Second Phase of Blog project

I gave the student groups about 30 minutes to write down their best 10 (or come up with some new questions) that were understanding or application type questions. We then posted all the sheets on the bulletin board. In groups of 2 or 3, students had to pick 2 questions from all the lists of questions. They had to check with me to make sure that the question was of sufficient difficulty and was not something that had already been done before and then they put their names next to the question that they had chosen. Because I didn't check all the questions before they were posted (which saved a lot of time), it was really important to have the students check their questions with me. Some I said they just couldn't do, for a variety of reasons, some I modified slightly to make them a bit more broad in scope or cover a bit more curriculum and some I let stand just as they were. Each class ended up with quite a variation of questions. Here is the list from one of my classes with the instruction that I gave to the students.

Instructions:
1) all students in a group must work together on one computer.
2) you must access the blog to get the information to the question.
3) if you can not find enough information in the blog to answer the question you must ask permission from the teacher to go onto the internet to get additional information.
4) you must cite the blog postings you used in the blog directly with the information in your blog post.
5) you must cite any websites you have used directly with the information in your blog post.


Why do fish swim upstream? Clayton's group
Why do penguins swim but not fly when they are birds? Jamie and Shawna
Why do ice ages happen and what do you think would happen if there was one in the future? Elizabeth and Farha
What would the earth be like if the oceans were freshwater? Shawna and Jamie
How are watersheds formed? Jacob, Richard and Jeremy
Does a solar eclipse affect the tide? Elizabeth and Farha
Compare the impact between glacier, river and ocean erosion. Shania, Jake and Kyle
What makes an organism suitable to live in a tide pool? Shania, Jake and Kyle
Describe all aspects of river flow throughout its course and explain why the river flow and shape changes. Yousuf, Zhora, Samantha
Why can humans only consume freshwater? Samantha, Zhora and Yousuf
Why is there so much water in our body? Wentao, Binta, Breeze
Why is there salt in water? Jeremy's group
What is the difference between tides and waves? Liam's group
How does sunlight impact the temperature of the ocean? Wentao, Binta, Breeze
Explain why waves go white at the end of the beach. Emma, Jamie H, Evan
How does erosion impact the ocean? Richard, Jeremy, Jacob
Does the position of the sun throughout the day affect the ocean? Jamie H, Emma, Evan
How do seasons impact the ocean? Andrew's group
How does ocean pollution affect people? Liam's group
Explain how bioluminescence works and why some animals and plants have it. Maddy L's group
Explain why humans can not drink salt water. Christina, Maddy, Shay

Blog project - first portion almost over

The blogging project is nearing completion of the first stage.

I added students to the blog by allowing them to be authors to my blog (Go to 'settings' then 'permissions', then 'invite authors'). I had a separate blog for each class. We compiled a list of the most relevant questions for the water unit (see below). I left my post with all the questions open at the front of the room and students signed up for a question. When they had completed their first post, they came up and signed up for another question. They posted their information using pictures, videos, links and their own words. Some students volunteered to take on a third question so that we would have information for all the questions and other students worked on giving feedback and giving editing suggestions on the completed posts using the comment box below the post.

Tomorrow we are going to work together to come up with some really good 'understanding' and 'application' type questions. Students will then decide on groups and pick questions. They will only be able to access our blog site for the information to address these questions and they will have to cite any blog post that they used when explaining the answer to their question(s).

On Thursday students are going to write an 'open blog' test on the basic knowledge posts. We have talked about this already and students think it's a pretty cool idea. Again, students will only have access to the blog post to answer the questions and they will have to cite the blog where they got their information.

So far there has been great 'buy in' for this project. Students have been working hard and have been focused. I am a little concerned about whether they will learn all the information, but I think we'll just have to keep working with the material in different ways so that they have to use it repeatedly and therefore will hopefully remember and understand the information.

Again, any thoughts, questions or feedback would be appreciated.

Example post (just the first one on one of the class blog sites)

what are the strongest currents? why?


Currents are caused by different things. Wind effects the water that is closer to the surface. The currents in deeper water are caused by sunlight creating heat pockets in different areas, the warm water then tries to pass through the cold water where the sun hasn't hit and it creates like a "wind" underneath the surface. The direction the earth moves causes different currents in the North and South hemisphere. The North hemisphere's currents turn to the right. The South hemisphere's turn to the left. The last thing that has an effect on currents are continents. When the currents come into contact with continents they are forced to move either South or North. With the continuous flowing of currents in all four directions; along with the Earth's rotation, keep the currents moving counterclockwise in the South hemisphere and clockwise in the North hemisphere. The strongest currents are the ones that are caused by the Earth moving and sending them in different directions.

