Just a Little Flip

Like so many other teachers, I have heard a lot recently about how flipping your classroom is the cool 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.

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.)

*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.

*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.

*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."

*I had no idea how to make a video.

*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.

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.

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.

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.

So I tried it. Yesterday, I gave my chemistry class the assignment to watch the pre-lab video* 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.

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.

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.

It was amazing.

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.

I like it. I am going to keep it.

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.

So what about you? Do any of you do anything like this? Or do you do something different?



*Don't laugh, this is a terrible video. Hopefully this will get better as I go along!

Sugar High

Long ago, one of my chemistry sections surged ahead of my other chemistry section. I fought this briefly and then realized it was a futile effort, and instead of giving the fast class free time or forcing the slower class to speed up, I let them continue on at their own pace.

Typically, I try to keep all my sections together, but I just didn't see how it was going to work this time. Blame it on the sunspots if you want, but it ended up that both of my classes ended up working with food during class today.

My first hour made S'mores.

I have used this activity for years to help kids visualize limiting reactants in chemistry, and it never fails to delight. At first, it just seems like a time filler "hands on" type activity, but what I have noticed is that kids really do use this to visualize the reactants in a chemical equation.*

Smores Stoichiometry


Pretty simple, really. You want to make s'mores. You have a limited number of supplies. How many s'mores can you make?

What gets interesting here is our discussion of what constitutes the perfect s'more. It turns out that chocolate is the transition element of s'more ingredients and everyone has a different interpretation of how much you should use. Graham crackers are diatomic when found in nature and no one has ever considered adding more than one marshmallow. But once you have the formula for your s'mores it leads into a wonderful discussion of why you can't change that formula.

We also find the masses of the ingredients and that allows us to convert into "moles." Moles are extremely difficult for my kids to visualize. They have no concept of what one mole of substance really is, but they can see that a marshmallow has a mass of about 6 grams. This is real. This is concrete. So if we have 100 grams of marshmallows, how many do we have? I really need to work this in earlier because it isn't until now that it clicks for some kids.

And you will never see kids work faster than on days when they get to ingest sugar after their lab.

This activity has done more for my kids' understanding of limiting reactant than any other I have done. It's because they can SEE the limiting reactant. They know that they are running out of chocolate and someone is going to be left with the "dud" s'more. In fact, the next day, when we introduce limiting reactants with chemicals, I have kids asking "so is that the chocolate or the marshmallows?" Something visual in their mind that they can connect back to. Gotta love that.

So, now I'm thirsty.

Luckily, my next hour is hitting on molarity today. I do a lab with Kool Aid, that again, really helps visualize (or in this case taste) what it means to change the concentration of a solution. It's strange because a lot of my kids have never apparently thought much about concentration until now. I mean, they have all seem to have had Kool Aid that was improperly made, but it cracks me up to listen in on how they have reasoned it out.

KoolAid


This is actually the first day we discuss molarity at all, and basically, I give them the definition and let them figure out the rest. Each group has to figure out how many grams of Kool Aid makes each of three solutions of the correct molarity, then they taste each solution and relate it back to its concentration. It gives them a reference point for when I say we need 3 M NaOH instead of the 0.10 M NaOH and I think that makes a huge difference in their understanding. One of my kids decided this year that he wanted to make 3 M Kool Aid, just to see how much different it was.

So we did. We couldn't get it all to dissolve.

I almost didn't do these activities this year, simply because I wasn't sure of their actual academic value. My principal (of course) walked in towards the end of the Kool Aid lab. He often has a questioning look on his face when he enters my room, but today, it was a little more pronounced. 

Until one of my kids gave him a five minute lecture on molarity that would make any chemistry teacher proud.

*I ought to mention that I have had both of these activities for years and am fairly certain that I stole them from someone out there. If you are the original author, let me know so I can give you credit!

My First Day of School and That Pesky Exploding Can

Okay, so my first day of school was over a week ago. If this is how my year is going to go, I should just start hibernating now!

