Reflections of a Science Teacher

Productivity Falters

2012-01-19T12:53:00.000-05:00

Time and space to think

Creativity explodes

Duties fall behind

Farmers Need Your Help

2012-01-19T10:11:00.000-05:00

Monopoly's Hurt Democracy
Guest post by Dave, Lisa and The Food Democracy Now! Team

I Stand With Family Farmers

On January 31, family farmers will take part in the first phase of a court case filed to protect farmers from genetic trespass by Monsanto’s GMO seed, which contaminates organic and non-GMO farmer’s crops and opens them up to abusive lawsuits. In the past two decades, Monsanto’s seed monopoly has grown so powerful that they control the genetics of nearly 90% of five major commodity crops including corn, soybeans, cotton, canola and sugar beets.

In many cases farmers are forced to stop growing certain organic and conventional crops to avoid genetic contamination and potential lawsuits. Between 1997 and 2010, Monsanto admits to filing 144 lawsuits against America’s farmers, while settling another 700 out of court for undisclosed amounts. Due to these aggressive lawsuits, Monsanto has created an atmosphere of fear in rural America and driven dozens of farmers into bankruptcy.

Farmers need your voice today.

Please join us in standing up for family farmers everywhere against Monsanto's abusive seed monopoly. Take a moment to ask your friends and family to join you in protecting family farmers from Monsanto's campaign of fear and harrassment. Spread the word.

Pass along this message via email
Share on Facebook
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Thank you for participating in food democracy,

Further information:
1."Monsanto Seed Patents", Public Patent Foundation
2. "Judge to consider oral arguments in lawsuit against Monsanto", Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association (OSGATA), December 29, 2011.

Stop SOPA and PIPA

2012-01-17T22:18:00.000-05:00

I've censored the following, in protest of a bill that gives any corporation and the US government the power to censor the internet--a bill that could pass THIS WEEK. To see the uncensored text, and to stop internet censorship, visit: http://americancensorship.org/posts/39601/uncensor

•"Don't you see ████ the █████ aim of ████████ is to ██████ the █████ of ███████?... Has it ████ ████████ to you, ███████, ████ by the ████ ████, at the ████ ██████, not a ██████ █████ █████ ████ be █████ who █████ ██████████ ████ a ████████████ as we are ██████ now?... The █████ ███████ of ███████ ████ be █████████. In ████, █████ ████ be no ███████, as we ██████████ it now. █████████ █████ not ████████-not ███████ to █████. █████████ is ███████████████."

Why We Stare At The Moon

2012-01-16T10:22:00.001-05:00

Taken from Harvard Astrophysics Observatory, on my birthday.

I had the fortunate circumstance to study educational theory and ideas at the Harvard Graduate School of Education with Eleanor Duckworth (2001), and have been on her critical explorations listserve since. My oceanography students were given the task of moon-watching last semester, and lately I have been thinking a lot about moon watching with HGSE grads. I know what moon watching brings to me, but, in light of the resistance I received from my high school students, I wondered what other adults gained from the experience. Here are some of their thoughts:

da wabbit - looking at a not-too full moon (don't want it too bright), the rabbit is in a quiet observant posture - as if snacking on a piece of grass while keeping an eye out for Farmer Brown. If you picture him/her sitting there, with legs underneath, facing right, you are almost there. Now, turn the whole disc 90 degrees counter clockwise. Now the bunny is facing UP (up? ... maybe not ... but maybe). His/Her ears are kind of folded back over hisher back. Good luck. Once you see it, you will not be able to avoid it. So enjoy the journey. ....This week, my fifth grade kids are starting a version of that grid picture. They've been tracking, with various amounts of dedication, things lunar since Sept and I have enjoyed their musings very much. They haven't been real creative, but their enthusiasm is awesome. With our new graph, this round is sure to be a great one. The crescent is incredible against the twilight sky. ~Jeff Davis '02, Santa Fe, NM.

just today as I was driving with my 10 month old, I looked out the window and saw an almost full moon in the middle of the day! I got so excited that I actually said to my 10 month old in the back seat, "If you look outside your window you can see the moon - it looks a little different in the day, doesn't it?" I truly thought about the moon 'study' we did. Of course I didn't expect much of a reply, but for me, seeing the moon always puts me in a good mood - it's a stability in this unstable world. The way Victoria put it, "no matter how well I think I know something, further study will reveal new possibilities" is great because it can apply to wherever you are at in your life. While I always get pleasantly surprised at where and when and what the moon looks like each time I see it, … I am excited to take it a step further and …'use it as an inspiration' for this new journey of parenthood I am on. ~Robin (Kessler) Cohen

Loved the moon. Especially the deeper we got into it. Because I too was constantly surprised by what noticings others offered. Things that hadn't even begun to appear to me. Like the rabbit. And thoroughly surprised by what I did and did not know. ~ ian hersey

One of [Eleanor’s] earliest assignments was to establish a moon watching journal. We were to share our drawings, descriptions, and discoveries with the class. I must admit I was a bit baffled by the assignment. What did this have to do with improving classroom instruction, I wondered. I wrote to friends back home and told them that I had discovered there was "an upside down rabbit in the moon." They thought I was nuts. By the time winter rolled around, I found myself more than once running around Cambridge at midnight (secretly cursing Eleanor's name) just trying to find the moon, let alone wax philosophically on it. After leaving my Teach For America site in Louisiana of six years and investing twenty thousand dollars I could ill-afford, I began to wonder why I had decided to put my life on hold for grad school. But I cannot tell you how many times I have returned to the metaphor of moon watching in my subsequent teaching career. For by the spring of 1999, I had come to some rather stunning conclusions. Every time I had tried to establish a definitive pattern about the moon, something unexpected would occur. Sometimes the moon was a cold and distant orb; sometimes it looked as though it must be shining so brightly only over Harvard Square. In class, fellow students would begin with literal descriptions of the moon only to end with mythical references. In the years since I have taken the class, former and current students continue to submit fresh insights. The lesson for me has been that no matter how well I think I know something, further study will reveal new possibilities. When we think we've exhausted the possibilities to solve a problem, that's when we must be open to the new ideas and resources that will emerge if only we are willing to embrace them. I currently teach 9th grade English in a suburban high school in Pennsylvania serving 2400 students. Our school is undergoing a stressful time of transition as we move from an IST program (where struggling students receive individualized tutoring) to RtI (where students are to receive additional assistance in the regular ed. classroom only). Over the summer, the programs that we knew to be successful were eliminated. The new programs have yet to be fully implemented. As we attempt to establish a new vision and to reach kids that are struggling academically, we teachers are becoming understandably frustrated in our efforts to be effective. Oddly enough, the moon is providing inspiration once again. Instead of concentrating on the present frustrations, I am trying to step back to get a vision of where we are heading instead of where we are currently stuck. As I have done this, I have been reevaluating the pros and get a vision of where we are heading instead of where we are currently stuck. As I have done this, I have been reevaluating the pros and cons of ability grouping, the role of grammar instruction, and the goals of freshman teams. Such reflection is critical for teachers if we hope to improve the quality of classroom instruction. Okay, I get it now. Thank you, Eleanor, for sharing with me an instructional strategy that continues to inspire. ~Victoria Short, HGSE 1998.

Ah, right. That's where I was. Now I remember.

Eleanor's final class at HGSE.

Soapmaking In Chemistry Class

2012-01-13T14:37:00.000-05:00

Saponification Is The Word

Cups of soap "curing"

As a part of our "Organic Chemistry" unit, I decided to have students make soap. I wanted to do this activity because it connects chemistry to real life, but the last time I tried it I had not felt successful with it. Not being one to give up, I decided to try again. I reviewed numerous classroom saponification recipes and discovered that there is a wide variety of approaches. I tried five different methods, some cold process, some using heat, some using ethanol, some not. I decided on the simplest cold process "recipe", with a modification of my own: adding a little borax. I would have liked to use coconut oil, but only had olive oil available at the time, so olive oil it was. I also had corn oil available in case the olive oil ran out.

I had all students handstir the oil and lye for at least ten minutes, to get them to see the emulsion occur. Then I allowed them to use the magnetic stirring plates. I did have one handheld emulsifier that I used to help anyone "finish up" the emulsion. Some students wanted to add color, so I allowed them to melt some crayon and mix it in with the handheld emulsifier. The melted crayon immediately solidified in the soap emulsion, so it came out more flecked than colored, but the students liked it.

The cups of soap are now sitting in my prep room. I will take them out of the plastic cups when they set up a bit, and form them into cakes wrapped in wax paper. Then they will sit until they cure more, and the pH is about 8.

So for kicks, here is the lab approach I used for my classes. I kept a squirt bottle of vinegar handy to neutralize spills.

Background

Evidence of soap making dates back to the Egyptians and Babylonians. In Europe during the Middle Ages, soap was very expensive, and in some locations, it was heavily taxed. Only the rich could have much of it, and few people knew how to make it, because guilds kept tight control of their recipes and the market for soap.

Things changed when people migrated to North America. There were no guilds or taxes to prevent the making of soap by the common person, enough people came to the US that knew how to make it, and the information was shared. Consistency of a soap product, however, was a problem. People used rough measurements or lacked enough fats or lye, and produced soap that was either overly fatty or harsh. Homemade soaps were usually made from kitchen fats or lard. The fats were broken down using ash soaked in water. The soaking ash produced the needed lye, or hydroxide.

The process is called saponification. Saponification is a process in which a fat molecule is broken down by sodium hydroxide (lye) into four smaller molecules; three of the new molecules are soap and one is glycerol. The glycerol molecule keeps the soap moist. Soap molecules have one polar end and one nonpolar end, giving it the ability to attach to oily substances in water. Emulsion is a temporary mixing of two insoluble liquids such as oil and water.

The soap you are making today is fairly crude, and still contains sodium hydroxide at the end. It could therefore be dangerous if you got it in your eyes. I would NOT recommend it for washing your face! It needs to cure for one to three weeks before it is useable.

Materials and Apparatus

Safety goggles, apron, gloves
62 mL of olive oil, 100 mL graduated cylinder to measure oil
400 mL beaker
50 mL of water, 50 mL graduated cylinder to measure water
250 mL erlenmeyer flask
10 g of NaOH, Weigh boat for massing NaOH and borax
1 g of Borax Glass rod for stirring
Salt (if required)
Stirring magnet and magnetic stirring plate (if available)
Handheld emulsifier (if available)
Essential oil or perfume (optional)
Plastic cup for setting soap

Procedure

Measure out the oil and water. Pour oil into a 400 mL beaker. Pour water into a 250 mL Erlenmeyer flask. Mass the NaOH in weigh boat or on a piece of paper towel. DO NOT TOUCH IT! Squeeze the weigh boat so that the solid NaOH drops into the water in the Erlenmeyer flask and swirl until completely dissolved. Mass 1 g borax and dissolve in the NaOH solution. The borax will add to the foaming ability of the soap.

SLOWLY trickle the lye (NaOH) into the oil, stirring continuously to emulsify. DON’T TOUCH IT! Keep stirring to “trace” or a thick paste forms. This could take half an hour. If you still don't have a paste after half an hour, stir in 2 spatulas of salt. Other methods of stirring include using a magnetic stirring plate and magnet, or a handheld emulsifier. Hand stirring can take anywhere from ½ hour to 3 hours; the handheld emulsifier takes just a few minutes to reach trace. Once the proper consistency is reached, you may stir in essential oil or perfume, if you want. Test the pH with a pH strip.

Pour into plastic cup and leave to cure. After a day or two, we will remove it from the plastic cup and wrap in waxed paper to aid the curing process. This type of soap needs to mature to lose its alkalinity (pH10-12 when new). Use only after at least 3 weeks of “curing”, or when pH level is around 8.

Note: The Secret is in the Stirring ! Don't Give Up!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Miscellaneous links
Fight Club Soap
A more complex soap recipe

Lighting Student Interest In Science

2012-01-05T10:15:00.001-05:00

Chemists Have Solutions

Solids, liquids, and gases dissolve to form solutions. In chemistry class, students made a concentrated solution of calcium acetate in water. By mixing together this concentrated calcium acetate solution with ethyl alcohol, students form a colloidal gel that acts like the commercial product Sterno®. The formation of the gel is a physical phenomenon and not a chemical reaction. When this gel is burned, it can be used as a heat source more desirable than pure alcohol because it is less likely to spill.

2 C2H5OH + 7 O2 -> 4 CO2 + 6 H2O

Students roasted their homemade marshmallows over the sterno. The homemade marshmallows roasted differently than store-bought ones, giving a creamier and smoother melted interior.

The exact structure of the gel is not known, but the calcium acetate solution probably traps the alcohol inside a flexible lattice. If the gel were to sit for several days, the alcohol and water would evaporate, leaving behind the solid calcium acetate.

The video that follows was assembled a few years ago. A newer video was created this week, but was overly large for this post. I have tried to reduce the size but it has not been going well.

Marshmallow Chemistry

2012-01-02T18:50:00.000-05:00

Physical Science Class Considers Organic Compounds

Take powdered gelatin, sugar, and egg whites, apply chemistry skills, and VOILA! Marshmallows. A little salt and vanilla help with flavor.

Basic organic compounds:

Marshmallows are mostly sugar, sucrose, C12H22O11
Egg whites are mostly albumen, a protein consisting of 584 amino acids.
Gelatin is basically made of collagen, giving us the molecular formula of collagen, C2H5NOC5H9NOC5H10NO2.

Egg whites, beaten to a stiff peak.

Chemistry Science Skills

I've been working on a master list of science skills that must be developed to provide competency in chemistry (to be posted at a later date). Each lesson Science skills practiced in this activity are all skills related to comparing and measuring: using simple measurement tools to provide consistency in an investigation; sensory observations; quantity; quality; and capacity/volume.

Gelatin

Here is how one food scientist describes gelatin: Gelatin is a mixture of polypeptides. Its amphiphilic nature gives it foam-stabilizing properties. A typical gelatin polypeptide contains the amino acids alanine, glycine, proline, arginine, glutamic acid, and hydroxyproline. It is prepared from collagen, which is isolated from animal bones and fish skins with a dilute acid. Now doesn't that sound just yummy?

Beating cooked sugars and gelatin.

How Marshmallows Are Made

Our recipe came from the Smitten Kitchen. In essence, 1) gelatin was dissolved in cold water; 2) sugars were boiled to the soft ball stage; 3) syrup was beaten into the gelatin until tripled in size; 4) beaten egg whites and vanilla were added to the mix; and 5) the creme was spread into prepared pans to set.

What's in the chemistry? Gelatin is "dissolved" in cold water, loosening and spreading out its long protein fibers. The heat of the sugar dissolves gelatins original bonds, and air is beaten in. The protein bonds will reform as the gelatin mixture cools, combining them with the other ingredients (remember, egg whites are also proteins), and creating the classic, bouncy, marshmallow texture.

Pans of marshmallow, awaiting cutting.

Marshmallows cut into squares using pizza cutter.

Tomorrow we will make sterno and roast our marshmallows.

Simplifying the New Year

2011-12-30T09:20:00.003-05:00

Focussing On What Is Important

Core values of mine are being kind to one another, taking care of the environment, learning and educating, feeding people, and fostering peace, health, and beauty.