The following is the list of questions that the classes compiled: (I left the student's first name just to show how the sign-up worked)

What is a food chain? Maddy L.
What are some difficulties that animals living in freshwater have to overcome?
What are some difficulties that animals living in saltwater have to overcome? Richard
What are some difficulties that plants living in saltwater have to overcome?shayelle
What are some difficulties that plants living in rivers, lakes and ponds have to overcome?
What are some adaptations of aquatic organisms for reproduction?
What is an adaptation?(Jamie B)
What are some adaptations for survival (feeding, breathing, shelter)?shawna
What are some adaptations for avoiding predation?Farha
What is a bioindicator species?Elizabeth e
What is a sea-floor vent? What are some adaptations of organisms that live near sea-floor vents?

Human Impact
What is pollution? Christina T
What is acid rain? Frances h
What major industries cause the most pollution? jacob
How much water do we use? Shania M.
How fast do the water resources deplete? Evan G
What are pollutants? Kyle M
What are greenhouse gases? Maddy L.
Does pollution affect animals lifestyles? Clayton
What types of pollution pollute water? Frances H
How do we purify water? Wentao
How do we sustain water resources?Binta B
What are the impacts of flooding?kyle M
What are the impacts when there is not enough water?
What is a point source of pollution? What is a non-point source of pollution?
How does agriculture pollute water? Shayelle M
What happens when there is too many nutrients in the water?kyle M
What is biomagnification? jamie b
How do we monitor water quality? What do we monitor in the water?

Frozen water
What are the different kinds of glaciers and their distinguishing characteristics?jamie.h
How do glaciers shape the landscape? andrew s
Why/how do glaciers move? emma c
What is an ice field? Kyle S.
Describe some of the major glaciers in Canada. Clayton
What is an iceberg? Yousuf
What is an ice age?dominic
What happens during an ice age?breeze
How many previous ice ages have there been and when were they? Elizabeth E
What is pack ice?christina T
How do scientists determine the age of ice?shawna
How important are glaciers as a freshwater source? jacob

Ocean
What is a tide? How is it formed? breeze
What is a wave? How is it formed? Farha
What is a tsunami? (Wentao)
What is an ocean current? Binta
How does the ocean affect air temperature? yousuf
How are beaches formed? dominic
Where are the strongest currents? Why?emma c
What properties determine whether a body of water is considered an ocean? Jake S.
What are hurricanes? How are they formed? Shania M.
What does the ocean floor look like? Describe the different parts of the ocean floor.jamie.h
How do waves change shorelines?
Describe how waves break on shore. Kyle S.
How does temperature change with the depth of ocean water?
What is salinity and how does the salt get in the ocean?


Freshwater
What is a watershed? Jake S.
Describe all the watersheds found in Canada.
Describe the shape of a river from its headwater to its outflow.
What is erosion/deposition? liam c
What is the water cycle?Drew B
What is an aquifer? How is water contained in the ground? zhora c
What is the water table? Evan G
What is a lake? What is a pond?Kyle S.
What is a stream? What is a river?liam c.
What is run-off?andrew s
What is a wetland?richard b

Grade 8 Water Unit Blog

In grade 8, students study a variety information about water. We live in Calgary and although we have some pretty great rivers, it is a tricky time of year to spend too much time in the water, or even outside for extended periods of time. So, this year I'm going to try to have students generate their own understanding of the concepts through blogging.

We started last week by looking at a basic 3 tiered version of Bloom's taxonomy which included: Remembering, Understanding and Applying. Students then went through the curriculum and listed everything that they needed to learn. We then worked as a whole class to find logical clusters of topics. Groups were assigned to take a topic and generate 50 questions relating to that area of the water unit (there was some variation in the classes, but in general there were topics like: frozen water, oceans, lakes and rivers, human impact, wildlife, water movement etc). When the groups had 50 questions, they went through the questions and determined which were 'remembering' type questions, which were 'understanding' type questions and which were 'application' type questions.

Answering the 'Remembering' Questions
The next step is to get students answering these questions in an 'Ask Jeeves' type response. The goal is not to just get answers to the questions, but rather to make it clear and interesting for people to come and read the answers. For this portion of the project, we are going to start with 'remembering' questions and students are going to each answer one question on their own from each unit. They can find movies on the internet, do a lab themselves and take pictures, they can explain, describe etc, but obviously they can not just copy and paste something from the internet. Each student will write a blog with appropriate tabs so that others can later access their information. These blogs will be attached to my blog for ease of sharing information.

Answering the 'Understanding' Questions
Once all the 'remembering' questions have been addressed by the class, small groups of students will start to tackle the 'understanding' questions. The goal here will be to only use information posted on our communal blog site. If students can not find what they are looking for on our blog, they will write out the question missing and add it to the bank of information. Again, the goal will be for each group to address one 'understanding' question from each of the main topics.

