Saturday, April 9, 2011

Week #5 in CEDO 525

Lesson Evaluation
This week we started to wrap up our work in CEDO 525 by applying the instructional strategies and technology integration into our classrooms.  Our first task was to evaluate a current lesson available on the web.  I chose the website Amusement Park Physics (http://www.learner.org/interactives/parkphysics/) due to my AP class’ impending trip to Six Flags Great America.  Over all the unit is solid and I will try to roll it into what I already do with my students.  You can see my full report on it in the Google doc below:

We also finished up our book Using Technology with Classroom Instruction that Works.  The final three chapters were Identifying Similarities and Differences, Homework and Practice, and Generating and Testing Hypotheses.

Identifying Similarities and Differences
When students learn something new they try to connect that something new to what they already know. For some students this connection is easy, for others it is very difficult and they end up learning small packets of information that have no application or reason for existing outside of a very small set of circumstances.  A teacher can make great strides in retention of knowledge and student achievement just by recognizing that what their students learn must be connect to what they already know.  My identifying the similarities between topics the students have studied a teacher can make great gains in their students’ achievement.  Technology can be used to organize these similarities as well a point out crucial differences.  I really liked the book’s use of data collection tools such as Vernier digital probes to better get students to visualize the similarities and differences in motion.  I do this in my own classroom and it really helps students understand the directionality of motion.

Homework and Practice
Homework is a dirty word to a lot of students.  Some of them see it as busy work and if homework is not properly handled it very much is.  The authors state that homework should be varied, have a feedback component and be age appropriate. All of these seem like very logical, but I am amazed at how often teachers (myself included) seem to forget these simple tenants.  There is nothing that seems to frustrate a student more than having spent time on a homework assignment only to have the teacher not engage the task that the student completed.  Last year I started teaching AP Physics.  Due to the massive amount of information required by the course my students were given a reading assignment each night to prepare them for the next day’s lesson.  They almost never did the assignment and our lessons would have to start from scratch each day.  I did not have time to implement reading quizzes, but I did try daily warm up questions to some success.  This year I was given access to a learning management system called Blackboard.  Now the students have a self graded reading quiz nightly that provides them with the feedback to know that they have done the reading and understand the basics of the material.  I love that the system engages the students while they are reading and I can program in what ever questions I want.  The quizzes can be taken as many times as the student wishes and I can make the quiz take only 5 minutes so that it is not a burden to my students or to me.  The system has made a big impact on my day to day teaching of the material.

Generating and Testing Hypothesis
As a science teacher generating and testing hypotheses are my bread and butter.  It came pretty naturally to me when the authors said that students should have the opportunity to test out their own explanations for what is going on around them.  I really liked their use of spreadsheets for students to investigate how changing a variable affects something that they observe.  In a science classroom all of this seems pretty cut and dry about how to implement, but I was impressed that the authors went on to show how web simulations could bring history alive.  It was neat to see that these ideas are not science specific.

4 comments:

  1. I wish I was able to have the ability to use Blackboard or a program like it in my class. How would you suggest (if the teacher has access to it) that it could be implemented if the majority of the class only has a cell phone as their way to connect to the internet outside of the school day? This is the position that I am in, and trying to get students to access even my Moodle portal has met with very limited success. I also ran into a parent who told me that her student or she should not need to access the internet to view what assignments are missing, or the grades. It was suggested to me very strongly that I should make phone calls for every student who ever missed an assignment. My reply that I would not have time to do so with over 40 students who have done less than 10% of the assignments for the year was met with less than enthusiasm.

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  2. I too am a science teacher and I have really been impressed with the use of spreadsheets. I have started to use google forms to collect the student data from our labs. After we collect it we determine our class average and our percent error. It has helped validate the concepts of accuracy and precision.

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  3. What could bring a lesson about the physical properties of a roller coaster to life better than a trip to Six Flags? Sounds like fun!
    Do you have a post-trip activity planned to bring their experience at the amusement park back into the classroom?

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  4. Homework is also a dirty word with my students - though they do know plenty of other dirty words as well. As I have noted before, I teach in a very depressed socioeconomic school district, and assigning homework can sometimes be like kicking at a dead horse. When I do assign “homework” I always give my students class time to start the assignment. I do believe in varying each assignment as much as possible. It is easier to do this in math. For example, if we covered four different ways to determine percentages and averages, I would assign two questions from each skill set, one even numbered and one odd. This is because the answers to all of the odd numbered questions can be found in the back of the book so that students can check their work. Students only receive credit if they have completed ALL questions. I will also finish the assignment with a new skill set they have not learned yet that is a lead into the next day’s lesson, if possible.

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