Naming what I will learn this year is not as important as commiting to continuing to learn.

Asking myself where I can make the greatest impact with volunteer efforts.

Making Decisions About What Adds Value And What Is Noise

Too much time is wasted online. Facebook is a time waster and does not add value. The "friends" list will be brought to something manageable and realistic. Love Twitter, but my list of who I follow needs winnowing - too much noise.

Try ro refrain from making unnecessary noises.

Clarifying Lessons With Today's Goals

Some of my lessons I loved ten years ago, but is that where we are today?

Jettison Bad Karma

There is a lot of stuff -- in the basement, attic, storage -- that is just not needed. Sell, give away, recycle.

Web Technology And Bloom's Taxonomy

2011-12-27T14:36:00.001-05:00

Kathy Schrock's interactive chart of Android apps that support the Revised Bloom's Taxonomy prompted me to think about how the digital tools I've had my students use fit into the Bloom's framework. A while back, Andrew Churches wrote a wonderful post relating digital usages to the Revised Bloom's Taxonomy: Bloom's Taxonomy Blooms Digitally. His post provides verbs and digital tools that are associated with the new levels of Bloom's. The picture here is Churches summary.

As I looked at Kathy Schrock's list of Android apps, and her list of Google tools, I saw that many tools overlap levels, depending on how they are used.

Remembering -- Understanding -- Applying -- Analysing -- Evaluating -- Creating

Keeping track of the many online tools and apps available is impossible as they continually change. You might find how I've used these tools with students helpful when designing your lessons. Each year I direct my students to use a variety of digital tools, some online and some downloads. So far this year, my Oceanography class has tweeted, blogged, submitted their documents online, watched my lectures online, discussed articles online, and glogstered.

Twitter: The few students willing to tweet think of it as a way to do status updates. I tried to show them its other possibilities by tweeting links to their blogs, searching hashtags,

Blogging: I've posted on this before, and will again. Links to previous posts on students blogging:

Glogster: Our first poster project of the year, on the history of ocean exploration, was done with Glogster. Later on in the year, a poster on hurricanes was required. The Glogster posters met requirements to a much greater degree than the paper posters did, and both assignments had the same students and similar rubrics.

Schoolloop: Our school uses Schoollop for posting assignments, notices, and grades. I have been requiring students to submit their papers and written homework directly into schoolloop. I have also been posting my lectures here.

That's a few for now. I will post more later.

How Is Your Response Time?

2011-12-12T21:51:00.000-05:00

"It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change." - Charles Darwin

So have you noticed things changing?

How have you responded?

These questions come to my mind everyday, in everyday living and dealing with people.

But it mostly comes up in my work. Nothing moves slower than a bureaucracy, and schools are certainly bureaucratic dinosaurs. Innovation is scoffed at, frowned upon, and had better work the first time you try it or don't try it again. (OK, that was both cynicism and sarcasm.)

Classroom-Changing Technology in 21st Century

2011-12-06T12:12:00.001-05:00

Digital Tools Changing Teaching and Learning

Ted Floyd wrote a post called 25 Things That Changed Birding—Recently enumerating changes in the 21st Century that affected how birding is done. This caused me to think about things that changed teaching for me. I've only been a teacher for ten years, which would all be in the 21st Century, but I have tried to meet my students future (college and business) needs by using digital tools as appropriate. I am not as ambitious as Mr. Floyd in identifying 25 things. Instead, I am going to think about a few things that have changed teaching and learning in my little classroom world.

Interactive White Board: At first my IWB was nothing more than glorified powerpoint, but as both the school's broadband access and online resources have increased, so has my "integrated" use of the IWB. I use it for everything from taking attendance to sharing and analyzing laboratory data. Students can easily contribute and present their research on the IWB. I don't use many pre-made IWB lessons, preferring to custom design my own.
Internet: My students seem to have access to virtually everything, and most days we access something online. TED Talks are inspiring presentations from some of the brightest people on the planet. Vimeo, Youtube, and other sites provide instant streaming video to support a lesson idea or answer a student question. Alternative viewpoints on current topics are available for students to debate. Internet savvy happens in my classroom.
Jing: With this tool I record my own lessons to post as either homework, instructions for a project, tutorials, or review. I have some difficulties with posting my screencasts, but I am improving all the time.
Blogging: I require my students to write blog posts, read others posts, comment on posts, and respond to comments on their posts. I believe this promotes writing for others, reflection, peer review, and thoughtful critique. All of their writing is directly related to their science curriculum, and thus adds to understanding of the subject material.
Netvibes: Where some people may use a webquest, I use a Netvibes tab. Netvibes organizes my readings, the resources I want to share with the students,

Use or Integration?

A twitter post one day read "introducing middle schoolers to StumbleUpon. Kids plugging in their interests." I asked, For what purpose? to which I received the response "to personalize and foster interests". Does this middle school math teacher really think that fostering personal interests through StumbleUpon is "integrating technology"?

The use of digital, electronic tools in the classroom has come to be know as "technology integration" in education. Simply using it does not, however, mean it was integrated.
What does it mean to "integrate" technology into your classroom? My understanding is that technology integration is to incorporate technological tools into a unified learning program. It is using available resources in ways that add to the teaching and understanding of the topic. Appropriate technology in one classroom may be different from another classroom. The best technology for learning how to write in cursive is the pencil. The best technology for learning accuracy in mass measurements might be a triple-beam balance.

In spite of my love for all things technology, my students only use what works for the content. Just "because its there" is not good enough for my classroom. It must demonstrate to me to give my students a competitive advantage in the future, and to be applicable to the curriculum.

Whale Song

2011-12-01T08:50:00.001-05:00

TED Talks in Oceanography Class

I love using TED Talks in my classes. They are inspirational, authentic, and brilliant. We've been studying waves this week - water waves as well as sound waves - and I thought it would be interesting to think about how whale sounds travel through water. In previous years, teaching ecology, I had shown students sonographs of the voices of different birds and discussed with students how the bird voice relates to that bird's environment. I wanted this class to think about marine animals communication through water.

Pilot Whale Vocalizations

Peter Tyack, of Woods Hole, presented a TED Talk on ways whales use sound and song to communicate across the oceans, and how their voices and behaviors are affected by human oceanic activities. After watching The intriguing sound of marine mammals, I had the students immediately write down their reactions and thoughts, after which we did a sharing of them. If students were having difficulty starting, or had stalled in their conversations, I prompted with questions, such as: "Why did Mr. Tyack use whales for his study?", "What do you think of the actual sounds the whales make? Why do you think they make that type of sound?", "What methods were used for this research?", "What additional actions could be taken for the whales?"

Whales and Whales:
For some really amazing photographs of whales, check out Oktay Kaya's photographic journey. Know that none of his photographs have been photoshopped or modified - they are as he took them.

Rubber Duckies and Scientific Literacy

2011-11-14T09:17:00.001-05:00

On Being Able To Evaluate News Sources

"By any measure, the average American is not scientifically literate, even with a college degree" (Robert Hazen)

Helping young students become scientifically literate in our standards-driven education system takes active research. Its not something the student understands the need for, and explaining the reasons does not help motivate them toward literacy. Simply telling a student that understanding the material will help him or her understand daily events and make him or her an educated voter does not pass the teenager muster test. It helps more, whenever possible, to insert discussions of current events into the lessons. Major events, such as a tsunami, earthquake, nuclear meltdown, or hurricane are extreme examples that are easy to tie in, but fortunately these are not daily events. In addition, they do not tie into every science curriculum.

Literacy is not just showing the students examples of science in your daily life, it is more about being able to differentiate between good and poor science reporting.

Teaching a new curriculum each year complicates finding examples of good and not-so-good science articles, though textbooks often unintentionally give examples of errors in scienctific understandings.

When teaching a unit on ocean currents, and oceanography is a new course to my teaching, I remembered the spill of bathtub toys and how they made an excellent study in ocean currents. Looking for an article online, I came across a wonderful module that discussed the Nike shoe "drifters", the bathtub floatees "drifters" and had articles about the bathtub toys for evaluating. I felt I had been given a gift. Even though the data was old, and students find it difficult to relate to data older than they are, it was all packaged up and ready for me to use. I was so glad I did the search for the article and came across this site.

What I need to do is come up with more examples like this. Its easy to find scientific articles in the daily news; the trick is to find time to evaluate them and present them to the students. Having a flipped class eases the time constraints. Since lectures are delivered after school, discussions about how well a study was done, or how science is affecting national policy, can occur in class. We can also spend more time on lab techniques, including asking questions and critical thinking.

Additional Resources:

Moon Journals

2011-11-07T18:25:00.001-05:00

One month of casual moon watching just barely breaks the surface of questions that could be asked and discoveries to be uncovered. Our one month of moon watching in New England was further hampered by frequent cloudy skies that blocked moon sightings. Initially, most students resisted keeping the moon journals, because they felt that looking at the moon each night was a pointless exercise, having "learned" the moon phases in elementary school. These students are now juniors and seniors in high school.

The assignment called for students to, each day, record their sighting of the moon and shape a question about that sighting. Their drawings, observations, and questions were to be assembled in a small booklet, which could be purchased or made from a stack of file cards, with each day on a separate page. Each entry was required to include date, time, and an indication of altitude and direction. I provided the students with daily tide information, and several times over the month data was shared in class. Students who stuck with the assignment, particulary the "ask a question" portion of it, found it surprisingly interesting and gained new understandings. Here are a few of the questions they had:

What is the angle [degree of inclination] the moon is at tonight?
How fast does the moon rotate?
How many hours is the moon out each day?
How much of a change is there each day?
How can no moon be visible at all?
Why can't you always see the moon?
How many craters are on the moon? How deep are they?
How high does the moon go in the sky?
Does the height the moon rises to change with the seasons?

Many students turned in work that was no more than hand-drawn phases of the entire month, as gleaned from an internet site.

At the end of one month, students were to write a full page analysis that demonstrated how their thinking proceeded during this work and comparing tide data with moon phase observations. Portions of their reflections include:

"While doing my moon journal out of school, I seemed to learn a lot. It rekindled the things I learned in elementary school, about the Moon’s waxing and waning phases. Following the moon phases was kind of cool. One thing I missed was the connection between the tides and the moon phases. We added tide heights to the moon journal entries we did at the very beginning, but I never found out the connection. I feel as though that is an important piece that I am missing. Overall, the Moon in the days we were assigned to view it changed a lot. I really got the feeling that the Earth and the Moon are orbiting in space, and stuff, because the moon was always a different height in the sky and was constantly changing phases. Hopefully we will be going over the whole tide stuff because I am very interested in them."

"Through this activity it has brought back memories of moon journals in younger grades and I hope to learn about these phases more during class."

"When we started this project, I did not understand where we were going to go with it. As we started to observe the moon I found myself noticing things that I never would have seen before. I also never knew that the moon had so much to do with the ocean tides."

"This assignment was ok. It got a little boring after a while because the moon would be the same shape every night. I did this assignment in Elementary and 8^th grade as well so it wasn’t anything new. Asking a question every night got a little tough. It was hard thinking of moon questions that I didn’t already ask."

"The information recorded in my moon journal included the time I saw the moon, the angle of the moon, and a drawing of how it looked. The journal shows its phases from waxing to full to waning. I thought this was very interesting. I also thought it was interesting the way the angle and time of observation were directly correlated."

Reading these reflections highlights the need for more work, both in and out of class. While we discussed our observations during the first two weeks, I thought I had lead them far enough that they could continue on their own, which does not seem to be the case. The students are also wanting me to explicitly answer their questions, rather than continuing on their own and discovering for themselves. This makes me unhappy because I wish for them to have ownership of their discoveries, rather than me sticking them with factoids. As I was collecting the journals, I asked the students "Did anyone notice that Jupiter was full last week?", expecting questions about the idea that Jupiter could be "full"; not a single student commented.

The moon acts as a clock for the planet that drives the tides of the oceans, the great lakes, and other fluids. Most humans are too involved with other pursuits to notice the effects of the moon on the planet and their lives, but animals, such as fresh water fish and migrating birds, have not tuned it out. What else does the moon affect? What if there were no moon?

My students will be asked to continue their journaling and their observations, and I am hoping they will make their own authentic discoveries.

Variations in Sand

2011-10-27T15:30:00.000-04:00

Maui Sand Contributed by Jesse R.

We looked at sand from around the world under microscopes in oceanography class. It was wonderful. This picture is from a student; I wish I could have gotten more pictures.

Student Presentation Skills Learning

2011-10-27T15:05:00.002-04:00

Powerpoint Woes Again

The hurricane research assignment came with a "presentation of your chosen storm" component. The class is mostly senior students with a few juniors.

The objective of the presentation is to present an historic, major storm to the class and to practice presentation skills. Students, in teams of two, had four class days to complete this work and were initially confused about why they needed three products to support their talk. I endlessly explained that different preparations have different functions (I used different words, though). First, every student chose PowerPoint as their digital medium, even though I know they have used PhotoStory and digital cartoons before and the assignment included a link to a page of choices. [Question to self: should I force them to try something different for another project? Would that serve them?]

Second, it took two days for the students to understand that they were not to put paragraphs of text on the PowerPoints. As I walked the computer tables I would see text-dense pages and tell them, "Take that off and put it on your handout" or "Reduce that paragraph to no more than six words." The doubling up on the disparate objectives -- hurricane research and presentation skills -- significantly increased my work as I patrolled and guided. [Question to self: how should the rubrics be changed, if at all?] I realized that I have not sufficiently modeled "good" PowerPoints as this is my first year teaching oceanography and most of my lecture notes slides are stolen from others. [Note to self: make your own lectures, if you are assigned same course for next year.]

THEN came the complaints about Why A Poster, Too? and my redundant refrain was that the poster is to "advertise" the talk, and would be placed in the hallway for people who could not attend the talk. The poster, I explained, should have both pictures and words.

I kept reminding the students that the bulk of the words should be on a handout so the students could follow along. They kept asking why? why? why? and I felt comfortable with my response that

The PowerPoint is a visual going on behind you and supporting your words with pictures and the handout is so they do not have to take notes but can follow along. You are not to read off the slides. You must practice your talk before giving it, so you can check your timing and slide usage.

I hoped that I was clear. *sigh* Sometimes I feel that the children have me in a hurricane!

Hurricane Ike, from the International Space Station

What Did You Learn in School Today?

2011-10-10T17:50:00.000-04:00

Children Report and Reflect on Learning

As parents, we ask and rarely do we get a complete answer. As teachers, we test. Not this week, though. I want to really understand how students are learning and what they are getting out of the course. This week I am asking students to blog What we did in class and What you learned from it.
After students post their blogs, they will be tasked with commenting on their peers' blogs, and respond to comments made on theirs.

Landforms of New England

For the past two weeks my oceanography class has been presented with tasks and information surrounding the essential question

What forces change the land and ocean of the Earth?

The unit included watched-at-home lectures, assembling Pangaea, building model seafloors and modeling bathymetric sampling, observing and recording characteristics of sands from a dozen different beaches, answering questions from the textbook, and taking a culminating geological field trip to a local beach.

