What Will They Take Home?

I covered for our art teacher during my plan today. I always like going into other classrooms to see how the kids act in a different environment. I found out that kids in the art room behave about the same as kids in my room.

We have three foreign exchange students this year and two of them are in the art class I covered. Both were working on clay masks in a country they have lived in for eight months. My mind wandered off and for some reason I got to thinking about how they would get those clay creations home.

Would they pack them in a suitcase? On a carry on? Maybe they would mail stuff. How much did they bring over in the first place? How do you plan to spend a year away at school halfway across the world?

I don't have any of the girls in my own classes, but they have all been involved in everything they possibly could throughout the year, so I have come to know them a little bit through the track team. I know they are homesick (who wouldn't be?). I know they are all pretty smart and are taking some challenging classes. I know at home they do not have school organized sports and the whole idea of sports competition kind of freaks them out. I know they work harder than a lot of kids that live here.

I haven't had much of a chance to talk to them about the differences in school cultures, so I don't really know how we compare, but from what I gather, aside from the language barrier, they haven't been terribly challenged academically.

So I'm wondering what it is they will take home. When you go home and talk about your experience with your friends, what do you say?

"Those Americans, no wonder they do terrible on international tests!" *


"Those Americans are so lucky to have what they have and they take it for granted!"

"Those Americans, they have it made, short school days AND the school pays for your sports!"

"Those Americans are so lucky, their teacher talks to them like a person!" **

"Those Americans have lots of bad weather!" ***

"Those Americans made me feel like I have lived there all my life!"

I don't really know what they will take home. I hope it is good. I hope their experience has been one that will stay will them for the rest of their lives.

And I hope they look back at their time here as an amazing experience that was filled with everything they expected and more.

Now that I think about it, I truly want that for the kids that live here as well.


*Like I care...
**This is actually paraphrased from one of those kids talking about me.
***I live in Kansas. We have had three tornado warnings this spring, not to mention hail about once a week.
****Got a little heavy handed with the footnotes today, didn't I???

The Catapult Project

We started building catapults today. Unlike the Roller Coasters, I actually came into this one with a plan.

This was based on a Science Olympiad problem that required teams to launch an object of unknown mass to an unknown target. That is a LOT of unknowns, so I have given my kids a little more direction.

I want them to build big catapults, but I want them to understand how a catapult works and what kind of plans they are going to need.

So we started off with mini catapults.

That shoot M&Ms.*

You have not lived until your kids have permission to launch candy across your classroom.

Cody is having WAY too much fun with this. (Also, please ignore the incredibly messy lab room, we are still recovering from the roller coasters.)

Today was the idea day. They got two paint stirrers, 2-4 mini clothespins, one stick of hot glue (I have discovered that this is PLENTY) and a snack pack of M&Ms. Anything else they wanted to use had to be approved by me.

After about three minutes of stunned silence, they took off with this and had a wonderful time trying to figure out how to build their catapult.

I'll give them couple days to perfect their catapult before we have a test day where they have to launch their M&Ms. I'm thinking prizes will be awarded for distance and accuracy.



*Next year, we will shoot marshmallows. M&Ms get eaten pretty quickly and shatter when they hit my floor. I had a lot of explaining to do when the custodian came in this afternoon.

Roller Coaster Success

I have always been annoyed that my Applied Physics class has never actually been, you know, applied physics. We created the class to cover standards on the state assessment for kids who would never be able to pass regular physics. While a typical day in that class is spent doing labs, they have always been pretty canned.

Last week I got bored with it. I was sorting through an old pile of papers and came across a roller coaster project that someone had presented years ago in a teaching methods class. We have been talking about speed and momentum and acceleration and energy. This just seemed perfect. So off to the hardware store I went.

I gave my kids 15 feet of conduit insulation, some masking tape, a marble and some pretty vague instructions about how to build a roller coaster. The only requirements at this point were that the roller coaster had to have two hills and a loop.

They ran with it.

They talked about energy.

They talked about momentum.

And acceleration.

And velocity.

And whether or not their roller coaster was one they would actually want to ride.


This coaster was changed because of that. They ended up putting another length on the end and tried to get the marble to come all the way back to the start. It was close, but couldn't quite make the return loop.

They had incredible discussions about everything we had learned in class. I was truly amazed. There is no way these discussions would never have come out of working problems on a worksheet.

Even when I upped the assignment to figure speed and acceleration, they jumped right in. They had to pick six points on their track and determine the speed and acceleration at each point. Kids who refused to do these problems as practice showed all their work WITH LABELS in order to prove their roller coaster was the fastest.

