswiththelowerlevel.blogspot.com/2010/07/new-life-for-old-labs.html" target="_blank">important</a>. </span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 18px;">The problem is, my kids have virtually no lab skills. They just don't do labs in middle school.* What few labs they did do were more of a "hands on" let's take a break from reading kind of thing. You know, what I used to do...</span><br />
<span style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span><span style="line-height: 18px;">The lab skills didn't matter. </span><br />
<span style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span><span style="line-height: 18px;">So what if I should have gotten 7.8 grams of salt and I ended up with 23.4 g???** This was okay because the teacher is going to summarize what we should have gotten and if I pay close enough attention, I will get the answer right on the test.</span><br />
<span style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span><span style="line-height: 18px;">This has always bothered me. A lot. I just wasn't sure what to do about it. So this has turned into my year to really focus on what I need to teach my kids about precision, accuracy and basic lab skills. This has not always gone <a href="http://adventureswiththelowerlevel.blogspot.com/2012/08/failures-mistakes-and-other-learning.html" target="_blank">smoothly</a>, but taking a few minutes during a lab to teach some of those things has made all the difference.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">So enter Lab Skills 8. Originally, I wrote this skill to assess whether or not kids were rounding correctly. We would discuss significant figures and what accuracy and precision were appropriate to record. </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">I ended the summer with it</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><a href="http://adventureswiththelowerlevel.blogspot.com/2012/08/chemistry-standards-2012.html" style="font-family: inherit;" target="_blank">written</a><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">as: </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><b><i>8. I can recognize accuracy and precision of data depends on instruments used. (ΔHS.1.3.3d)</i></b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px;">I never liked that wording, mostly because I had to explain it to every single person who read it. Before school even started, <a href="http://www.blogger.com/profile/06311964051653908828" target="_blank">Bryna</a> suggested this: </span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px; text-align: justify;"><i><b>I can use significant figures to appropriately communicate the precision of data and calculations.</b></i></span></span><span style="line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px; text-align: justify;"><br /></span></span><span style="line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I liked this wording so much better, so I changed it to begin the year.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Now, </span><span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 18px;">I like significant figures just as much as the next science teacher, but with all the upheaval I had going on in my room, I didn't focus on them very much. And really, do those rules REALLY make any sense?? Not, at least, to a teenager. They tend to focus so much on the rules that they miss understanding why those rules exist. So basically, I told my kids to round to least precise decimal place and be done with it. Even with that we were still struggling, but for the most part, my kids are rounding to a reasonable place and I am okay with that.</span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Then I actually started assessing with it. The more I got into it, the more I realized I wanted this target to assess more than what it was. The original idea was to assess only on the recording of the data, but as I mentioned, I wanted kids to be held accountable for the accuracy of their data. </span></span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 18px;">I debated quite awhile about how I wanted to handle this change. I thought about leaving this skill alone and adding in a separate skill specifically for data collection. I didn't like this for a number of reasons***, but I really thought those skills should go hand in hand.</span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 18px;">We started a new trimester last Monday, so I took the opportunity to yet again rewrite that skill. I think I like this one, but I guess we will see how it plays out.</span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">So here it is...the new and improved....</span></span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 18px;"><b><i><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif; font-size: 12pt;">Lab Skills 8. </span><span style="background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; font-family: Cambria, serif; font-size: 12pt;">I can report data and calculations in
a precise and accurate manner.</span><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></i></b></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">*I KNOW!!! I have issues with this and have made them known...I am working on that.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">**Actual results.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 18px;">***N</span></span><span style="line-height: 18px; text-align: start;">ot the least of which is that then I would have 11 lab skills instead of 10 and my OCD would not allow that to happen.</span></div>
Tracie Schroederhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10237663751076265379noreply@blogger.com2