Our field trip included stops at several, local geological features, with me getting out and explaining the feature. Discussed were glacial erratics (Stickney's Boulder, Groveland, and New England stonewalls), cobbles and glacial till (behind Northern Essex Community College, Haverhill), eskers (in Kenoza Lake, Haverhill and Kimball Road, Amesbury), and glacial striations on the exposed bedrock in the center of Exit 52 off route 495. Yes, I had two busloads of children climb up into the center of an exit ramp.

The day was spectacular with sunny skies. Beach time was to be spent conducting a dune survey. Students had read the literature review for the assignment, and been introduced to the assignment the day before. Interested students were allowed to bring surfcasting poles, provided they had current, valid fishing licenses. During the two-plus hours at Plum Island's Sandy Point, a barrier beach, students combed the beach for sea treasures, mapped dunes, photographed the layers of sediment, and fished. Finally, to get back on the bus, students were tasked with collecting a gallon of water for our saltwater fish tank.

I await their blogging reflections with excited anticipation.

An ebook of glacial landforms.

Untitled Thoughts

2011-10-02T12:05:00.000-04:00

Today I saw a bumper sticker that said

Even if people have different views of "God" (just take the word "God" off altogether if you have a problem with it), this sentiment seems to me the way it should be. No Exceptions. But its a hard thing to do. I was reminded of Important Words to Be Happy:

      1. Free your heart from hatred.
      2. Free your mind from worries.
      3. Live simply.
      4. Give more.
      5. Expect less.

Christianity, Judaism, and Buddhism - the only religions I know anything about - all tell us to forgive others. I have been struggling with this "forgive everyone everything". The first step is not too hard, the step where I wish nothing bad befall another. Its those following steps that are difficult for actions which I view as "unforgivable". I will keep working at it, though, because until I forgive others I can not forgive myself and be truly happy.

What we think, we become.

All that we are arises with our thoughts.

With our thoughts, we make the world.

- The Buddha

Link to a blog on forgiving ones self.

Doodling

2011-09-28T14:58:00.000-04:00

Google Doodle by Johnny Zuk

Showed my first TED talk of the year today and it wasn't even about science. Sunni Brown said Doodlers, unite! It was relevant, though, because doodling combines multiple learning modalities. I insist on students drawing on field trips, and tell them to pace and read aloud when trying to memorize something, in order to engage more of the body into the "thing being learned". Doodling constitutes visual literacy and:

"... has a profound effect on creative problem solving." (Sunni Brown)

The class then colored fossil similarities between continents while listening to history of continental drift.

Flipping Class

2011-09-26T23:06:00.004-04:00

photo from: http://www.yogadestin.com/

Turning a Class Upside Down

I am doing a personal trial of flipping a class in the hopes of improving understanding. Student homework is the powerpoint lecture that is normally given in class, with my voiceover. The slides include questions that must be answered and submitted to me online.

Since lectures are now homework, project work is now classwork. I have found I can control the student products better -- and improve their quality -- if I am there to keep everyone working. I make sure that all parties getting credit for the work are actually participating; plus, I can explain the concepts better for students individually.
Students began reporting to me that they really liked this model. They felt that they could control the pace of the lecture, rewind, relisten, and take notes at their own speed. The feedback was encouraging.

Salman Khan on TED explains the idea of the flipped classroom better.

Because students are now doing active work in the classroom, the classroom has gotten noisier. This is difficult for me to work in, the noise. I am struggling with the amount of noise that an active science class generates. I am excited about being a coach in the classroom and looking forward to bettering my own delivery of this style of learning. The class that I am flipping is a senior elective, oceanography. It has a handful of juniors in it, but for the most part these students are seniors and have a wide range of reasons for electing to take this class. Since my class is an elective that does not have a high stakes exam attached to it, I felt comfortable embedding my own learning of a new style of teaching into it.

The scientist in me needs formal data so I plan on asking for formal student feedback on the course structure. I'd also like to ask you readers for your experience with the flipped classroom. And for those wanting even more information:

Filling in the Blanks

2011-09-17T18:00:00.000-04:00

Students Choose Topic, Then Research and Teach It

What a great time in class this week. The students were teaching and I was just there to guide them and fill in any omissions. The essential question was What can we gain from learning about the history of oceanography? Students were tasked with reading the chapter on the history of oceanography, answering the study questions, and selecting something out of the readings (there were also online readings) that appealed to them and that they would like to learn more about.

Wide open assignment: "something that interests you" from the history readings. This frustrated many students. "Give me a topic!" Nope, you are a senior and can choose your own. (I actually did assign narrow topics for the IEP students.) "Is there a rubric for us to follow?" Nope, you won't get a rubric in college. "How do we do the online poster?" I will tell you tomorrow; today is just for research.

A couple of days of research, a couple of days working on their online posters, then the students taught their classmates what they learned. [We used edu.Glogster while it was still free for teachers; they now charge a significant fee for student glogs.] The online poster was great for parents (no running out for poster board and glue!) and made for much neater presentations (no badly cut paper curling at the edges, no glitter sprinkling the classroom).

I knew that not all of the history of oceanography would wind up getting presened by the students, so I prepared a summary slide show that we could quickly flip through, stopping at subjects that were not addressed. Each class (I have three oceanography classes) was different, which made it fun for me because I was challenged to fill in the various blanks of each class. I like a good challenge. It was also fun because I was able to play off their interests using their work.

For example, one student included a picture of the stars of Orion and Taurus constellations in her Polynesian Explorations glog, which gave me an opportunity to discuss how stars were used in both navigation and storytelling, and the IWB allowed me to draw the constellation picture over the stars. Another student talked about the shadows of the sun, which allowed a foray into looking at various sundials and how a sundial has to be set up for the latitude in order to be accurate. And yet another student had a picture of the electromagnetic field around planet Earth, triggering conversation about geographic North Pole versus magnetic North Pole.

And on top of all that, "motivation" for the next unit was initiated with an interest in the Earth's magnetic field. Yep, it was a good day.

Moon Watching Introduced

2011-09-16T11:33:00.000-04:00

Picture from Moon Connection

Why the Resistance?

My oceanography classes will be making moon observations, including sketches, over a one or two month period. The length of time the assignment lasts is cloud-dependent. I'm getting major resistance from these high school seniors. They think it a silly pointless exercise. They think they know all about the moon phases. I disagree that they really understand the relationship between Earth and moon. I'll report back later on how it goes.

Fighting Sleepless Zombies in the Classroom

2011-09-12T12:27:00.000-04:00

Guest Post by Jay Cooper

Teachers have a tough time making the light go on in students’ heads when the light didn’t go off in their bedroom or living room the night before.

Countless extracurricular activities, after-school jobs and the lure of video games or online activities are causing a growing number of students to roll into class without enough sleep. Inadequate sleep leads to decreased mental aptitude and memory loss, and undoubtedly plays a factor in a student’s performance in the classroom.

As the new school year starts, the Better Sleep Council (BSC) is asking teachers to partner with it and help encourage students to get their sleep on a good mattress – not on their desks.

The BSC has set up a web site and Facebook page encouraging students to “Stop Zombieitis,” and is even reaching out to students late at night on Twitter to encourage them to get a good night’s sleep. Rather than lecturing students on sleep in a way that will make them tune out and ignore the message, the Stop Zombieitis campaign is geared toward high school and middle school students, reminding them in a more entertaining manner to get their sleep so they aren’t zombies roaming school hallways.

The website explains the signs of Zombieitis and directs students to other resources that discuss the importance of sleep and provide helpful tips for getting quality sleep. The site even includes a function that allows teachers or parents to “report a zombie” in their classroom, a light-hearted way to nudge students who are falling asleep in class to get more adequate rest.

The Facebook page shares quizzes and other messages that help students determine if they are getting enough sleep, and encouraging them to do so each night.

The BSC is asking teachers to check out the Facebook page and website themselves, and share it with students. This way, we can all work toward a more well-rested student body that performs better in the classroom.

The website can be found at http://stopzombieitis.com/ and the Facebook page is at www.facebook.com/stopzombieitis. Here are some more articles that are related:

Breaking Stereotypes

2011-08-26T19:27:00.002-04:00

Blonde, Female, Smart and Able

Yesterday I took my 1982 Honda Rebel out for a ride and the spark plug blew out of the socket. That was quite surprising. Fortunately, even though I had been riding for 45 minutes, I was only a half-mile from my house. Running on one spark plug, I rode noisily home, getting embarrassing attention from my neighbors.
Knowing that the spark plug popped out because the threads were stripped, I purchased a Helicoil Repair Kit from Amesbury Industrial Supply to repair the stripped threads. I had never done this job before. Heck, I'd never even seen someone do it. I only knew what to buy because a friend told me over the phone. The information included in the kit was not comprehensive enough to follow as instructions. So, being in the age of instant information, I went to look for a "how-to" video online. I found one, but it was not very helpful. The part the narrator was working on was sitting on a work bench and I did not want to go taking the cylinder head off to do this job. Not seeing more videos with my search, I went to a Popular Mechanics article, "How to Repair Stripped Spark Plug Threads." Perfect! Then I read:

Warning: Installing a Helicoil or other threaded insert looks simple -- but it's not. Any readers out there who wish to attempt it might want to practice a couple of times on scrap parts.

Super. Practice? Not gonna happen. Another good article on the subject is from Auto Media. I also accessed the experience of others by reading as many comments on the procedure as I could find. None were very encouraging. I had no air compressor to blow out the chips. The tap did not have a handle. And every male I had encountered (at the two auto supply shops and the coffee shop where my daughter works) said "good luck" with that tone of "yeah, sure you can". Even the friend who'd told me the tools I needed kept asking if he should come over and help, but he had a dinner date in Boston which he did not need to be late for. I was feeling like I had (again?) taken on more than I should.

But I did it! And was stoked about it. It is a wonderful feeling to tackle a problem out of your comfort zone and solve it. Not to say there weren't glitches. I used a channellock to turn the tap, going slowly and backing it out ever now and then to wipe off the chips sticking to the grease; it was awkward and could only make 1/3 turns before having to be moved. I dropped the coil tang in; that resulted in a lot of swearing but once I stopped and calmed down I purchased a telescoping magnet and retrieved it. The spark plug still needs regapping but I'll need to buy a tool.

This story has a moral and is really about not allowing preconceptions to determine who you are or what you do. If you want to do something, then you can; it's all about you making that decision. No one can make you more or less, better or worse. Yeah, I'm blond, but I'm not dumb.

Inspirational Principals

2011-08-25T21:22:00.000-04:00

The above screen grab is a tweet from the Burlington High School principal. It is a retweet of a link to an article about math education. This article was retweeted extensively by teachers and administrators who felt that it "really resonates". The administrators who tweet and share with one another are real leaders in their field. They are not followers; they inspire their staff to take reasonable risks who inspire students to greater learning.

We still hear the question of "why tweet?" when to me it is obvious. In a world that changes so rapidly, I could not keep up without my network of friends, my "PLN". As the screen grab shows, twitter is great for rapidly sharing information, links, articles, and comments. Comments back and forth turn into a conversation.

The list below was compiled by Cybrary Man and is part of his personal learning network. Cybrary Man also has a great collection of internet catalogue of educational websites. Is your principal in this group?

Ready or Not

2011-08-23T18:55:00.000-04:00

Students Arrive Next Week

It's one week until students come back into my high school science lab and time to get it -- and me -- ready for them. The room looks exactly as it was left last year, except for the shiny, polished floors. There is a glass wall cabinet standing next to a note that says "attach cabinet here". There is a note on the electric box that says "outlets needed". Fluorescence lights are uncovered, the sinks are clogged, as are the gas jets, and one chalkboard still has doodles on it. Sigh. I was hopeful when I left, but it was not meant to be.
My room is over 50 years old and, with the exception of an add-on eyewash station, an oddly placed emergency shower, and the IWB projector (yay!), it has not been upgraded in all that time. Two summers ago I came in and painted the walls and ceiling, which somewhat helped it's appearance, but it is a sorry looking facility for this suburban community. There is not much I can do to make improvements in its appearance, but I will be putting up posters and pictures and inspirational quotes.

This year I will be teaching chemistry, oceanography, marine biology, and physical science. That means materials for the disciplines of chemistry, physics, earth science, biology, and some astronomy and meterorology. In this little room. I placed the aquariums (as yet unfilled - I need to purchase filters out of pocket) in the front of the room, away from the lab stations. I placed the IWB board on the "side" of the room and turned the tables to face that way, rather than to the front of the room which has a fixed teacher desk and demonstration table. I did this because I wanted the focus to be on student learning, not teacher lecturing. When they faced me, because of the cramped space, I was trapped behind the desk and had trouble walking around the room to help. This arrangement is my experiment for moving to a more student-centered environment. I also bought a wireless mouse that I can hand off to students to give them further control.

My teaching style is very hands-on and uses quite a bit of materials. Trying to house, organize, find, and manage these materials can be a logistical nightmare, especially in my small room. There are cabinets under the sinks which I plan on utilizing more, having found a key to lock them, but I may need a map and a spreadsheet to track what is where.

I also expect my students to use 21st century tools for their work, submitting papers electronically, blogging, and tweeting. I'm working out guidelines for my classroom for texting and other social media. All of this will need to be in electronic form.

So those were my thoughts for today. I did not get much room prep accomplished, more of a planning step.

Tides Don't Have Anything to do with Oceanography?

2011-07-30T16:13:00.001-04:00

Photo taken by the Galileo spacecraft from a distance of about 6.2 million kilometers from Earth, on December 16, 1992. (Source: NASA).

Have you ever tracked the moon? By that I mean drawn a picture of it every day and noted the time and its location? Try it. It is a wonderful thing to do.

As I am teaching oceanography this year I intend to make this one of the assignments I give to my students and am nervous (curious?) about how high school seniors will respond. They will also be making, in class, the journals in which they will record their moon observations. These students may or may not "know" that tides are controlled by the moon, but how much do they understand? Do they "get it"? I've had adults ask me to explain this to them, but after doing a moon dance and manipulating models, and hearing explanations, they shake their head and still don't "get it". So my students will make records of moon observations. They will compare their observations with local tide charts. They will discuss what they notice. And hopefully they will "get it". Besides, what could be more awesome for homework than moon watching?

The having of wonderful ideas is what I consider the essence of intellectual development. ~Eleanor Duckworth

Listen to this Podcast on being ripped apart by a black hole, by 365 Days of Astronomy.

Hampton Seaweed

2011-07-25T11:53:00.002-04:00

Hampton Beach from the upper deck of La Bec Rouge, NH

Motorcycling along the coast yesterday, a friend and I took a break in Hampton, NH for dinner. A short walk down to the water to watch the waves and at our feet were fragments of seaweed. The average person taking a glance down at them would have taken them to be all the same. But picking them up we noticed that they were all different, even though at a glance they seemed to be the same. The bladders were located in different places, and some were smooth while others were bumpy. There were distinctions in the blade forking. There were color variations. Were they different species or different genus?

Rockweeds, Fucus species; Knotted Wrack, Ascophyllum

There we were, dressed inappropriately for the beach, surrounded by swimmers and sunners, closely examining seaweed. Clearly, my friend and I are not average people.