There has been a lot of discussion about this on every listserve you can find about what to do on the first day of school. Everyone is pretty much in agreement that reading through a syllabus is a great way to immediately cause disinterest in your class. The Marshmallow Challenge seems to be a popular choice with the physics crowd, and to be honest, I really want to try that in my classes some day. I teach Chemistry, so I kind of want to keep in with a chemistry theme and, of course, the question on every teenager's lips seems to be "when are we going to blow something up". The Modeling has an Exploding Can Demo set as the first activity to do with the kids and there has been some discussion about that activity as well. Some teachers cannot do this because they do not have access to natural gas. Some like to go over their class rules on the first day (why, why, why??). And some don't like the activity because students have a hard time explaining what is happening.

I love this demo and find that the first day of school is the perfect time to do it. My principal even came in to do a short evaluation on the first day this year (seriously???) and was pretty surprised that we were already in the lab causing a ruckus.

It's a simple demo that catches kids off guard, because about the time everyone stops paying attention and chatting about their summer, the thing explodes. I had one kid this year who actually dove under the lab table to take cover. He may never live that one down.

To specifically address those teacher who don't want to use the demo because kids can't explain it, you are absolutely correct. That is the whole idea. It's OKAY not to be able to explain something. If those kids could perfectly explain every action of every particle inside that can right now, then for goodness sake, send them to the counselor to get into a more advanced class. The whole point of a chemistry class, after all, is to learn how matter interacts with other matter.

This demonstration actually serves several purposes for me. First, most kids have reformatted over the summer and need to get some of those brain gears moving. Second, we come back to this demo several times throughout the year. After talking about reactions, for example, we go back to page 1 in our lab book and re-describe what we think those particles were doing inside the can. And finally, after the demo, the groups draw their particle representations of what they think happened and the next day we whiteboard those ideas. This is where I set up my norms for our whiteboarding sessions.

I try to pick kids that I have worked with in the past or who know a little bit about me and have them be the presenter for their group.

And then I grab my bag of chips. A snack size bag with just a few chips is perfect for this. While the group is presenting, I munch on chips. Doritos work well because they are really loud and kind of messy. I create a pretty decent distraction by crumpling up the bag and stuffing it into these mysterious little compartments in my desks. A couple swigs from my pop bottle (shake it up to get a nice loud escape of gas) and it goes flying across the room into the trash can. Usually by now, kids have noticed. I kind of look around the room, "oh, was that inappropriate?" My apologies. I then have the group make a note on the board.

The next group is a little nervous now, so I leave them alone.

Third time's a charm, so I get out my phone. I have it set to make the beeping sounds when you type so kids know what I'm doing. Of course I "try" to hide it like my students do, but pretty soon, they start to notice. "Oh, was that inappropriate as well?" Please make a note.

Now the last one is kind of tricky. I have to have someone presenting that knows me pretty well or I let them know ahead of time what I'm going to do. I don't want anyone in tears on the first day. After they present, I pretty much argue that my answer is the correct one and their group is just plain wrong. I usually have a hard time keeping a straight face for this one.

So now we have three things on the board that we as a group have more or less decided are inappropriate for the setting. They then get to suggest any other behaviors that might best be left at the door. We talk about how important the whiteboard sessions are when it comes to getting information. We talk about the difference between hearing and listening. We talk about respect. We talk about general polite behavior.

These two days are a pretty good introduction to the class as well as the general setup of the modeling classroom. The kids get to experience what the rest of the year is like and possibly more importantly, do NOT get the answers on the first day. This can be uncomfortable for a lot of kids and some do not handle it well.* I have actually had kids ask me for a textbook so they can look up the right answer. Good luck with that.

Learning in this room isn't about getting the right answer RIGHT NOW. It is about having to discover the right answer in another place and time and connecting it back to what you did on the first day. If I can get you to do that, then I have done my job and can sleep well at night.

Have a great year!