Answering the 'Applying' Questions
The goal is to follow a similar strategy for these questions as well, but I am curious to see how these sections go and talk to the students and design something for this section that will work for them. So, I'll leave this portion open at the moment.

It should be interesting....wish us luck!!

Metaphors and dancing in class

I got a chance to use a new metaphor in my grade 8 class this week. We were discussing dissolving and the students were having difficulty guessing what happens to sugar when it is put in water. I asked them what they would do if there were a group of them and one of their friends looked down the hall to see someone coming to beat them up. Their first suggestion was to go and beat up the person coming, but I told them that they were all Buddhist and had taken a vow of non-violence. Their next thought was to hide their friend in a classroom, but I told them that the doors were locked. Finally, in desperation, they guy was coming down the hall after all, they said the they would make a wall of them around their friend, who would stay in the middle so the assailant could not reach their friend. This, I said, is what happens to sugar when it is put in water. One student replied 'so, basically, what you're saying is that sugar is a chicken!!'. Yep, that is correct, sugar is a chicken. They then asked if water was 'bailing' on its friend when it evaporated and I said that it was more like a parent coming and making the water go home for dinner; it's not like it has any choice in the matter.

It was such a fun discussion and right when we were finished my principal walked for a visit and I asked if someone would like to explain the discussion. One of the students explained the whole thing so clearly that I suspect that lesson might be one he remembers for a very long time. I hope so anyway!

Afterward, my grade 9 class came in and we learned DNA replication and mitosis by dancing out the moves. First of all I gave different students A, C, T and G and then had the others be the phosphate-sugars to make the ladder with some extra 'floaters' around the room. We walked through the process of DNA replication and then changed the students and did it faster and faster, until it seemed that they were quite clear with the process. Then we worked through some notes on mitosis and proceeded to act that out as well. It was again a lot of fun. After teaching meiosis I have now assigned the students to write a story, song, skit, analogy or comic explaining the three processes. They are due on Tuesday, so I'm looking forward to seeing some of their creativity in action.

New Grade 8 project

So, the grade 9 project ended quite well and I got very good feedback from the students. Most of the presentations were good, contained a lot of information and were quite creative. They wrote a test on Friday and I was happy to see that much of the information was retained by many of the students.

Now I have moved away from projects for the 9s for a little while until I start my biodiversity projects and am giving my grade 8 students some projects on body systems and disease.

In the past I have taught most of the material about the body systems and then had the students do a choose your own adventure murder mystery project, but I though that I would use the google docs and try something new this year.

Phase I - Become a Specialist (4 classes)
Before we started I told all the students that they were doctors and I congratulated them on this accomplishment! Now the goal was to make all of them into specialists. I created mixed ability groups and gave each group a system of the body (Circulatory, Respiratory, Digestive, Nervous and Urinary). The goal of each group was to answer the following questions:
1) What is the function of the system?
2) What are the main organs, tissues and cells of the system?
3) In general, how does the system work?

The groups were to make one google doc for their system and then everyone in the group had to know the information well enough for each person to pass a quiz on their system in order for them to move on to the next step of the project. I have never tried this before and I was a little concerned about how well it would work. The students had to work together and test each other, and then when they felt they were ready, all 6 had to come to me and tell me that they were prepared to write the quiz. I use an online course shell and so the quiz was a 10 questions multiple choice test that was marked automatically by the computer system.

As the students were working along in the document I gave feedback about the information and then got the students to remove the questions and try to make a document that was clear, concise and flowed logically. If I felt that their document was ready and they had decided they were all ready to write the quiz I opened the quiz and they all took the test. Overall, this worked really well. I had 2 of my students who tend to struggle fail the test. I allowed them to come and see me, I asked them some questions orally and if I was happy that they had the basic information, I gave them a 5/10 and the whole group was able to more on to the next step. I had two groups with multiple student fail and so I made these groups go back into their document, fix it up, study together and try again. All the students passed on the second attempt and I took the average of their marks.

Phase II - Investigate a disease (1 class)
I broke each of the groups of 6 into groups of 3 and allowed them to pick any disease that related to their body system and add information about the following:
1) What is the disease?
2) What is going on in your body if you have this disease?

This second question was strategic because students were not able to find this information easily on the internet. I wanted them to think about how the system worked and apply that to what would be happening if this disease was present. This portion of the project was not marked, but it has built their understanding for the next phase of the project and they enjoyed looking into a disease of their choice.

Phase III - Teach (one class prep, 2 classes for teaching)
I struggled with the best way for students to share the information about their systems to each other and I decided that I would get the students to teach the class. I emphasized that this was not the same as giving a presentation because they had to ensure that the other students learned the most critical aspects of their system. While students were presenting they used the white board, SmartBoard, diagrams, videos and demonstrations. I did step in if the information was incomplete or incorrect, but mostly my job was to slow down the presenters and to get the students to write out or simplify their information.