Collecting Sand

2011-07-22T23:51:00.006-04:00

Sand Reveals Geologic and Biologic Nature

Sand fascinates me. I started collecting sand in 2001, during a camping trip to Mount Desert Island, Maine and a ranger-led hike along Great Head Trail and across Sand Beach. Stopping on a granite outcropping that presented a magnificent view of the Beehive and the beach, the ranger had us look at and touch the rock we were standing on. He passed out magnifying glasses so we could get a good look. I'm thinking, I've seen granite before but I'll play along. So I crouched down to look closely and notice. I don't recall how long each of my four children spent looking at the rock but I do know that they looked too.

The New Hampshire and Maine are known for their pink granite, an igneous rock formed of quartz and two types of feldspar, black and pink. The three minerals are roughly equal in proportion, and there are bits of mica sprinkled in along with a third type of feldspar, a white feldspar. After naming these minerals the ranger proceded to tell the group how this coast of Maine rock had once been connected to the coast of Spain, back a few hundred million years ago. Here is how one amature geologist describes it:

"Prior to 600 million years ago the World’s landmasses had been forming and reforming into groups until on almost opposite sides of the globe two super continents, one called Gondwana and the other Laurasia, had come into being. Slowly they drifted together and at about 600 million years ago they met and formed the giant extra-super continent, Pangea.

Pangea looked like a letter C, or a very distorted 8. A bit like a knobbly Pac man figure facing right, it’s mouth agape. But think of the 8, bent into a C shape. Where the two halves of the 8 meet, or perhaps where Pac man’s tonsils could be, were a few independent landmasses which had been crushed together and bridged the gap between the two continents. They are known as the Avalonian, the Amorican, and the Iberian plates." Spain Rocks, by Richard Morley

Avalonia Rocks

It was the Avalonia rocks that connected what is now Maine and Spain. Geologists give a time range of between 400 and 600 million years ago for the collision of Gondwana and Laurasia. My attempts to verify that Maine and Spain are of the same parent rock concluded that parts of New England, including coastal Maine, did share parent rock with parts of Europe, including France and Spain.

So back to our Maine hike, the group then continued walking the trail and ended up on the beach. Here the ranger had us looking at the sand with the magnifying glasses. In the sand I could see the parts of granite, broken into their respective minerals. But there were also green sea urchin spines and very small pieces of seashells. This little "aha" moment burst into my brain where I realized that sand on the beach can tell you the story of both its parent bedrock and the life that has lived there. This is way cool, I thought.

Now when I look at sand I look for evidence of the creatures that live(d) there. Pink Bahamaian sand, pink seashells.

Colorful and interesting
grains of sand

Recently I found a website that gave me better ammunition for those times when I got overly excited about sand in front of "muggles". Gary Greenberg took photographs of sand at a magnification of 250x. His work is gorgeous, combining art and science into amazing photograph-portraits. No one who notices these photographs could doubt my collection again. :)

A Couple References:

Geochronology and geochemistry of the Pola de Allande granitoids (northern Spain): their bearing on the Cadomian-Avalonian evolution of northwest Iberia. Javier Fernández-Suárez, Gabriel Gutiérrez-Alonso, George A Jenner, Simon E Jackson. Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences, 1998, 35:1439-1453, 10.1139/e98-074
CAMBRIAN-NEOGENE PLATE TECTONIC MAPS. Jan Golonka, Institute of Geological Sciences, Jagiellonian University, Oleandry 2a, 30-063. http://www.dinodata.org/Golonka/phan.pdf
The Natural History of Novia Scotia, volume 1: Topics and Habitats. Nova Scotia Museum of Natural History. http://museum.gov.ns.ca/mnh/nature/nhns/t2/t2-2.pdf: The Avalon and Meguma Zones.

Postscript:

Displays of sand can be found in the following places:

International Society of Sand Collectors. (Even I was surprised by the existence of this group, and anyone can join.)
Nima Sand Museum, Japan.
Dig It: Secrets of the Soil. Exhibit at Smithsonian Institute. (OK, this is soil but sand is part of soil.)

Blessings

2011-07-21T09:50:00.001-04:00

Sitting on the deck this morning with my coffee I am feeling content and blessed. Even though the house is underwater and, recently divorced, I am a single parent struggling to meet the emotional and physical needs of my family, I am surrounded by beauty and love. There are many pat quotes that can be uttered, but none equal the genuine feeling of the blessings that surround me. Words are muted in comparison. Snapshots and videos are incomplete. Songs are written, perfumes are created... the art of nature and love outdoes all human replication efforts.

And thus, I enter a new chapter of adventures in my life. I am looking forward to it. May you walk in peace and beauty.

Properties of Alkanes

2011-06-01T10:25:00.002-04:00

Methane bubbles.

Ligher than air and flammable.

Underwater Fireworks

2011-05-25T21:59:00.001-04:00

More redox practice and another demonstration. I had tried this demonstration a few years ago with the Flinn Scientific kit but had been unsuccessful (as have many other chemistry teachers, according to my web search for answers). I was also concerned that chlorine gas was generated by the Flinn method. This time I went in a different direction. I placed about 12 mL of 18 M H2SO4 in the bottom of a large test tube, then layered an equal amount of ethanol on top. Clamped onto a ring stand, the ethanol heats up instantly. 0.5 grams of potassium permanganate are poured in and it sits on top of the sulfuric acid and more heat is generated. The reaction is as follows:

(1) KmnO4(s) + 3 H2SO4(aq) → K+ (aq) + MnO3+ (aq) + H3O+ (aq) + 3 HSO4- (aq)

(2) MnO3+ (aq) + MnO4- (aq) → Mn2O7 (s)

(3) Mn2O7(s) + CH3CH2OH(aq) → 2 CO2 (g) + 3 H2O(l) + 4 MnO2(aq)

Looked like lightning on the horizon. :)

Sacrificing Gummy Bears and Zinc Anodes

2011-05-24T17:32:00.000-04:00

We are all the way up to the Oxidation-Reduction chapter of our chemistry textbook. I'm excited to have made it this far but anxious about what the students are understanding of it. Rust is the common "real life" example given for "redox chemistry", but watching a iron rust is not much of an engaging 'hook' for students. So I introduced the section with a "Gummy Bear Sacrifice" which is a marvelous lavender flame produced by dropping a gummy bear into molten potassium chlorate. When heated, potassium chlorate decomposes:

2 KClO3(s) → 2 KCl(s) + 3 O2(g)

This provides sufficient oxygen to ignite and oxidize the sugar in the gummy bear, which is an exothermic reaction:

C12H22O11(s) + 3 O2(g) → 9 C(s) + 3 CO2(g) + H2O(g) ΔH = 5635 kJ

Why is the flame lavender colored?

The following day we talked about boats. Since we live along a major river and a few miles from the ocean, I thought it might make the whole "metals rust" notion relevant with protecting marine props from salt water corrosion with zinc anodes. They started getting the idea of how the electrons move, but are still struggling with writing the equations.

Being the Change

2011-05-02T17:58:00.002-04:00

On Sunday, May 1, 2011, 92 Pentucket Regional High School students and their chaperones joined 42,000 other people on the Boston Common to raise money for their hungry neighbors during Project Bread’s annual Walk for Hunger. These students raised $8,167 for Project Bread; Project Bread provides food for 448 emergency food programs in 130 Massachusetts cities and towns. The spectacularly sunny days and cool breezes made for a perfect walking day for the students who tread a total of 1,760 miles. “Long walk: accomplished”, said Julia L., and all the students felt the walk was worth their time and would do it again. The money raised by the students will go to food programs in their local communities. The community service effort put in by the Pentucket high school will help hundreds of people struggling with poverty and the high cost of living.
I have organized and coordinated the students on this walk for the past several years. It takes a lot of time and energy to coordinate, but I do not have the means to personally donate a significant sum of money to such a worthwhile cause. I can, however, bring together people with a common concern and the result is a significant donation. The many students who collected small donations can see how they build when added together and how one person can make a difference. According to Project Bread:

• $25 provides 50 people at a soup kitchen with a bowl of hot soup and a sandwich.
• $100 provides five families with a week’s supply of groceries.
• $200 provides ten families with a hot meal and a week’s supply of groceries.
• $500 helps support a summer food program for low-income children.

The day brought many blisters and sunburns and aching legs to the students, almost all of whom walked the entire 20-mile route. Olivia D. summed up what many of the students were saying with “It was a long physical and mental effort, but it was worth it!” “Definitely worth it not only for the cause but the memories”, added Teresa L. Comments at the end of the day by other walkers included:

• “This was definitely something I am proud to be a part of.” (Kyla S.)
• “Such an inspiring walk for an important cause. Worth every step! Will definitely do again next year!” (Molly M.)
• “I have never done the Walk for Hunger and I’m glad I did. It was a great experience.” (Yasmine A.)
• “I loved the route we took. It was a really nice day” (Kelsey B.)
• “I loved all the support [by people cheering us on].” (Stephanie P.)
• “Participating in this walk really opened my eyes to the reality of Hunger.” (Carolyn B.)
• “It was a life changing experience. “ (Leigh M.)
• “It really was a walk for hunger. I was starving at the end.” (Mike M.)
• “I could have walked more.” (Tom F.)
• “What doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger.” (Jeff F.)
• “Ow.” (Jonathan A.)
• "Lets quadruple the score next year! Next thing you know it Hunger will be nothing but a myth." (Christian M.)
• “Grueling pace.” (Jacob B.)
• “Most fun and exercise I’ve had all year.” (Tyler S.)
• “Ran the last two miles with Angelica.” (Emily D.)
• “Tons of fun.” (Olivia D.)
• “I have too many blisters to count.” (Desere B.)
• “So many sammiches.” (anon.)

Pentucket Regional High School Walk for Hunger Team, May 1, 2011

From the Project Bread press release:

As the economic crisis continues, more and more families are finding it difficult to make ends meet. Project Bread estimates that more than 660,000 people in the state are struggling to put food on the table. The continued high rate of unemployment and expiration of benefits have forced many people to seek food relief for the first time. Last year, Project Bread’s FoodSource Hotline, the only comprehensive hunger resource in Massachusetts, answered 47,000 calls from people in need.

These emergency food programs served over 57 million emergency meals last year to people who had no other place to go. Since 1969, the Walk for Hunger has spurred 1,080,800 Walkers to tread 21,165,800 miles and raise over $81.4 million to help hungry people.

World Kindness Week

2010-11-07T12:34:00.000-05:00

"There can be no happiness if the things we believe in are different from the things we do" ~ Meg Appleby

What will you do this week to make the world a kinder place?

Where can we start? Spread Love. Generate Random Acts of Kindness. Create Global Classrooms.

Textbooks as Resources

2010-10-27T12:43:00.038-04:00

Teaching two levels of high school chemistry from two separate books has me wondering a lot about the order of topics taught. The two books, Modern Chemistry by Davis, Metcalfe, Williams for the college prep level and Chemistry by Addison-Wesley for the honors level. These two books have distinct styles about them. Both begin with scientific methods and end with nuclear chemistry. I like to teach nuclear chemistry right after the atom, to merge it with atomic structure and because the remainder of the curriculum deals with what is happening at the electron level.

The Addison-Wesley book follows atomic structure with writing chemical names and formulas whereas the Davis, Metcalfe, Williams book goes to calculating moles. Electron configuration is presented in Chapter 4 of one book and Chapter 13 of the other. The order of teaching each of these courses differs and is directed by others and the requirement that we give matching tests.

Grrr... wish I had more control over order and pacing.

A Rubric for Thinking

2010-10-13T15:09:00.002-04:00

Our school has five habits of learning for which rubrics have been developed: Communication, Creative Explorations, Collaboration, Independence, and Thinking. Even though I have always assigned reflections to students, now I am asked to document their thinking using the thinking rubric.

The students have been given the five rubrics by many of their teacher and now students expect me to grade their reflections according to the rubric. In the past I have not graded reflections, just a "done" or "not done"; I've used them as informing of different students and concepts. My experience with following a rubric is that is all the student will do - the student will follow the letter of the rubric and not expand outside of the rubric.

Somehow the idea of a rubric for thinking bothers me, but I am not sure why. What do you think?

Hearing the Students

2010-10-12T15:25:00.000-04:00

It has been a repeating question of mine of how to better connect the laboratory experience with the textbook/concept learning. It seems that students just don't want to take the time necessary to truly analyze their lab work. Simply reviewing the experimentation has not seemed to make a difference.
Reflections have always been part of my classes and I read each one looking for understandings and confusions. Reflections get the grade of "did it honestly", or didn't do it. This year I have been using the IWB to have students post their lab data collectively. This is different to the old chalkboard method because I can set up a table ahead of time, save the results for each class, and quickly pull it up whenever the assignment is discussed. In reading student reflections I have learned how much they value having class data collected. It appears that students will follow review discussions more closely when their own data is used as part of the review. Conclusion: Keep collecting student data and use it more frequently during concept reviews.

imagine

2010-10-09T09:27:00.000-04:00

This morning I posted "imagine" as my facebook status. I did not realize it was John Lennon's birthday when I did so. Wonders.

1971 imagine music video

Current Event or Off-Topic?

2010-10-07T21:26:00.001-04:00

Another tragically large enviromental calamity occurred this week in Kolontar, Hungary when a reservoir ruptured releasing an estimated 185 million gallons of caustic sludge. Pictures show the devastation to the people of these towns.

Without actually planning on it I found myself discussing this news event in my chemistry classes. The curriculum had me in the periodic table of elements, so this deviation into a current event could have been considered "off-topic". It did, however, afford me an opportunity to reiterate how most elements are found in compounds and not as pure elements, and how ore extraction and refinement produces large amounts of waste products.

When I was growing up we had dinner as a family in the dining room. The TV would be giving the nightly news in the living room. My father sat with his back to the TV, but could see the reflection in the french doors behind my mother. Our conversations often included what was happening in the world and always ceased for the weather report. Very few students these days either eat dinner with their families or watch the news, so I was not surprised that few of my students had heard anything about the sludge flood.

I am happy with the class discussion on this current event and feel that it was successful as a chemistry lesson. The discussion occurred spontaneously during my first period and I chose to continue with the remaining classes. I am disappointed, though, that I was not prepared for this discussion ahead of time. My knowledge of bauxite extraction and refining comes from watching TV programs and even a quick stop at "How Stuff Works" would have provided me with more information to add more depth to the conversation. A quick search revealed an extensive presentation of a "Cradle to Grave" analysis of aluminum, by Professor Raquel Rivera Pinderhughes of San Francisco University, that would have also brought . Even so, I will continue to take chances on discussing current events to make chemistry class authentic.

The Quality of Science Labs

2010-09-29T13:35:00.002-04:00

Both types of observations have different purposes, but they ultimately come together to create the knowledge we have of the world today. ~Katie

Beginning two labs of the year, "Lab Techniques" and "Observations in Scientific Inquiry", initiate chemistry students into the two sides of data collection: quantitative data and qualitative data. Our first lab gave the students practice into using measurement tools of chemistry, specifically the mass balance and the graduated cylinder. Dry starch was massed in a weigh boat, added to a beaker with 50 mL of water, stirred, decanted into a second beaker, then filtered, the filter paper dried and massed. Finally, students conduct calculations to determine how much starch was "lost" during all these steps. Rather a sneaky choice for a product to track since starch is sticky so product loss will be substantial, but it drives home the need for precision in measurements and care in lab techniques.