*From some of the discussion, some of the teachers do not handle it well. Get over it. Nobody knows it all. And besides, if all you do is tell kids the correct answer, you are taking all the fun out of science class!

The Yellow Lab

As you can imagine, and may possibly be experiencing yourself, our run of Snow Days played havoc with my teaching schedule. The last one we had was a week before our trimester ended, and I sat down and re-planned. I resigned myself to the fact that I just wasn't going to get through the next unit and had it figured out how to end on the right day. Looking back now, I think that may have been more planning than I have done all year.

The day we came back, our principal sent out an email asking us to vote whether or not to extend the trimester to the next week. Um, no. No, I don't. I was, however, in the minority.

I sat down again. We were finishing up with molarity, so I went in search of a project that I could use as a final.

As luck (?) would have it, my computer died. It was a quick death, with it dying in its sleep, simply not turning on one morning. This could have been a set back. However, it sent me scrambling into my backed up files. I have been teaching since 1997 and apparently have never deleted a file. I found an "Ideas" folder from early last decade that I had forgotten all about. In it I found a bunch of things I had copied from The Chemistry Coach that was run by Bob Jacobs at Wilton High School. He has since passed away and the site is no longer maintained, although I am definitely going to check to see if there is an archive somewhere. I corresponded with Bob several times (mostly to see if I could use his stuff), so he was sort of the beginning of my PLN.

One of his creations was The Yellow Lab. Its story is based on the Clue board game and the students have to go about finding Miss Scarlett's murderer. The killer either used potassium iodide or lead (II) nitrate to do her in and the molarity of that solution.

After listening to some of the discussions my kids had, I felt a lot better about what they learned this year. For all the complaining that they didn't understand what we were doing, they sure stepped it up when they were required to use that information.

My latest obsession has been project based learning. I've never done much in the way projects, but after this week, I am going to make it more of a priority. If I can get organized, that is.

I also offered the extra credit mini-project at the end. I had three students write hilarious stories and one group create a video. I need to do more stuff like this :)

Mass Numbers for Dummies*

I have come to believe in the manipulative. It seems that anytime you can get kids to touch something they are learning about, it sticks so much better than if they just listen or read about it.

Trying to get my kids to understand the structure of an atom had always been a struggle. How to you picture something you can't see? 

A few years ago, we had an Easter egg hunt for our track practice, so I had a hundred plastic eggs sitting in my cabinet. One day, while trying to explain the atom, I picked up an egg and asked the kids what we would find if we could open it up. This set off an amazing chain of events that led to the creation of this activity.

Each colored egg represents a different element.

There are three eggs of each color and each egg represents a different isotope of the element. Each element has three isotopes. I wrote the isotope notation on the outside of the egg. 

Inside each egg is a "nucleus" and electrons. I bought a bag of beads at a craft store and it just so happened that each bead had a mass of one gram. Seriously. I couldn't have done that if I tried. This lets me use the eggs as models again when we talk about atomic mass. The electrons are tiny little beads (relatively no mass) that constantly have to be replaced. I'm working on that.

I tied the big beads together to form the nucleus of each atom. The tying is important, otherwise your kids end up doing nuclear chemistry and that isn't our goal.

For example, the purple eggs represent Hydrogen. The red beads are the protons, while the green beads represent the neutrons. Each element has three versions with different numbers of neutrons, Hydrogen-1, Hydrogen-2 and Hydrogen-3. Everyone starts with Hydrogen to get the feel for the activity. I labeled the protons with a "+" sign so they can distinguish between the protons and neutrons. I did not do this in the other elements because I want them to realize the isotopes all have the same number of protons. 

The kids then go through and answer questions about the atoms.
Structure of the Atom

This leads us into mass numbers and atomic masses. We keep these out for most of the unit and the kids are free to use them whenever they need a visual. While I haven't got any hard data to back it up, I can definitely tell a difference in overall comprehension.

What do you do to help kids understand those abstract ideas?


*Please note that when I say "Dummies" I don't mean my kids. I am actually talking about me.