Art and Science

I am just about done with another painting project for Earth Science. This time they painted murals on the walls of the classroom. Not sure what I will do next year....but it looks great! I just have one small section that needs to be finished. At the front of the room above my whiteboard, a group is working on painting the whole geologic timeline in order.

I loved the idea when I started but was a bit nervous. First I had the students get in their groups and do a quick big post it with as many pictures and quick info that they could find on geologic time. They could do pictures/words/or anything that demonstrated geologic time.  I then lined them up and had them look at other groups. They had to place sticky notes on the poster that they thought was the best. I used the # of post it votes to determine the order the groups got to choose their Era for the mural.  The first assignment had students individually research their era/periods. They had to answer specific questions about the climate, animal/plant life, and general landscape during their era. Next in groups the students had to  create a rough draft. Once this was approved they started painting. All was going well and I got excited... but then it started taking a long time, and I started to feel like they were having fun painting... but they were using a ton of paint and I wasn't confident they were getting any content. When we final got to a stopping point and most groups were done, I did a brief notes lecture on major extinctions. I was happy to find that the majority of my students were engaged and following along. And not only that, I could tell that they were starting to grasp the enormity of geologic time. I could see a light bulb go off about what a small piece of geologic time, humans fit into.  By having the Era's around them they were interested and making connections! Success! 

The final piece to the project is an individual research paper on a prehistoric animal. The students got right into it and were immediately engaged in researching their animal. Also they seem to understand where their assigned animals fits into the geologic time scale!  

Continuing on...I am wrapping up the year. In genetics my students are going to create podcasts that answer the question "Why doesn't everyone get cancer?"  Even though I get stressed at the end of the year, I'm happy with how this year has gone and I am looking forward to implementing more PBL into my classes. I think I have a found a good fit for myself with PBL. My major goals are to continue to fine tune making sure content is incorporated into the units and that the objectives are still fully learned by students. Back to work I go! Hooray for the semester coming to an end! 

PBL on Forces and Newton's Laws of Motion

As part of a program/training I am working on, I recently completed a PBL with my Physics 1st classes. It was a co-project with another teacher in the district. She did her project with a group of 8th grade students and I did mine with 9th graders. We collaborated a little and had the final project together. Here is a brief outline/rundown.

Essential Question: How can you design a toy or game to demonstrate Forces and Newton's 3 Laws of Motion to children?

Students were given the role of toy designers and had to design a toy or game and then market it (with a video). The toy or game was supposed to help children to engage in and learn STEM skills.

The kick off event was that I set up a room of games and the students got to play games for the class period. They didn't have to do a whole lot of work, but they were supposed to think about the games through the lens of forces.

The culminating activity was family game night where families were invited to come play the games. And I am taking the students bowling!

Overall, a big success!  As with anything, the first time could always be better. Here are some the biggest successes:

• This was one of the first PBL style projects, I've completed where I felt like I didn't skimp on content. I felt a little rushed because of having to set the date for the family night ahead of time. I could have used another week of content/and building time. However, I felt that the students covered as much content and showed as much knowledge of the content, that they did when the unit was done traditionally. 
• Game night was a success! I loved seeing parents out looking at what their student work. It was fun for the students to be able to showcase their hard work. 
• The students learned the program wevideo. and I learned a lot about editing and using wevideo as an instructional tool. 

Some areas to improve:

• More focus on the design piece. Many of my students focused on physical games such as bean bag tosses and obstacle courses.  I would have liked to see more go into building a toy or game. And coming up with rules etc.
• I was a little rushed to cover the content. I would have given myself another week if not two more weeks for the whole unit. 
• I would have added in more check points along the way for student accountability. 

It was fun to put this together as a showcase because it created accountability for me to have it ready ahead and to put the thought and time into that was needed. From this experience I am motivated to continue working through the lens of PBL projects!  I am excited to come up with a plan for Earth Science next year where I teach all my units as PBL. 

I am currently working on putting my projects into unifying science themed units/issues. I am trying to think about the Next Generation Science Standards, unifying science concepts and issues. It is pretty complex as you can see from my crazy brainstorm session....and this brings me back to one of the reasons I started this blog, To help journal my thoughts and put the crazy all over the place ideas that are in my head onto paper and into coherent ideas! 

Pictures from Biosphere PBL

I finally am remembering to post the results from my Earth Science project. I'm happy with how they turned out. I have some new improved ideas for next time. And I still think there was more content the students could have covered. But overall I'm excited with what they produced. I added in a community piece last minute and brought in some guest speakers. But I would like to explore this part more if I were to do the project again.  If I were to do it again the big things I would do more with would be making sure students added in human component.  And then adding in piece that looks at climate and latitude.

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So much has happened in my classroom since this project....I am really going to work to try keep this blog more updated.  Even if nobody else reads it, I want to be able to use it as a journal for myself. Every time I finish a project or go to a conference or just do something different in the classroom, I get inspired. I'm thinking that when I'm down on what's happening in education and my classroom, I can come back and re-read some of the things I've done and look at the successes I have had. And just get some new inspiration. 

Its been a while since this project but I thought about posting because we just started a new project and my students are doing murals on my walls of the Geologic Eras. They are super excited and very into it already. I think the first biosphere project gave them confidence to paint. 

One more final thought is that I want a goal for myself for next year to be to go back to some of the stuff I've done with reading/writing across content. I think I've gotten away from that, and I want to add more art into my classes. I think art is such a cool way to show/express content and the students get into it. So more project based learning that incorporates reading/writing, art and science! 

Also one more idea I had was that since I'm going to be teaching mostly Earth Science next year, I want to revamp the class so that I'm still hitting the objectives but that it is set up in units by topic. So for example water, or matter. I think I can pull other sciences into the topics and create more interest. I'll write more as I start to outline what this might look like.