The second lab was all about making qualitative observations. Copper chloride was added to water and observed for ten minutes. Aluminum foil was then dropped onto the solution and observed for five minutes, after which the solution was stirred vigorously and then filtered. Finally, the filtrate was added to 6M hydrochloric acid and observed for ten minutes. Students were required to make a minimum of 24 observations during this lab experience. Because this is the beginning of the year, students were not expected to understand what happened, and were directed to make just observations -- no inferences or assumptions. A blank page was left in their lab journals for further notes when they begin to understand the chemistry involved.

To tie the two labs together and emphasize how both types of observations must be recorded, students were asked to write a paragraph discussing the qualitative and quantitative data in terms of the labs that they did. In closing, here are two sample responses, one in partial form:

Quantitative and qualitative observations are two very different things. A quantitative observation includes specific numbers and measurements of a substance. For example, in the density lab with the tin foil, we had to measure the length and width of the tin foil, and then figured out the density, thickness, and volume. These observations all contained numbers so they are quantitative. A qualitative observation includes specific physical traits such as color and size. In the observations in scientific inquiry lab, we had to record the color of the water with copper chloride added and how the color of the water changed. We also had to record the color of the tin foil when we put it in the solution. These observations are more about physical traits so they are qualitative. ~Paige

A qualitative observation is an observation that can be described. This could be the size or color or the looks of a physical change. A qualitative observation is an observation that involves numbers such a measurements. The reason that qualitative observations are so important is because they can describe a change that is going on and what it looks like. No measurement is going to be able to tell this. In the most recent lab I did, Observations in Scientific Inquiry, I had to do an experiment and make qualitative observations about it. I had to describe the color of the water, whether or not it was bubbling, and what the tin foil seemed to be doing in the solution. Things changed a lot so I had to write down a lot of observations. The reason a quantitative observation is important is because it shows the measurements of something and can help to find out other things about the thing that is being observed. . I took the metal pieces and recorded the mass by weighing them on a balance.... ~Connor

Why Chemistry is Hard

2010-09-09T18:21:00.000-04:00

I am preparing for a year of teaching all chemistry to sophomores in high school. A lot of people believe that chemistry is a difficult subject yet I always found it to be most fun. Wondering about that I began searching around for why it might be that some people find chemistry difficult to master. This post is about what I found.

Chemistry involves higher order thinking skills.

Chemistry requires practice.

Chemistry is abstract.

Explaining this to the students will - hopefully - aid them in understanding what they need to do to be successful.

Daily Chemistry

2010-09-02T15:24:00.000-04:00

This year I am trying to immerse my students in chemistry thinking and learning right from day one. There were only two days of classes this week, and the first day had shortened periods, but I still managed to jump start their thinking about chemical reactions, and have a lot of fun at the same time.

Day one involved passing out papers, textbooks, and other administrative duties, but there was still enough time to go outside for the Mentos and Diet Cola demonstration. First I asked students (sophomores and juniors) if they remembered the difference between physical and chemical changes, and how they might tell one from the other when watching chemicals react. Once we had reviewed the difference I placed a 2-liter bottle of diet soda on a table. Then I took out a package of mint Mentos and a large test tube. The Mentos fit perfectly in the test tube, which I then invert over the opening of the soda; they slide right in quickly. Students often confuse the gusher that results with a chemical change because there was a "gas produced", so there follows a discussion of whether it was already there or if it was created.

To assist with the discussion I talk about putting a raisin into ginger ale (the bubbles attach to the wrinkles and cause the raisin to float) and explained how the mint Mentos is rough, there are tiny divets all over that the carbon dioxide attach to.

The second day our demonstration was a chemical reaction: vinegar and baking soda. For this I funneled baking soda into a soda bottle, inserted a baggie which I held around the nozzle while I filled, Let the bag drop onto the baking soda, quickly corked with a rubber stopper, shook and let shoot. I tried it in the classroom the first period but that proved a bad idea as the foam and cork hit the ceiling and sprayed over a bunch of us in the front of the classroom. After that I did it out of doors. The trick to this demo is knowing when to let go and not waiting until the pressure forces your hand (in which case it sprays all over you). The discussion that followed back in the classroom was a simple review of acids and bases and how we knew that a chemical reaction had occurred. The chemical equation was written on the board and I pointed out how they were going to learn how to read and write chemical equations plus how to figure out the best ratio of chemicals so there was no excess.

Such a fun short week. The students were great and I am looking forward to working with them.

Student Information

2010-08-31T07:00:00.003-04:00

One Week to School

2010-08-24T10:49:00.005-04:00

School starts next week and I am so excited to get back to the students. While there is still more lesson planning for me to do, I am full of anticipation for working with the students this coming year. I think all good teachers experieince anxiety for school opening.

Picturing my Classroom

2010-08-17T10:50:00.002-04:00

There is a difference between having a picture in your mind of what your classroom will "look" and feel like and having a plan to produce that picture. The picture must, however, come first. If we try to generate a series of lessons without having an idea of the road that we want the students to take, the teaching will not play out as desired.

In the critical first days, we set the tone of our classrooms. We set the pacing, the expectations, the atmosphere. I seek a student-centered classroom, which is more difficult to manage than a teacher-centered one. Allowing students greater control over their learning, their movements, and their speaking immediately raises the bar for teacher moderation. There will still be some class time that is teacher-centered (lecture notes, lab directions) where students are expected to "sit down, be quiet, and listen". But there will also be questions and discussions that I hope the students will generate and become responsible for. Ensuring student respectfulness during class times that are less than quiet requires the teacher to be listening and watching on many levels.

Knowing the proportion of lecture : discussion : lab activity is my first step. With the curriculum and frameworks before me, I establish an essential question for each unit and then lay out the files that approach that essential question, looking for the variety of means for reaching my students. (I use the Grant-Wiggins Understanding by Design approach to designing lessons, but that is another post.)

Overall, I have great students who will be respectful when they understand what "respectful" looks like.

‎"To control and sort young people for the sake of institutional efficiency is to crush the human spirit." ~ Ron Miller

I gave up on control in classrooms years ago, control is illusionary. Now I strive to make chaos look real good. ~ David Marcus Title

"Chaos is really good for art, and sometimes friction causes chaos. But chaos is really the catalyst. I really think that chaos is like gas. It's like energy." ~ Neil Young

I hope I find the time to post what happens on the first day back to school, but in case I don't here is a reflection from another teacher, Michael Doyle.

Back to School!

2010-08-12T16:11:00.002-04:00

It’s time! No more procrastination! It is back to school time and time to be organized. I have a little over two weeks to prepare for the upcoming school year. Inspired by ProfHacker, I’ve made a checklist of what I hope to accomplish in the next two weeks. Wish me luck!

Establish a filing system to corral papers that come up for each course and meeting group.
Create a model portfolio for each course, to aid in student understanding of expectations.
Review the curriculum for each course to identify changes in applications and potential uses of technology.
Set up computer file folders for each course. Our online submittal process is cumbersome for returning marked homework and requires multiple saves.
Complete work on my new website for students. I changed my webhosting over the summer and am completely reworking my site design.
Post the syllabus to each course on its website listing and on the school's site.
Create a Google docs form for student information. Rather than collecting and organizing papers with student information, I am going to try to keep basic information electronically.
Post two weeks of lessons for each course, including tutorials, homework deadlines, work guidelines, and lab assignments.
Paint the cabinet that got missed last year when we were painting, and do other general cleaning and room preparation.
Enter school events into my calendar such as holidays, breaks, due dates for grades, etc.
Refresh my work wardrobe. It is important to me to look neat and professional at work, even on days when the work is messy. A review of outdated, ill-fitting, and worn clothing and shoes is needed.
Stock up on office snacks and supplies.

How about you? What are you doing to get ready for this school year?

Nature Observations

2010-05-23T14:09:00.000-04:00

I got this email from a friend today and thought it was well written so I am sharing it. She is referring to a nest of hawks at the top of a building.

I've been to see my urban hawks already today. Saw Dad deliver a chipmunk. No one was that hungry though..."ah Dad, chipmunk again!?" and I saw some wing flapping and had a good long look at the feathery legs. I'm gonna keep visiting to see if I might witness a flying lesson. (it's about time, developmentally speaking, for the eldest to learn.)

Biodiversity Day

2010-05-22T10:22:00.001-04:00

Today is International Biodiversity Day, one of my absolute favorite topics (ask any of my students)! Teaching biology this year has not been as satisfying as I would have expected it to be, had I not been told to stick closely to the curriculum of the Science Department. Biology could have been a lot more enjoyable if we were not trying to teach every biology topic that has the potential to be on the MCAS exam. The curriculum attaches ecology to the end of the year where, in my mind, it should start off the year and be referenced as other topics are investigated. While I could not start the year with ecology, I have been integrating the ideas throughout the year, as I could.

This past week I introduced the H I P P O acronym to causes of loss of biodiversity. We thought about the procession of plants in a rocky or watery landscape, and went outside and looked at examples of succession on and near our school campus. Students then, sitting beside the pond, drew a series of pictures that illustrated succession. After creating biome travel brochures, we presented them and discussed differences between the flora and fauna of the various biomes, while sitting in a circle in the sun. The week felt like a kinder, gentler classroom.

The seniors put a trampoline on campus as a joke;

it made a great spot to sit and talk.

This week my plan is to overlap MCAS prep with more discussions of biodiversity, keystone species, and the devastation of the Gulf oil spill. The oil spill is obviously not in our ten-year-old books, nor is it on the curriculum, but it provides a good opportunity to discuss the impacts of humans on the biosphere. It is my belief that teachers and curriculums need to be flexible enough to take in current events and make connections between what is "in the book" and what is happening here and now.

So on this beautiful day, if there's one single thing you should do, you should go outside.

Is This Called Progress?

2010-05-15T08:28:00.000-04:00

At the end of last year I made a short list of things that would make me happy for this year, and I promised updates. Well, this is an update, though not the one I was hoping for. My six things were:

Get my pilot's license
Organize my work files
Be consistent with my vitamin regimen
Update and maintain my websites regularly
Sustain a vigorous routine at the gym
Take control of my budget

My number one goal has been put on hold indefinitely for financial reasons. :(
I have not begun my number two goal. I still have half the year?
Goals numbers three and five I have been successful with and I am feeling healthy enough to try hiking with other people.
I have gotten worse, not better, at goal number four. While I take responsibility for this regression I forgive myself because I know the stress I have been under with my divorce.
And goal number six is always a work in progress! Again, this goal has taken a major hit with the loss of a second income and all debts falling upon me.

So while it doesn't look like I have made much progress, I am still feeling hopeful. Here's to improvements in the next calendar quarter! :)

Students Blog

2010-05-04T23:05:00.002-04:00

Half of today's class was spent explaining how to blog and the other half was spent outside looking at the pond. For most science teachers up against the MCAS deadline this would sound a huge waste of time but I do not. So much more of our information is coming across the internet than through other media I believe it is important for the students to not just learn how to use the media but to become adept at it. I chose blogging because writing your thoughts is instructive for understanding about what you understand.

To introduce the assignment, I needed to define for the students what a blog is, how to sign up and post on the class blog, how to insert links to the text, how to embed videos, what a category is, and what tags are and how to use them.

http://www.evenfromhere.org/?p=1282

Wanting to give them a model, I posted an initial post about pruning wisteria bushes. Then I looked at the blogging rubric I planned on giving the students and realized my model would not be much of an exemplar, so I tried to add a bit more.

Their first blog assignment is as follows:

Blog #1: How do organisms affect one another’s survival?

Walk around your yard or neighborhood. Notice all the types of organisms, including plants, humans, insects, and so on. Diagram how the organisms interact with one another. Jot your ideas about the following on a piece of paper. Which organisms provide energy or nutrients to the others? What would you expect to happen if all the plants died? What about if one other organism died? Why is it difficult to make accurate predictions about changes in communities of organisms. Once you have jotted your ideas on paper, then go to the computer and add your post to our class blog.

We then went outside of the school building and took a walk around the pond. The pond was looking, in my mind but not the students', spectacular. The students saw a pond with dead and living algae and duckweed on it. When I made them all stop and started pointing out things to them they were quite amazed. "Look at all the fish in there! I didn't think fish could live in that!" So then I pointed out the fish nests, the frogs, the cattails sprouting, the horsetail rush, the turtle in the mud, the dragonflies, the spiderwebs, and so much, much more. It was a wonderful 15 to 20 minutes outdoors on a gorgeous day. I hope they take time to OBSERVE and ask questions about what they see, and to present those observations and thoughts to the blog readers. I wish I were a better writer and could give them a more interesting example as a model.

Worm Dissections

2010-04-09T12:32:00.004-04:00

Watching Worms

2010-04-08T22:32:00.001-04:00

We watched earthworms in biology class today. Sound dull? Not at all - the students thoroughly enjoyed it. What do worms do when set on a piece of wax paper on a desk? Try to leave, of course, but how? How do they move? What do they do on dry paper towels? Or wet paper towels? What happens when you put an acetone-dipped swab at each end? How do they smell? WHAT is that yellow stuff? Students were given a sheet to guide their observations and questions, but there was much exploration outside of the parameters of the guide sheet. The only rule was to be kind to the earthworm and not to harm it.

Why did I decide to spend classtime watching worms? To give the students something to make observations about, observations that could lead to questions, that could lead to experimentation or study, that could lead to more observations, that could lead to more questions... see where I am going with this?

What else? The curriculum dictates that I next teach human anatomy and then ecology, a sum of ten chapters of the textbook, over the next six weeks. And we watched earthworms today.

Earthworms are an important indicator of the health of garden soils, contributing to its biological, chemical, and physical health. They convert organic matter into humus and make nutrients and minerals more available for plant uptake, and aerate the soil. Soil sustains all life on Earth. Earthworms also form the base of many food chains. Thus, ecology. Earthworms are also organisms with musculature, circulatory systems and nervous systems. Thus, anatomy.

Watching worms was a fun way to move from the evolution unit and begin brainstorming future study.

Tomorrow, we dissect worms.

High School Science Fairs

2010-03-21T16:58:00.011-04:00

Years back, our high school held an annual science and technology fair. Honors students were required to generate a project, and it was optional for other students. Then the state high-stakes (you won’t graduate unless you pass) science MCAS exam came online with it’s added curriculum content and it’s consumption of class time, and time for guiding students through long-term individual projects was erased. Our Superintendent’s office is now, however, thinking of reinstating the science fair at the high school. Of course, there will be no compensation for time out of school for this, nor will any of our other responsibilities be removed.

