Blog Question 1, cont'd.
This week, we had the opportunity to interview two middle school students who were at the level dictated by the assignment. The first student said that she learned best by doing lab work, and the second student said that she listens to what the instructor tells her to do and then just "goes with it." Interestingly, both girls said that they need a quiet environment in which to learn, which seems to be the opposite from the lab environment that the first student just brought up and indicates that the girls view learning as a passive process, in which they gain knowledge from the expert. The second student also said that she would go to her partners for help (which means that they do work in a collaborative environment from time to time), but that she would trust the teacher for guidance first if she were learning something new. The first girl also said that she learns by implementing the strategies (mnemonic devices) her teacher tells her to use.
This type of environment is also counter to what the high school students I interviewed last week discussed; those interview subjects viewed learning as an active process, in which they tried example problems and conducted lab work. The boys said that they needed the teacher to be able to explain the concepts to them; however, they also had gained the necessary skills and had reflected already on their on learning styles to the extent that they expressed a sense of responsibility themselves to do practice problems on their own and to be aware of when they finally understood a concept. That is, the boys use their teacher as a resource but do not rely on her expert authority to learn.
I believe the age difference between the middle and high school students whom I interviewed may contribute to their different perspectives on learning. It was interesting that the high school students demonstrated metacognitive processes at work, while the middle school students viewed their sole source of learning as being the teacher. It is very scary to think about students being that young and of the responsibility of the teachers to bring them from where they're at during middle school to where they need to be; clearly, it is the work of dozens of responsible adults in these students' lives who allow them to prepare to succeed at the high school level.
Blog Question 3. (Work in Progress, especially if I get a chance to talk to teachers at GHS tomorrow!)
Process for deciding what is taught in the science classes:
From my understanding, teachers need to comply with standards set by the Iowa Common Core, the local district, and the school; however, teachers also need to use their own creativity to best differentiate the material for their individual learners and appeal to students' prior knowledge/interests. For instance, today's lesson was based on building a model of a coal power plant, which corresponds to the Iowa Common Core requirement that students demonstrate a knowledge of science as inquiry and "Use evidence to develop descriptions, explanations, predictions, and models" (Iowa Department of Education, 2012, "Science Grades 6-8," Retrieved from: https://www.educateiowa.gov/pk-12/iowa-core/science/science-%C2%BB-grades-6-8). The concept of of converting the energy in fossil fuels to electricity also corresponds to the standard: "Understand and apply knowledge of forms of energy and energy transfer" (ibid).
However, although these standards are established by the state, the teacher found the activity and used examples throughout the lessons from students' own lives. For instance, she mentioned the coal plant in Cedar Rapids and asked students who had seen it. She referred to a research activity they had done last Friday online, to active her particular students' prior knowledge. I observed two periods of the same lesson, and she differentiated instruction by going more into depth with the relationship between science and society with the second lesson, getting into the Industrial Revolution in detail as an example of the disadvantages of using coal power plants.
Analyze a lesson from my cooperating teacher:
Her anticipatory set was a simple but sufficient diagram of a coal power plant. She referred to the research project they had conducted last Friday to activate their prior knowledge. Her students worked collaboratively in groups to build a model power plant, and then they discussed how their model matched the diagram: first in groups, and then as a class, to catch any misconceptions students still had. They watched a video on fossil fuels while their models cooled down, which I felt was an excellent way for her to incorporate multiple modalities and appeal to different learning styles. Her closure was to discuss as a class the pros and cons of using this type of technology.
So, yes, her lesson plan did include all of the elements that we have been talking about. I will have to ask her when I get a chance where the lesson plan came from, but it looks like she has enough freedom to select which activities in particular to use (even though the Department of Education says that, at some point, students need to be building models). According to the teachers at GHS, lesson plans need to be submitted a week ahead of time but are pretty brief: learning targets, anticipatory set, a few activities, and homework. I will have to double-check to see to what extent that is the same or different at this school.
Anything else I noticed from Week 2:
Oh, my gosh. My jaw just about hit the floor when they were discussing climate change (which grew out from their conversation on the Industrial Revolution) during the second class I observed. The teacher drew a diagram of the sun and earth and showed heat hitting the earth and bouncing off (before she drew carbon dioxide on the board). One of the students asked if this is what happens during the winter time. His misconception is: it's cold right now, because the heat is hitting and bouncing off the earth. In contrast, the heat will not "bounce off" during the summer, so the heat will get absorbed and stay on earth during the summer.
You could have knocked me over with a feather. I keep forgetting how young these children are, and they must really all full of these alternate conceptions. As a teacher, I will have to establish a safe environment for them and be approachable enough so that they are willing to talk and share these conceptions during class discussion. It will also be prudent for me to interview them and give them pre-tests before starting new units, to catch some of these conceptions. As we have been discussing in Methods class, I will also have to keep a poker face and have the children actively engaged (through model building, lab work, Internet research, etc.) so that they can be made dissatisfied with their current conceptions.
Wow...what an idea of how summer and winter works. It never would have occurred to me (maybe it has, years and years ago, but I forgot what it's like), but what creative children.
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