I began modeling today.... in my Biology class. Broke out the whiteboards already. I began in Physics as well, but no whiteboarding until probably Thursday.
FCI tomorrow at the beginning and then the spaghetti bridge lab from Mark Schober's site. We pre-labed (pre-labbed? Pre-lab-ed?) today and I thought I did a fairly decent job of letting the kids go in whatever direction they wanted. I just set up a strand of spaghetti with the cup and the marbles and let them come up with questions. Eventually they pulled out the ideas I had thought of and two of my classes had ideas that I hadn't thought of at all! It will be interesting to see what they choose to do tomorrow. My first hour struggled to share ideas at first and so I broke them into smaller groups to talk about it first and then came back to the whole group discussion. That made them more comfortable and then they really got going. The other hours were great.
My favorite part of last Thursday (mini lab day) was the smile I received when a student realized she got to pick her own research question.
ReplyDeleteBryan,
ReplyDeleteI have also started modeling in Biology class, although i almost feel as if it is more socratic questioning with white boards than models, I would love to chat with you how you are implimenting it. kpokley@caseville.k12.mi.us
I did an intro white boarding, like the one we did in our class - draw three things that describe important things about you and one thing that the four of you have in common. We then tried to circle up and present. Everything went well, though circling was tough because of space constraints with 36 kids - got to work that one out... The sharing went well too with the students being very attentive to their peers. Also, I don't have a supply of markers yet so we had to use regular markers. They worked fine but the cleanup was tough.
ReplyDeleteWe ended up not having enough time for the lab after the FCI so I went over the lab report format and sort of modeled out what they'll do tomorrow. One of my favorite questions came from my student teacher. As I was getting things ready this morning for the lab he asked how the kids were going to suspend the spaghetti. I told him, I have no clue it's not my experiment. I can't wait to see how the kids tackle that one tomorrow.
ReplyDeleteI assigned a reading about data tables and Graphing for my physics kids yesterday. I am going to try and do the article discussions that we did with them tomorrow. We'll see how it goes.
As for my Bio classes I took a lab that was all pretty and typed out and tossed it in the trash. I just gave them the question and let them go nuts. They were excited about it. Especially when I told them I had absolutely no clue what their results would be. The question? What makes a good thumb wrestler? We had a fantastic brain storming session and then went back through the ideas and they eliminated the ones that were too difficult to measure (eg. strategy) and ended with 3-4 good testable ideas. It's go time tomorrow. I'm tempted to wear my referee shirt and find the "Let's get ready to ruuuummmmmmbllllllllllllleeeeeeeee!" soundbite.
"One of my favorite questions came from my student teacher. As I was getting things ready this morning for the lab he asked how the kids were going to suspend the spaghetti. I told him, I have no clue it's not my experiment."
ReplyDeleteNow that's funny. But I'm struck by something. You're implementing modeling, while maybe starting standards based grading AND you have a student teacher? I don't know whether to envy or pity that poor ED student.
Oh, I forgot to mention. Our freshman Physical Science teacher thanks you for the spaghetti lab. She thought it was great and used it on Thursday!
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