What does a high school student gain from generating a science fair project that is beyond what they get from class? I asked this of my Twitter Professional Learning Community and these are the types of responses I received:

“Students doing science fair projects gain experience on whole project lifecycle, from planning to publishing results” @amoroso

“It helps them see that good research doesn't mean your hypothesis is "right". And after doing projects, students have no trouble identifying variables. Also see that doing on experiment leads to more ??'s They learn how to solve problems scientifically. Another perk: they can study a branch of science that may not be covered in the current year's curriculum.” @janellewilson

“Learning how to actually come up with a testable hypothesis. I've seen too many high school students who can't do it.” @sumrtime

“Ownership of learning. Problem solving skills.” @AltEdAdventures

“They can learn how to find their own answers to things they wonder about and how the scientific method works.” @flyingjenny

"Confidence that who they really are is OK. Like the girl I wrote about who doesn't like sports, music or clubs - but LOVES spiders." @jerrybattiste

Alternatively, this type of remark was also received:

“Sci. Fair- the politics of science, science as competition, style over substance. Sorry if I sound cynical. I'd rather be doing "good" science in class rather than "good looking" science for a competition.” @jeffmason

And the following when I asked about the pros and cons of science fairs at the high school level:

“I have never met a 7-12 science teach who ever liked science fairs.” @SciTeach3

“Con: kids with more money sometimes have unfair advantages which can affect self worth in some children. Pro: allows for connection between education and creativity. The children who actually do try get the experience.” @cbcurtisTTL

“Con: 2 much focus on fictional "scientific method". Pro: kids doing self-selected projects.” @science_4_all

“Con: parents often still doing the work!” @berrendsci

Many of the comments can be summed up by this:

“Can’t you convince your admin that your students 'do science' as part of your classes? If so, may be less waste of time on lame fairs.” @chrisludwig

Does holding a science fair demonstrate that good science is being taught? In my opinion there is very little real creativity in many science fair projects as a quick google search will result in countless already-created projects. So if we cannot convince the overlords that our students “do science” in class, and they insist upon a science fair show,

How can we ensure that the students’ time is spent effectively?
How do we make sure the “pros” outweigh the “cons”?
How do we remove focus from the fictional “scientific method”?
How can we ensure the science fair is at the high school level of inquiry, and not embarrassingly elementary or middle schoolish?

The thing to do is make sure we, the educators, give the students the guidance they deserve. Careful thought needs to go into the direction and documents we give them. As high school science educators we must ensure that our science teaching does not drift into the fictional or easy.

Figures in this post are from the document A Miniature Guide to Scientific Thinking by Dr. Richard Paul and Dr. Linda Elder.

2010-03-21T12:16:00.002-04:00

The crocuses are finally emerging in my front garden. I only saw purple ones; I wonder where the whites, yellows, and oranges are.

Today I pruned the wisteria bush, trying to only take off the newest vines. There are 'rules' about when and how to prune, but realistically - I prune when I can, which is better than not at all. The wisteria looks like it could take some more pruning, but I'd like to see the blooms before I take it down any further.

This wisteria should have been planted further from the house as some of the ground roots have, when left untended, made their way into the cellar through the cellar window. My thought when planting it was that it would make an archway from the front yard to the side yard, and maybe someday it will. At the moment, however it is at just the right height for hitting the driver of the lawn mower in the face. While beautiful in the Spring, it is an aggressive plant that requires continual monitoring.

How to Burn Out a Science Teacher

2010-03-20T17:59:00.004-04:00

Administrators, if you are looking to burn out your teacher, here's what you do:

Provide a classroom that does not meet the basic needs for a working day, e.g., an unheated classroom.
Ensure that classroom does not have the basic equipment for the course being taught, e.g., no fume hood for teaching high school chemistry.
Do not provide for adequate laboratory supplies to perform inquiry science, but require that labs be done.
Provide no more than 50 minutes out of each day to: prepare for teaching five classes; grade papers; enter grades into grading program; fill out IEP forms; complete referral forms for at risk students; write college recommendations; clean up lab materials; print progress reports; and more.
Schedule several after-school meetings in each week, during time when students could be getting extra help.
Mandate the curriculum you expect to be followed.
Stress the importance of "hands-on" science but do not provide adequate supplies or allow modification of curriculum.
Add two to four new initiatives each year that must be layered on top of the curriculum. Do not repeat the initiatives from year-to-year.
Be inaccessible for pedagogical discussions, and if caught in the hall and spoken to, act distant.
Do not listen to the concerns of your staff, or try to understand their concerns, or support them in the work they need to do.

Of course, you could do something else.

Thank goodness for my students!

Free, Differentiated Professional Development

2010-03-05T17:38:00.054-05:00

"Professional Development", aka PD, is an ongoing and required part of the teacher's year. Some PD is better than others. At our school, the Grassroots Technology Group, a volunteer group of teachers who share ideas on how to use Web 2.0 tools in the classroom, offered to share their experiences with their colleagues, and help them learn one new tool, as one of the PD workshops. We helped to guide the teachers to technologies that would fit their skill base, and thus offered differentiated instruction to our fellow teachers. The workshop options were: Delicious, Netvibes, Using Cell Phones, Photostory, Jing, Smartboards, and Glogster.

This was the second of a pair of workshops (see Dec. post). The first one provided an introduction to the tech. tools and thissecond one was to provide teachers with time to create something using the tool. It was teachers teaching teachers and was at no cost to the district.The rudeness of many of our colleagues was distressing. Teachers skipped the workshop, complained about having to go, complained about being required to participate, complained about being required to learn a new technology, went to the workshop and did nothing, returned to present to their departments with nothing prepared, and were generally very rude. This is not to say all of the teachers behaved like this, just enough to make it really unpleasant. As a group, the Grassroots Technology Group was made to feel like "the man" telling others what to do when in actuality we thought we were providing something more useful than the usual PD. As a group, the teachers who had run the workshops debriefed with each other and as a result we are considering not offering to provide this service again.

I wonder why the teachers showed such disrespect. In their classrooms, teachers do not tolerate their students doing the things that they did to their colleagues. Can you imagine a teacher allowing a student to do other work in class? Yet they think nothing of doing it when they take a class. I have many ideas, but would love to hear yours.

Runaway Schedule

2010-03-04T09:31:00.005-05:00

There are always daily occurances that can knock a planned lesson into plan B or C, but just one sick day can put me off-kilter for a week at school. Add to that a power outage school day, combined with three power outage days at home, and I felt like I was running on a treadmill that was out-pacing me. The curriculum doesn't change and the state test date doesn't change just because I had a couple of off days. Planning and preparation are key to a smooth-running classroom so when I get blips in my schedule I will only engage in a lesson or activity that I feel comfortable with. This means that new ideas need to wait. Schedule scrambling also means an increase in classroom clutter, but the students themselves are a great resource for helping pull the room into shape when lab supplies start stacking up.

Dissection of a Purse

2010-02-23T20:01:00.002-05:00

I can never find anything in my purse. It's not a big purse, it's not a small purse, and it's not overfilled (as it was during the days of babies and toddlers). I read a facebook status today that said, "So I was just digging through my purse to find my eye liner...and i found a beer...i think my purse might be too big if its hiding beers on me now." So what is in mine? No beer, but:

Hairbrush, pocket notebook, pilot log, checkbook, valentine from my son, camera, tape measure, folding botanical magnifier, ipod, tube of Archipelago Botanicals Oat Creme Milk handcream, eyeliner, dental floss, mini box of wooden waterproof matches (I don't smoke), liquid-filled compass, two pair of reader glasses (one purple & green, the other black with red flowers), two small smooth stones (one green, the other black with grey stripes), six lipsticks/lip glosses, copper bookmark, two clicker pencils, felt tip pen, ball point pen, mini-sharpie, debit card, license, medical card, work id, bandaid, multivitamin package, cough drop, file card listing lab supplies to buy, bobby pin, cell phone, spare camera battery, and $45.61.

So if you had to create the person who owned this collection, what would you infer?

Now if you read this far, you have got to check out great purses here and here; wish I had a couple of them!

Web Tools for Education

2010-02-22T12:33:00.001-05:00

Steve Dembo put together this great presentation on Using Technology: Practical Applications for the NICE miniconference in Illinois. Here it is, the top ten Web 2.0 tools for education:

Using Technology: Practical Applications on Prezi

Vernier Labs

2010-02-22T11:51:00.033-05:00

This year I have been learning how to use the science department Vernier probes and their LabPro software for labs in my biology and chemistry classes. They make it easier for the students to collect data, allowing more time for analysis. They are also great for giving students a feel for what scientists use in the field. I have now done three labs using the Verniers and LabPro software: a cellular respiration lab measuring CO2, a pair of endothermic and exothermic lab measuring temperature changes, and a heat of fusion of water lab, again measuring temperature. The software and tools were easy to set up for the students and running the labs went quite smoothly. Problems occurred in the usual areas for the usual students: they did not read the entire procedure before beginning the lab and re-do's were necessary for them. The software creates beautiful graphs for student analysis. As a teacher, though, I want the student to be able to understand how the graphs are made and create their own graphs. In this regard, I want the students to download the actual data and use Excell or other spreadsheet tools for graphing. The software does not provide a straightforward means for accomplishing this. In addition, the software-generated graphs can only be saved in a format that can only be read by the LabPro software, rather than providing an option of saving as a jpeg or gif for insertion into a lab report. Because of this, the student must create a copy of the graph and insert it into a document file immediately upon completion of the lab. These problems could be me not understanding the software.

Another thing I was wondering about is how much of the slickness of the program removes the student from truly understanding the concepts. It is one thing to push a plastic syringe and feel the pressure, and quite another to simply read a series of kPa numerical data. Creating hot packs and cold packs, which is what I normally do for endothermic and exothermic labs and which I did not do this year, could have helped the students connect better with the the endothermic and exothermic labs. With these thoughts in mind, in the future I will try to schedule an inquiry lab prior to the Vernier probe lab. It's a matter of timing and scheduling.

Chemistry Animations Links

2010-02-14T11:20:00.001-05:00

PhET: Free
online physics, chemistry, biology, earth science and math simulations Simulations and teacher-generated lesson plans.

Chemistry
animations index Chemistry Experiment Simulations, Tutorials and Conceptual
Computer Animations. Flashplayer.

Chemistry animations Links
to movies and animations. May not be up-to-date.

McGraw-Hill
Chemistry Flash Animations Narrated animations go with Chemistry Essentials
textbook.

KScience
Simple flash animations free to use for teaching.

Chemistry : Home: The Science in Context Developed
specifically for Chemistry: The Science in Context by a team.

Nature vs. Nurture

2010-02-11T19:00:00.008-05:00

Biology class yesterday and today was about genetics, genetic disorders, and Why Genes Aren't Our Destiny. The article they read, from a January 2010 Times magazine, explored the field of epigenics and presented how the choices a person makes in lifestyle can influence how genes are expressed, both in the person making the choice and in their offspring. Even though the text was a bit dense for my freshmen students, they were great about reading it and highlighting information that supported the premise (title) of the article, words that they didn't know, and ideas they found intriguing or confusing. Conversations varied quite a bit between classes depending on their make-up and abilities. Some focussd on the health aspects of exercise and the food we eat. Others picked up on the historical context of Darwin and Lamarck, and considered the possibilities of future drugs. In all cases I let the students lead the direction of the conversation and the conversations were, in my opinion, valuable to them. They were engaged, thinking, and participating.

Today we followed up with TED Talks videos, or excerpts of them, interspersed with discussion about the key points of the talks. Again, conversations took many directions, and again I let the students lead the direction of the discussion. We had to watch the Dean Ornish twice because he spoke so quickly. One student said "I'd hate to have to do a 500 by 500 punnett square" and there were some titters at some points, but the ensuing discussion was productive. These are the TED videos we watched, the first one in it's entirety and the others I chose excerpts from:

Gene's Are Not Your Fate, by Dean Ornish.
School Lunches, by Ann Cooper.
Teach Every Child About Food, by Jamie Oliver.

I felt a bit preachy, and wondered about imparting my values on the students when I trashed the big agribusiness and the overuse of pesticides, herbicides, and hormones on the food that we eat. Then a colleague pointed out that as teachers we do this every, we model for learners how to think, how to evaluate, how to approach a problem, and how to take keen note of what lies in the world around them. This is our job as teachers. Hopefully we present information that is balanced and well-supported, and allow disagreements to occur. Itis part of the education of us all.

My hope is that they are haunted by these ideas and explore them more, make even small changes in their diet and exercise habits. At the end of one class a student came to me and asked where you get organic beef because he had not seen any at the market his family used; I was able to tell him about a local farm that raised and sold their own beef.

One step at a time. Pitch, power, trim, patience.
I can't wait to share an article from Popular Science (November 2009) called "Toxic Avengers".

Patience

2010-02-10T19:00:00.005-05:00

I've been giving a young man the opportunity to learn how to drive a stick shift with my five-speed Honda Civic. He is a quick learner and really just needs practice time to get the shifting to be smoother. He gets so frustrated and embarrassed when he stalls or jolts the car, even though it does not bother me at all. I tell him not to worry, cars behind him will wait, and he's not doing anything that others have not done before him. Always when someone first tries to drive a stick they want a precise answer about when to shift; I always say "listen to the engine." The last time he drove he said to me "it sounds like it wants to shift" which means he is not relying on the tachometer for direction. Now I am pointing out "anticipate what is coming up" in terms of a hill, turn or stop sign with regard to his speed and shifting transitions. Because he can only drive my car occasionally he is not getting consistent practice to make him feel confident.

Pitch, Power, Trim Patience.

Since I have started flying, everytime I let this young man drive my car I can hear my flight instructor in the back of my head saying: "listen to the engine", and I can feel my flight instructor's patience with me as I struggle to make my transitions smooth. I keep telling him that he is exceptionally patient to deal with students bouncing the plane around. When transitioning the plane in altitude or direction, he has given me these four words to remember: pitch, power, trim, patience. This sequence can be used in other teaching situations as well: pitch the concept, power the lesson, tweak the details, give the student time to absorb.

Patience is the mark of a good teacher. A teacher can not expect that every student will reach the same endpoint at the same time and following the same path. Give the student the time he or she needs, provide patience, guidance, and understanding, and the student will succeed. I have a very good flight instructor.

A Dozen or so Charts of Elements

2010-02-07T09:58:00.004-05:00

The Periodic Table of Elements is the chemists main toolbox. There are numerous tables online that can be used by the teacher and the student for learning about the elements of the earth. Here is a bakers dozen of beautiful and useful favorites:

Dynamic Interactive Table of Elements. A multi-layered interactive table with tabs that provide a wealth of information about properties, orbitals, isotopes, and just about anything else the student would need.
Another Interactive Table of Elements. The benefit of this chart is that you scroll over the element and the information appears, rather than having to click and move through to another page. Contains all the essential data plus visuals of electron configuration and orbital configuration.
Printable Periodic Tables. If you want to print out a copy of a table for your students, this is the place to go. There are six versions to choose from. Another site that promises printable charts is ScienceGeek; I've not had time to check each link but it looked pretty interesting and should be explored.
Visual Periodic Table. This table would make a nice poster. Its different contribution is an identification of what the element is its appearance in nature and its use in industry.
Periodic Table of Videos. A whole set of videos by the University of Nottingham demonstrating properties of the elements and describing them. Quite a lot of fun.
Interactive Periodic Table Game. A module in the form of a game that can help the student with understanding trends and patterns in the periodic table. It also includes a link to a printable version of the table.
Los Alamos Lab Periodic Table of Elements. Colorful with interesting information.
These tables are great for the elementary or high school student. WebElements Periodic Table. Chemical Elements. Jefferson Labs Table of Elements. Easy to use, click on an element and you are brought to a whole page of interesting and useful information on that element.
ChemiCool Periodic Table. Lots of great information plus videos and links.
Wooden Periodic Table Table. An actual table shaped like the periodic table of elements and containing samples of the elements. Very cool.
The Photographic Periodic Table of Elements. Another site from the maker of the wooden periodic table table, this site contains pictures, stories, text, data, detailed technical data about every element, great pictures, information about radioactive decay chains, and more.