For a project that took about eleven minutes for me to plan, it turned out really well, although there are several things I am editing for next year.*

-First off, they don't get to use my metersticks as supports. Just a little glitch if you require them to, you know, measure anything. I soooo didn't see that one coming.

-I would also like them to compare the speed and acceleration to real life roller coasters.

-Maybe make a commercial advertising their roller coaster?

-I'm thinking I could have a couple staff members listen to the presentations and pick a "best of show."

-Glass marbles shatter when dropped off the bleachers. Into millions of little pieces.

After I got them all started and I started Googling, I came across several sites on project based learning. New obsession here. While this isn't exactly where we are at the moment, we are definitely going to be doing more of this in class. These guys will be my guinea pigs this year and I think they are totally okay with that.


*Is it considered editing if I didn't have it written up??? I'm not even sure I can claim the planning part.

Teacher Tip #4

When you have dozens of kids scattered around your room doing a lab with motion sensors, do not try to wander around to see if they are okay. All you will really accomplish is anomalies in everyone's graphs.

A Tale of Two Chemistries

We finally closed on our second trimester this week. If you remember, we last left our hero* dangling off the edge of insanity. Come to think of it, I really don't ever seem to get too far from that edge.

My Regular Chemistry class settled down a little bit and more or less accepted that I wasn't going to change what we were doing. It helped that the most vocal mob was broken up. It also helped that our incredible librarian told her groupies to suck it up and rise to the challenge. After awhile those rusted wheels started turning and it wasn't quite as painful.

I never could get them into a discussion with our whiteboarding. They just kind of assumed that whoever was talking was right and dutifully copied down those answers. I'm not sure what adjustments to make there. I thought about requiring them to ask at least one question per day, but couldn't decide whether I wanted to fight that battle or not.

I'm not sure my class learned everything I wanted them to. Even the very last day, kids were not able to recognize when a substance had the nitrate polyatomic ion in it. While kids do need to take some responsibility for their own learning, I blame me for the most part. I need to be more aware of when my kids are not getting it and not let them sneak past me when they don't understand. I think I trusted the curriculum too much when it told me to let them figure things out on their own. Having never been in that position before, they weren't ready for that. I let them flounder for too long and I lost them and never got them recovered. And when you lose them in the first couple weeks, they are lost for the rest of the time. The Modeling people do not like you to mess with their curriculum, but I definitely need to add in something in  to help them understand some of those concepts a little more. I have never been one to follow every little detail anyway, so why start now?

Probably what bothered me more than anything, though, was the last day. Everyone was so relieved to be done with Chemistry. Me included. I really don't want my kids to hate my class. I don't want them to see it as something to just get through. I want them to love it. We live in an incredible, beautiful world and I want them to wonder at it. I'm more than a little disturbed that they keep saying that they hate it. I am hoping (praying) that this is just because I haven't taught Chemistry for several years and that once I am comfortable with the material again, it will go a little more smoothly.

My Applied Chemistry took off with the Modeling. We had relatively small groups (12 in each class compared to 22 in my regular chemistry) and they were pretty comfortable with each other. The whiteboard discussion really turned in to learning most times. Of course, every once in awhile, someone would ask something like "why is your shirt green today?" but hey, they are teenagers, you can't expect a whole lot of maturity all the time.

One great thing about Modeling is it forces those kids to actually do something other than copy from their neighbor. They never know who is going to have to speak for the group or what questions I am going to ask, so everyone has to be prepared and know what is going on. My Applied kids truly benefited from this approach and, of course, this is true for Regular as well, but it doesn't seem to be as crucial for them.

Modeling is just what is says it is. You create a model of matter. We start with the basic observations that have been obvious for your entire life and actually describe them. We draw them. Instead of kids reading about these models, we create them ourselves. This has helped those lower kids develop an understanding of where that information came from. When I ask them why is H2O written that way, instead of saying "because you told us," they can look back in their lab notebook and see the evidence for why. That is what I really love about it. And that is why I will keep doing it.


*Hehe, that's me.

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 :)

If You Give Your Kids a Scantron...

...they become completely different people.

I did a post-test today as part of ASU's monitoring of the Modeling curriculum. The second the first scan-tron sheet hit the desk, an eerie silence descended on the room.

Kids sat up straight. They faced forward. No one made a sound. No one even asked me any questions.

I have no doubt that this comes from years of filling out bubble sheets for our standardized tests.

While I appreciate the fact that they think a scantron equates to serious business, I can't help but feel a little sad about what we have done to our kids.