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. 

PBL in progress

Hello! It's that time again! I can't believe how fast summer goes! I am always sad to see the summer end, but there is also something exciting about the start of a new school year. It's nice to be able to have a fresh start and regroup!

I have two sections of Earth Science this year and I am starting with my idea from a few posts ago. The original Buck Institute project is called "A Balancing Act' and was focused on learning about ecosystems in a biology class. I am modifying it for an intro earth science project focusing on how the four spheres are connected. The students will be working in design teams to design a set for a reality tv show where the premise is that people are put into a man made biosphere to live.  Each class is one biosphere and each design team is a different ecosystem. Within each team, each student will focus on one of the following aspects, geosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere. So far I have done just a few intro activities, including watching the Ted Talk by Jane Poynter on her experience living in Biosphere 2. I ended my last class by giving the students a memo that they have been selected to be on a design team for the new reality tv show and I showed the trailer to the 1996 movie "Biodome." Hopefully they are excited.

Now I just have to plan the next steps. In the original project the teacher had the students do posters and a report. In my previous post I had mentioned possibly having students create a mural in my classroom. Due to how many students are in the class I think a mural may be difficult. But, since we just deployed chrome books to every student I think I will incorporate technology. Maybe I can come up with a 3D modeling program. I still have to think the project part through. The key is going to be chunking the project into small manageable pieces and ensuring that the projects represent mastered content knowledge. So here I go. I will share my results.

Geodes!

For my Earth Science final project I had my students make their own geodes. They had to research and come up with a method of making geodes. They worked in groups of three and they had to have 3 geodes to display at the end. One was supposed to have the smallest crystals, one with the biggest crystals, and one was supposed to be the most natural looking. Here are some of their results. Turned into a very cool project. It took some of the students a lot of experimenting to get what they wanted. How often do students really get to "play"? Usually we just give them a set experiment and they have to follow it exactly. This was an awesome way for them to explore and figure out what worked and what didn't work. 

Idea!!

I am supposed to be grading....but I just had what I think is an awesome idea. If I don't write it down now I will forget it. So I'll put it in here, hopefully this summer I can the details ironed out and then one of my first posts in the fall can be showing some cool results! We'll see!

I found a PBL from Buck Institute (BIE) for a life science project on ecosystems.  The project is set for 7th grade. But after looking at it I think I could turn it into a starting earth science project and make it higher level/more rigorous and add content. I also had a few changes to make it my own.

The original project from Buck Institute uses the driving question "How can we design a completely self-sustaining ecosystem?" The project is for students to act as "set designers" for a TV reality show who need to propose a working ecosystem for an artificial biosphere. You can find the official project in the book, "PBL starter Kit" from the Buck Institute for Education. You can also go to BIE,org and create an account to have access to PBL information and other projects.


My idea is to keep the same concept but have the final project be a movie poster or show advertisement in the form of murals. Each group would do a different ecosystem and paint the murals around my classroom.

So that is my idea in a nutshell. Its just a brain storm now. But I'll let you know as I come up with more ideas and figure out more of where I'm going with it.

Time to try again!

Well...I did good for a while...but myself slip and I stopped updating. I'm back and motivated to try again.  I wasn't sure where to start up again since its been so long. I doubt any one is interested in a long drawn out saga about everything I've done this year.  Instead I'll just give you a few highlights and successes, a few ways I want to improve, and some ideas for next year.

The big push in my district this year has been of course technology, but also something called Project Based Learning. Some teachers are balking at this...and the big question is how can we still hit the content with projects and ensure the students learn the required material?  For me, I think it will be challenging but I am excited! PBL fits my teaching style and I think I can blend the lecture/content within the projects. At least that's my goal!   I tried one PBL unit in Earth Science this year and I think that although it was not exactly as cool as I thought it would be, I learned a lot about what not to do when setting up my project. All PBL's center on an essential question. For this one, my big question was "To what extent do humans own natural resources?" The students picked an issue to look at and examined the question through their group's issue. For example I had a group look at deforestation. They investigated how the ways in which humans use trees for economic gain and the impacts this has. Another group focused on the use of plastic and the effects. The students created videos that included written text, interviews, video clips, etc. My biggest success was that student engagement was awesome! Every day almost all students were working and focused during class. The students did the research and I think they had good information....the part that didn't go so well was the transition of the research and knowledge they gained to the video. The content of the actual videos themselves was low. The students could talk to me about the issue and had some great insight into the essential question but the video's didn't showcase that knowledge. Part of a good PBL is the publishing component. Originally I wanted the students to have a product that they would show to others outside of the classroom. This part got pushed to the side toward the end. I think if I had focused on the public presentation they may have been more focused on getting the content into the videos.

Other positives from the year are just that I think I am continually gaining more and more activities for my "toolbox". I can take any content and then in my head I can go through different strategies and its easy for me to pull out a strategy that I think will fit for the activity. I think my big goal for next year and this seems big but I'm going to try to do it in baby steps. I tend to try to jump all in so I plan to slow down and do one thing at a time. That said...my goal is to come up with an essential question and a project for all my units. And then embed all my strategies into the unit so that the students are still getting content. For example, the students seem to really seem to do well with foldable activities where they take notes in some sort of foldable and keep everything today. So maybe I can still do that...but online...and then they use that as a journal for their project. This is all very preliminary and I'm just getting my ideas together. As I finish up the year I need something to get excited about,,.so this is me brainstorming to get myself motivated. I still want to keep a heavy focus on literacy and do a lot of reading and writing. Not sure what that will look like but I'll update as I figure it out!

This entry has turned into a ramble and I'm not sure that I made any concrete points! So I'll leave it here with the idea that I will add and post as I figure out more firm plans to incorporate project based learning and technology into my classroom next year!