And then are the charts of non-chemistry elements that take the form of the periodic table of chemical elements:

Periodic Table of the Internet. Fun assembly of urls and ranks of search engines, blogs, tools, social networking, and more.
The Periodic Table of Comic Books. Fun links to comic book pages involving chemical elements.
Twitter friend @WillyB shared the Periodic Table of Beer Styles.
Twitter friend @BlessedBees shared the Periodic Table of Visualizations.

Now I am thinking about all the projects a teacher could assign to organize information (history, art, math) in an organized chart of elements.

Post post addition: Ben Wildeboer shares the additional site Chemogenesis Database of Periodic Tables. If you have the time to explore, and there are hundreds of periodic tables, there is a great amount of chemistry history contained in these tables as well as a huge variety.

My Rant about Scientific Methodology

2010-01-26T15:57:00.048-05:00

At some point at the beginning of each year, some poor student will introduce "The Scientific Method", which I take as an opportunity to rant about textbooks dumbing down science. I will be talking with students about making observations and questioning those observations, and someone will say something about the "steps" of the scientific method. I will stop whatever conversation we have been having about noticing details and start into my rant.

My rant consists of blasting textbooks for oversimplifying science and teachers for buying into these oversimplifications and being underprepared for the subject. I usually go on for several minutes, to make sure I get my point across, then I thank the poor student that triggered my rant for giving me the opportunity to correct this horrendous miseducation.

Why is it felt that to teach scientific methodology, there needs to be a formula of steps to follow? I have seen the scientific method defined as four to 14 steps. I have seen "lesson plans" to lead students through five steps that are to be memorized as "POHEC" (problem, observation, hypothesis, experiment, conclusion). I have seen definitive answers to questions such as "What is the order of the seven steps of the scientific method?" That is not how science works. No way. No how. Not real science.

And in what reality is a hypothesis and "educated guess"? Not the real world of science, that's for sure! My rant on this could be a whole separate blog, but please teachers, eradicate this phrase from your vocabulary.

(Added 5/6/2010: I found a great post titled "Is Teaching the Scientific Method a Form of Child Abuse?" You should read that as well.)

Science is circular, it flows from one idea or concept to another and builds upon itself and the work of others. This schematic better illustrates how real science works. I really like the benefits and outcomes frame as it concisely answers the "why do I need to know science?" question that students might have.

The complete version of this animation and a discussion of each element is contained at How science works: The real process of science. The elements discussed are illustrated in the figures on the same site. I strongly recommend that all elementary teachers and middle and high school science teachers read the pages at this site.

The Still Earth

2010-01-22T19:34:00.001-05:00

During my flight lesson today I scanned the surrounding sky for other traffic, saw that the sky was very clear and looked to see how far I could see. I was above Hampton, NH and I could see the mountains from Mount Monadnock to Mount Washington. To the southwest the sun was setting in spectacular oranges and pinks, and the tops of the mountains reflected the magnificence of the sunset in their snows. For me, at that moment, all stood still and there was not a sound, all there was was the beauty of the scenery surrounding me. I absorbed it all and was at peace. It was only a short moment, but I will never forget that moment for as long as I live.

I was later told that the ground-level sunset was jaw-dropping. What I saw could not be expressed in words.

Methane Mambo

2010-01-19T18:42:00.001-05:00

Random post of a video a student just gave me. Gee I love chemistry!

Fight Suck

2010-01-17T10:16:00.003-05:00

Schools suck the fun out of everything they teach. Do we want schools to suck the fun out of outdoor adventure? -- Peter Gray, Professor of Psychology at Boston College

This quote was posted in Outside the Inside Classroom in relation to the No Child Left Inside Act. The two sentences of the quote each triggered a separate reaction from me: 1) True. 2) But wait... no... but...

I've said before that everything important that I learned as a pre-teen and teenager I learned outside the public school system. And from what I've seen, the majority of public schools, the one I teach at included, have not changed their methods in the last 40 years. This is not to say that some individual teachers have not changed, but on the whole, the entire education system is still entrenched in 19th century teaching. Why is that?

Within my own classroom I work hard to keep the curriculum from boring the students into a stupor. This year I have found it even more challenging due to the fact that I am teaching a high stakes test subject; I have curriculum with strict deadlines. The first week of June, my freshmen will take - and need to pass for graduation - the state biology exam. Trying to maintain momentum, hammer in the vocabulary, run through the chapters, and provide thoughtful reflections and laboratory experiences is wearing me out. It can be done, but it is exhausting, for both me and the students.

One of the reasons I took this particular teaching position over others I was offered was the opportunity to teach Environmental Science. As an environmental scientist I had been teaching adults how to comply with environmental regulations. It seemed to me that a better approach would be to teach younger people the why and how, rather than trying to force an older work force to change habits. Little did I know that the "environmental science" course was simply a dumping ground for students who needed a third science and had were not going to take chemistry or physics. (The course is no longer offered at my school.)

I would love to teach a true environmental sciences course. I volunteer-taught an after-school enrichment program on ecology one year at my children's school. A more expanded and comprehensive program is one I am thinking about, however. The idea of environmental literacy being required was appealing to me until I read Professor Gray's "Schools suck the fun out of everything." If I agree with him, why would I want to support the legislation. On the other hand, my classes don't suck fun.

My thinking on this will continue, and I will post as they come along. It all needs ruminating on for now. In the meantime, I will continue to fight for the fun in valid and authentic learning.

Post-it Parking

2010-01-16T18:28:00.005-05:00

On my third flying lesson, while in the air, my flight instructor says "I can see you overanalyze and are a perfectionist. Don't worry about everything all at once; work on one thing and add as you are able. To help you out, I am going to cover up some of the instruments." He then proceeded to cover up a handful of the instruments with yellow post-its. "Now listen to the plane. Feel the plane." Thus I refocused my attention to flying and feeling the plane and not trying to keep instrument needles on particular lines. My flying improved.

Sometimes we need to "park" things from an agenda because there is only so much time in the meeting. Likewise we may need to "park" part of a lesson until a later date, to allow for student comprehension of supporting skills or understandings. Where my flight instructor physically covered up distractions to the work I needed to do, in a classroom teachers are confronted with distractions to the lesson that are not so neatly covered up by small squares of sticky yellow paper. Somehow we have to communicate to the student how to "park" the distractions so they can focus on the lesson. Somehow I need to paste a post-it over each child's distraction until he or she is ready for handling it. Yet another skill to teach our students: how to set aside distractions to enable task focus. A post-it metaphor will be coming to my mind now when I observe distractions to learning in my classroom.

River Watching

2010-01-13T09:22:00.003-05:00

I am blessed to live in beautiful New England with the Merrimack River across the street and a creek in the back yard. The water is fresh water but is tidal due to our proximity to the ocean. My morning commute is another blessing, being a short seven-mile drive along and across the river. With the beauty around me I arrive at work ready for the day.

Every day I think I should stop and take a picture of the river. It's life and vitality impresses me and every day has something to show me. When it is very cold in the winter a thin layer of ice may coat the surface of the river. Being a major river and tidal, these sheets of ice collect along the edges and sand bars of the river, catching other drifts and piling up. At low tide there may be a tall "butte" in the river, at tide change icebergs will be traveling. We saw one being used by two bald eagles as a place to argue over a fish breakfast.

Somethimes it has gotten so cold that the river looks solid with a thick white snowy layer. It is a fast moving river that no one should try to cross on foot, but I have seen a coyote cross in the early morning, dead of winter.

In the back yard as the tide comes and goes in winter, the ice cracks and moves to the higher areas. Cattails are beaten down by the moving ice. At night it sounds like there is a toop of marauders moving up the creek. As much as I dislike the cold, I love watching the river.

Literacy Challenges

2010-01-10T15:51:00.005-05:00

Literacy happens across subject areas.

It was ten years ago when I first started teaching after having spent nearly twenty in an engineering firm. I used a large vocabulary and, in my opinion, a sophisticated sentence structure and was frequently met with blank stares by the students. I very distinctly remember one geology lesson where a senior girl said "Now you're just making words up, Ms. McCarron." Since then I have somewhat reduced my vocabulary but more importantly I stop and ask "do you know what that means?" Many a lesson has been slowed by trying to uncover the meaning of a word and make analogies that work for the students. A French colleague of mine (in my former career) had once told me that the English language is difficult to learn because it has words that convey a specificity of meaning that other languages do not. When students ask why I use the unknown word rather than what I gave them as a definition, I tell them that the English language is full of marvelous words to illuminate understanding.

A few weeks back, during lunch duty, I sat with a student who was reviewing her English vocabulary book. Looking at the words I started using them in sentences that related to the lunchroom. "In five minutes a horde of students will evacuate the cafeteria through the egress on the left", I said pointing at the door. There were a few more sentences I made and she said that it was useful to hear them used in new ways.

At the beginning of last week, a student was complaining to her friend at the beginning of chemistry class about having to learn 20 new words for the week. I looked at her list and said, "write those on the side board and I will use them in sentences during the week." She looked flabbergasted. "You know all these words?!" I was honest - one I had never used or heard before and I would have to look up. She challenged me: "what's this mean?" pointing at 'stalwart'. "Strong, solid, brave", I said without hesitation. So the words were written on the side chalk board and they were used in sentences, not only by me but by the students as well. It was fun to try to sneak them in and see if they recognized I was using one of 'the words'.

I am a scientist, and I make a lot of English grammar errors. But I enjoyed the exercise and will probably have another set of words written on the side board soon. An article in the London Telegraph today lamented that Teenagers 'only use 800 different words a day'. I don't know about that, but I do know I challenge their vocabulary regularly.

Oh, the word I didn't know? Punctilious, which happens to describe the chemistry student's English teacher perfectly.

Onion Root Tip Mitosis

2010-01-07T16:09:00.002-05:00

Socrates on Stem Cells

2010-01-06T16:05:00.001-05:00

Today my biology classes used the Socratic method to learn about stem cells. The previous night's homework had been to read the one page of the textbook that related to stem cells and to then locate an article that they understood. Students were to study and print the article and come to class prepared to discuss. The following day the tables were arranged in a square around the room. Students were given a handout of The Six Types of Socratic Questions and told to review them in terms of their articles. We then began a line of questioning that I hoped would lead to both their further understanding of stem cells and their understanding of how to ask critical questions.

Some classes need more direction than others; some are able to run with it on their own. There were moments when everyone wanted to put in their two cents. Some students dominated but it was a requirement that each student participate. Even quieter students benefit from listening to the discussion.

At the end of the day, teachers were asking me if we were going to continue the stem cell discussion - students had apparently been talking about it all day.

Cause a Ruckus

2010-01-03T11:37:00.007-05:00

Seth Godin's blog today is a reminder to "just do it". This is what the Grassroots Technology Group has been doing for the last two years under the excellent guidance of Lindsey Barlow and Rachael Costello. Recently we have given professional development to school staff, an indication of how it has moved from being a near-underground venture to an accepted practice within the school.

Now I need to apply this same principle to my home life. My spouse's displeasure of me when I venture out on my own has kept me homebound much more than I would like. And he is less than happy at my desire to get a pilot's license. But at the urging of my friends and in the words of Seth: "I'm going. Come along if you like."

Six Things for 2010

2009-12-31T18:36:00.005-05:00

It is New Year's Eve day and I am thinking about things to look forward to in the upcoming year. Following the advice of Zen Habits, I am going to focus on habits that will bring more joy to my life. In keeping with one of my favorite quotes, my list of Six Impossible Things that I am imagining for 2010:

Get my pilot's license

The schedule for this one is entirely $$-dependent

Organize my work files

I am lucky to have a classroom aide. With her help, I am color-coding files for different courses and creating master files.

Be consistent with my vitamin regimen

My fibromyalgia pain has five components: stress (little control over this); sleep (monitored); medicine (not too heavy); exercise (not too much, not too little); and VITAMINS. I have a tendency to remember the vitamin component only when the pain levels increase, which is not a good method. I need to work out a better method.

Update and maintain my websites regularly

I want to blog more frequently and revamp my personal website.

Sustain a vigorous routine at the gym

Using a personal trainer has kept my FM pain down but is very pricey. I would like to get myself doing more work on my own.

Take control of my budget

My 6th resolution keeps changing. Taking control of my budget is a necessity for accomplishing goal no. 1. But I really want to take another physics class. And I need to set aside time to read literature. And salsa dancing! Hmmm...

Now to generate a plan for each of these habits. Progress to be posted here.

Have a joyous year, smile often, love one another!

Mitosis Cookies

2009-12-23T22:04:00.000-05:00

Levitating Golfball

2009-12-22T09:45:00.003-05:00

PD for Colleagues

2009-12-16T20:34:00.005-05:00

Our school has a few people who meet every Friday morning at 7 am to discuss the use of technology in the school. The principal, seeing the value of this core group of people, gave us the opportunity to run grassroots technology workshops on one of the professional development days. Generally, the teachers raved happily about getting pd that was useful and that didn't cost thousands of dollars, though there always seem to be a few detractors. (Yes, we did it for free.) My assignment was to train a dozen teachers in the use of Delicious and Netvibes. After the hour I felt that I had covered a lot of ground rather quickly and was concerned that people would not actually use the tools I had just shown them. My plan (we shall see if time allows) is to send my group periodic questions, tips, and links for their delicious.

Student Comics on Viruses

2009-12-14T14:21:00.009-05:00

The assignment was to create a comic book or strip on a virus or plague that was drawn from a can. Classtime in the library was given to allow for virus research, including watching a short PBS video on how a virus invades your body. (It was funny to say the words "research your virus or plague!") A sort of storyboard of the flow of the comic was required before the student could continue with creating the comic. Students were given a variety of tools they could use for creating the comic, including online cartoon creators and colored pencil & paper. The students had a good time with this project and I was very happy with the work and learning they did.

Twelve Months of Tweeting

2009-11-29T13:00:00.004-05:00

Featured Student Reflection

2009-11-15T17:51:00.002-05:00

I require students to create an Herbarium of native tree species. Students are then to reflect on the work. My reflection of last year's project was the subject of a previous post. Here is an example of a student reflection from this year:

Herbarium Reflection

I actually enjoyed the herbarium project. The only problem I had was not wit the actually project, but with the way I organized my time. I really enjoyed taking walks and searching for different leaves. This is because I love to walk, so It all worked out. The most challenging part of this project for me was finding the venation patterns and margins of the leaves. This was because I was always afraid that I would label it as the wrong type. I was way too careful in labeling the venation patterns and margins. My favorite leaf is the silver maple. I just really love its shape, and the tree that my silver maple leaves came from was huge. It is sitting in the middle of my yard, and for some reason I love it. If I were to do this project again, I would definitely start making the book earlier. It became very stressful working on it within the last week before it was due. I believe I spent about three hours outdoors taking walks and looking for leaves. If I could change something about this project, I would get rid of the part about depicting the fruiting body. I just do not see that as very important. Overall, I liked this project more then the insect one. I think this should be the summer assignment instead of the insect one.

Plagues aren't Funny

2009-11-08T12:43:00.000-05:00

An interdisciplinary project that our 9th grade team has chosen asks students to consider how people have managed conflicts throughout history. To integrate the biology curriculum, my students will focus on plagues, viruses, and other diseases, and how people have responded to these crises. Students will be asked to create a comic book that shows how a virus develops or evolves, what their assigned disease causes/caused, and any technological developments that came about as a result of the disease, in response to the disease, or that manages the disease.

To make this assignment more interesting than just focusing on one time period, students will be assigned different plagues, pandemics, and diseases ranging from the Peloponnesian War Pestilence,The Black Death, and the Spanish Flu to polio, smallpox, measles, malaria, HIV. By getting the variety of viruses, students should see how sanitation, vaccines, and medical practices have evolved to address these issues.

Comic books seem like an ideal form for presenting their research because the virus is a ready-made "villain", and scientists, doctors, or technological developments can be the "hero". The hope of the assignment, for me, is for the students to learn more about:

Viruses and diseases, how they infest, how they evolve
Medical technological advances
Writing nonfiction stories
Conducting research
Tools available on the web for organizing and communicating information

Students may hand-draw their book or use online tools for creating it. "Comic Life" looks like a great program that I am hoping to have students tap into for this assignment, although there are other cartooning programs available. They will also be encouraged to use brainstorming tools, either file cards or online mindmapping tools, for organizing their research into a story line.

Science Text Sets

2009-11-06T19:31:00.003-05:00

Our high school PD is focussing on increasing literacy across the disciplines this year. As part of this, we are reading Cris Tovani's "Do I Really Have to Teach Reading?" The book is excessively easy to read, and sometimes I feel offended by the assumption that I don't teach reading and by the level of the book readings. My first year as a teacher I learned that students struggle with science vocabulary and my sentence structure. That first year one student said to me "Now you're just making up words, Ms. McCarron." So I have been helping students decode new words, breaking down sentences, and generally slowing down to allow for their understanding for all my years as a teacher. Not depending on a textbook and using alternative texts to increase literacy and understanding in science is integral to my teaching.

Tovani's book does, however, articulate how these alternative texts can be better organized, and describes other types of texts that I might want to consider adding. Organizing text sets into unit groupings will help me remember to make what I have been using more readily available, and will encourage me to fill them out more. Text sets I already use are field guides, narrative expositories, scientist journals, newspaper and magazine articles, web resources, and excerpts of books. What I need to do now is 1) place what I have into an organized system, 2) fill out the units with more material, and 3) incorporate reading materials that are a bit easier as what I have tends toward the more sophisticated writings.

Students and Technology

2009-10-31T11:39:00.002-04:00

Students are not as tech-savy as one might think. They can thumb with lightening speed on their cell phones and they can download videos and music, but there are a lot of skills that don't rise to the surface when they make their personal priority decisions. I discovered this in an assignment that was due yesterday by my 9th-grade biology students. An article by Prof Hacker today, On not assuming students’ technical skills, has prompted this reflection.

This past summer students collected, identified, and created displays of insects. To continue the learning, I asked students to take pictures of their favorite insects and create a field guide of their catch on Wikispaces. The assignment I gave started with a class period of everyone simply signing up for a free wikispaces account and requesting to join the insect wiki I had previously created. (This took an entire period only because of the poor internet service in my classroom and the sharing of ten laptops by all students. Some students waited over five minutes just to log onto system.) The second step was to create a page using a template I had created. Thirdly students, in pairs, were to research and complete the required information, citing all sources, and finally they were to add pictures to the wiki. We will work on tagging posts later. At each step, I projected on the screen the webpage and demonstrated how to complete the task. The assignment was broken down into these pieces and students were given a week to complete. I work in a district where 99% of the students have computers on internet and the vast majority have cell phones.

My surprise came when students began emailing their files or turning in paper versions of their report. Reasons for not filling in the wiki came in the form of "I couldn't find the page" (there was a link on their school webpage assignment), "it wouldn't let me edit" (they had not confirmed their account through their personal email), "it kept disappearing" (click save), "how do I add the picture?" (showed the icon again), "my picture doesn't show" (the add picture instructions say double-click), and so on. As students came to me with their problems, I pulled the page up on the screen, would have the student log in and talk them through it, using their example to guide others in the class and having the student "drive" through it, so to speak, always being supportive and understanding of the problem so the student did not feel like he or she had a stupid question.

Although the assignment was due yesterday, I gave the non-honors students the weekend to complete the assignment. Giving a couple more days to feel successful is more important to me than an arbitrary deadline. I am still looking forward to this field guide.

Jack-O-Lantern Carving by Combustion

2009-10-30T13:58:00.003-04:00

Every year at Halloween I demonstrate a combustion reaction in a pumpkin. Adding calcium carbide to water produces acetylene gas. In air, with a spark, the acetylene ignites explosively. I conduct this reaction in a pumpkin that has been pre-carved and the face pieces replaced. It is always exciting for the students - so exciting that they often can't get a good video. Watch.

Step 1: CaC2 + 2 H2O → C2H2 + Ca(OH)2

Step 2: C2H2 + O2 → CO2 + H2O

A Matter of Balance

2009-10-25T15:35:00.005-04:00

So many competing interests coming into the public classroom make creating lesson plans a real balancing act. In my science classroom, while striving to teach an authentic curriculum that meets the state frameworks, I want to:

create a constructivist learning environment

connect the course to the students world

meet the students on their individual levels and on their technological turf

attain higher order thinking skills

continue learning with my students and give them practice for becoming life-long learners

My teaching incorporates literacy, art, history, and math into the science lessons. It is hard work for the students and I reach out to them to let me know if the work appears too "random", if they are not understanding the "why" of what I am doing. My time during the school day is consumed by watching the students, reading the students, helping the students, and reaching out to them in many different ways. My lesson planning comes after hours and can become trouble when my home responsibilities begin to get neglected. I've often told people I feel like a starfish, trying to reach out in many directions to many people at once. It's hard to keep my head above water... or sand. But every day is a brand new day and an aha moment from just one student keeps me going.

Starfish photo attribute: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hamed/ / CC BY 2.0

When a Chemist has a Birthday

2009-10-22T12:50:00.004-04:00

We can't have a wimpy little birthday candle, right?

The gummy bear sacrifice:

Above, when heated, potassium chlorate decomposes: 2KClO3 --> 2KCl + 3O2
This reaction provides enough oxygen to ignite and oxidize the sugar in a gummy bear.
C12H22O11 +3 O2 --> 9 C + 3 CO2 +H2O.

--------------------------------------------

There should be fireworks too. ;)

The "So What?" of Nuclear Chemistry

2009-10-19T12:23:00.004-04:00

Tried to give my students a connection to real life while studying nuclear chemistry including half-lives and radiation. I asked them to read the article "Life Returns to an Eerie Chernobyl", consider NPR's "Voices of Chernobyl: Survivor Stories", go to Chernobyl Facts site for more info, use Google Earth to look at pictures of Pripyat in the Ukraine, and finally give me a reflection on it all: - Based on the SCIENCE of nuclear chemistry, do you think the area is safe for people to live and grow food in? - What do you think should be done with the land? The students answered the reflection prompts and really did not reflect at any depth. Need to practice this more.

Nature Poem and Love Poem

2009-10-15T21:39:00.004-04:00

Sharing an Oscar Wilde poem:

We Are Made One with What We Touch and See

We are resolved into the supreme air,
We are made one with what we touch and see,
With our heart's blood each crimson sun is fair,
With our young lives each springimpassioned tree
Flames into green, the wildest beasts that range
The moor our kinsmen are, all life is one, and all is change.

With beat of systole and of diastole
One grand great life throbs through earth's giant heart,
And mighty waves of single Being roll
From nerveless germ to man, for we are part
Of every rock and bird and beast and hill,
One with the things that prey on us, and one with what we kill

One sacrament are consecrate, the earth
Not we alone hath passions hymeneal,
The yellow buttercups that shake for mirth
At daybreak know a pleasure not less real
Than we do, when in some freshblossoming wood
We draw the spring into our hearts, and feel that life is good

Is the light vanished from our golden sun,
Or is this daedalfashioned earth less fair,
That we are nature's heritors, and one
With every pulse of life that beats the air?
Rather new suns across the sky shall pass,
New splendour come unto the flower, new glory to the grass.

And we two lovers shall not sit afar,
Critics of nature, but the joyous sea
Shall be our raiment, and the bearded star
Shoot arrows at our pleasure! We shall be
Part of the mighty universal whole,
And through all Aeons mix and mingle with the Kosmic Soul!.

We shall be notes in that great Symphony
Whose cadence circles through the rhythmic spheres,
And all the live World's throbbing heart shall be
One with our heart, the stealthy creeping years
Have lost their terrors now, we shall not die,
The Universe itself shall be our Immortality!.

-- Oscar Wilde

Field Guide to Local Species

2009-10-02T17:57:00.010-04:00

The insects collected for the summer project will be used throughout the year to teach many different biology concepts. Students will be creating web-based pages of an insect and its habits, lifestyle, and living requirements. These pages will be contained together to make a field guide of insects we have observed in the area. Later, students will add tree species to the field guide.

For each insect in the "Field Guide to Our Biology Catch" students will provide a picture (preferably from their collection) of the insect and:

Latin name
Common name
Family
Description: shape, size, color, antennae, palps, wings, legs, thorax, abdomen
Food
Life cycle: stages of development, life expectancy
Habitat
Range
Interesting Facts (optional)
Cite Resources
Thus far into the assignment, the students have joined Wikispaces.com and are starting their research. Watch here for the results.

I've Always Loved Scavenger Hunts

2009-09-27T14:49:00.006-04:00

Through Twitter I was introduced to the site "TerraClues" which combines Google Maps with a scavenger hunt. Of course I had to try it! Here is a scavenger hunt on the History of Atomic Theory. The idea is to identify the scientist behind the clue and then locate his birthplace on the Google Maps. I really hope I get some comments posted on it.

Gifts I Have Been Given

2009-09-25T09:48:00.004-04:00

I'm not talking about Holiday gifts, birthday gifts, or end-of-the-year gifts. What I'm talking about are random "I saw this and thought of you" gifts. We all have a personality that shows through our actions, our words, our "decorating" style, and what we get excited about. I obviously get excited about nature. My desk has an assortment of pine cones and other fruiting bodies from different tree species. I enjoy looking at them and I will use them to illustrate form, function, diversity, and patterns. On a side table I have a series of jars of sand, labeled with the beach from which they were gathered. On this same table are rocks and minerals.

My husband is obviously my biggest gift-giver, but students and colleagues have joined in. Here are some of the random things I have been gifted this year:

Porcupine quills: This one is not really a gift, but the story is fitting for the post. Collecting porcupine quills from a road kill is something I have done in the past. After being hit by a car, the quills are spread over the road so there is no need to pull them from the dead animal. Porcupine quillwork is perhaps the oldest embroidery practiced by the Native Americans. I have also seen some amazing earrings created from porcupine quills. So driving along Rt 11 in NH one day we saw a road killed porcupine up ahead. My husband glanced over at me and said "You want me to stop, don't you." I just smiled and he pulled over. My son & I collected a handful of quills that were on the edge of the road.
Santana CD: OK, so this is not a nature-related gift, but it was something random from a student who knew I liked Carlos Santana.
Falcon pellet: This my husband brought home from his job site. He was working on the roof of a building that had a falcon nest. When he presented this to me he was as excited as a boy with a fancy new toy. It was charming.
Virgin Gorda Sand: Sand, a small rock and a sea urchin from a student's vacation.
Bird carcass: This was also given to me by my husband and also came from the work site where the falcons lived. It was stripped clean of flesh and splayed out in a grotesque figure of death. I could not get as excited about this gift as others because I was not sure how to sterilize it. He had brought it to me because I had been lamenting that I did not have an assortment of animal skulls for my biology class.
Live cicada bug: Brought to me by a chemistry student because I had assigned an insect collection project to the biology students.
Large quartz crystal: About four inches in length, this crystal was found in the basement of a worksite by my husband. It had been painted on one side, as if it had fallen out of the wall, and is fairly battered, but a beautiful crystal nonetheless.
Dragonfly: Found dying by the stairwell by a student in school, it came to me because of the insect displays in the hallway.
Paper wasp nest: Given by the school nurse, it is a piece of a large nest she discovered in her yard. It is saturated in wasp spray and presents all the stages of wasp development. The wasps appear frozen in time, emerging from the cells, as they were killed by the pesticide before they could fly away. It is grossly fascinating. The nest is a darker color than was original because of the insecticide application.

Parent Night

2009-09-23T20:28:00.005-04:00

On the first parent night of the year, parents get to listen to each of their child's teachers for ten minutes. I used my time to explain my philosophy of teaching, how I would intentionally leave their child without an answer, how a lot of the work they do in my class is active work and figuring stuff out for themselves. I explained how the I was working to reduce paper in the classroom and how their children needed to have internet access to submit work electronically. The parents wanted a handout of my course syllabus and expectations, yet they had signed a sheet of paper the first day of school saying they had read them and agreed to them. Hmmm.

The Importance of Small Creatures

2009-09-12T12:13:00.000-04:00

From TedTalks: As E.O. Wilson accepts his 2007 TED Prize, he makes a plea on behalf of all creatures that we learn more about our biosphere -- and build a networked encyclopedia of all the world's knowledge about life.

Fighting Nature Deficit Disorder with Summer Assignment

2009-09-04T13:44:00.010-04:00

Honors biology students were assigned an insect collection project to complete over the summer. Fifty insects were to be collected, killed, identified and displayed in a display case. I assigned a reflection of the assignment to my classes and I was surprised at the negative comments made by the students. We had a discussion of the work, how it was assigned, presented, and supervised, and I will be making changes so that next year's students are better equipped for the project. Specific modifications:

Problem: Not all the sites and printed documents had complete pictures. Solution: Need to improve the quality control of the electronic and printed documents.

Problem: Instructions for building the display box were confusing. Solution: I will rewrite the box construction instructions.

Problem: The assignment was handed to them on the last day of school without explanation. Solution: High school teachers should go to the middle school to explain the assignment directly with the students.

Problem: Transferred to school over summer, or transferred to Honors class over summer, and did not know about the assignment. Solution: Clearer advertising on summer assignments webpage and make sure the guidance department is aware of the assignment.

Complaint: There is no teacher available over the summer for asking questions. Solution: Actually there were two teachers available through email, netvibes, and facebook groups. Their availability should be clarified to the students when they receive the assignment.

Complaint: I don't kill anything - it is against my religion. Solution: An alternative assignment can be given if notice is provided at the outset of the assignment.

I have a reflection to share but I think I will make that a separate post.