Phase IV - Diagnosing symptoms
Tomorrow we will be starting on the next phase of the project. Here students will work in groups of 2 or 3 but group members must be specialists in different body sytems. The group will be given a scenario of a person coming to their clinic, or of someone they meet in their life who is experiencing some sort of symptom. In each scenario, students must write out:

1) What they think is actually going on inside the body system(s) now that the person is experiencing this problem?
2) What will happen in this body system, and ultimately this patient, if the symptoms continue?

Each group will be given a scenarios from each body system one at a time. They will be able to come and ask me for more information if they feel they need to run extra tests. When they feel they have completed the task for the given scenario, I will get one of the other students in the class who is an expert in that system to look over their explanation and give feedback to the team. At this point, the team can fix up their explanation before handing it in to me to mark. I will give the students a small oral quiz on the scenario and then give them a mark on their explanation and understanding of the system.

The students are looking forward to this phase of the project, as am I. I think it will be a fun, highly educational and collaborative process.

The following is the list of scenarios:

Circulatory

1) A patient, named Jordan, comes in with a cut that will not stop bleeding.
2) You arrive on the scene of an accident and find a woman lying on the ground. You take her pulse and find that she has an irregular heart beat.
3) You arrive on the scene of an accident and find a man, Frank, lying on the ground. You can not see any wounds, but when you take his pulse, you cannot find a heart beat.
4) Sydney comes into your office and says that she is feeling tired and unwell. You take a blood sample and find an elevated number of white blood cells.
5) You have been out skiing in the mountains all day when one of your friends complains that he is feeling pain and numbness in the toes on his right foot.

Respiratory

1) A patient, named Sandra, comes in making wheezing noises when she breathes.
2) Nicholas comes into your office with chest pain. You do an x-ray and discover that he has excess mucus in his lungs.
3) You are attending a hockey game and a player gets hit in the stomach area with the butt end of a stick. You go to the ice to find that she is unable to breathe at all.
4) You are climbing a high mountain and one of your team members is feeling dizzy and lightheaded.
5) You are driving home and find that your neighbour's house is on fire. Miguel has just run out of the house surrounded by a cloud of smoke. He is coughing and cannot seem to catch his breath.

Nervous

1) A patient, named Kate, comes in with numbness in her left foot. She says she has been this way for over a week.
2) You arrive on the scene of an accident and find Jimmy lying on the ground. When you ask him to move his right foot, he is unable to do so.
3) You come upon an accident and go to help some of the injured. You shine a light into the eye of one of the patients and the iris does not contract or expand.
4) Rachel comes in to your office complaining about persistent pain in her knee.
5) You are going home on the bus and see another rider, Luc, fall down and start shaking uncontrollably.

Urinary

1) A patient, named Marcus, comes in feeling quite tired and unwell. You take a urine sample and find that he has excess sugar in his urine.
2) Caitlyn comes in quite worried about seeing blood in her urine.
3) Carmen says that she has been feeling tired and sick for a week or so. You take a urine sample and find that she has excess waste products in her urine.
4) Marnie has brought in her son Blake, a 5-year-old boy, who still often wets the bed at night.
5) You are hiking in the Grand Canyon in the summer. It is very hot and dry. You come upon a man, Randy, who is sitting on a rock and who is looking ready to pass out. You ask him if he has any water and he says ‘no, I didn’t think I would need any’.

Digestive

1) A patient, Sam says that he has had diarrhea for the past 48 hours.
2) Michelle comes into your office and complains of being constantly hungry. She says she is eating a lot, but that she is hungry, tired and sometimes dizzy.
3) You are out having dinner with your friend Pablo. He decides to have a chicken salad. Six hours later he is throwing up repeatedly.
4) Mitchell comes into the office complaining of a burning sensation in his throat and an acid taste in his mouth.
5) Alexis comes into your office. She is very thin and has indications of burning on the inside of her mouth and throat.

Space project is over!!

So, all the grade 9s in the school presented their videos, animations, skits, PowerPoint presentations and various other media projects to the classes today. We mixed all the groups from various classes so students could see the work from students they don't see in their day-to-day classes. The presentations were definitely strong on the integration of the curricular content and many showed a huge amount of effort on the editing and production of their presentations. We gave a feedback sheet to the students today and certainly an overwhelming majority liked the project and felt that they learned a lot of material. They also felt that presenting the projects to each other was a good way of hearing the information many times over and they felt that this helped them remember the material. When I tabulate all the feedback, I will put up the statistics on this blog. I am also giving a test next week and I am interested to see how much of this information is retained and what they are able to recall and apply now that the project is over.

Project almost complete

In the past week, all the students designed a plan for their project. One student in each group opened a new google doc for their group, added the members of the group and also added me. I put up a google doc with a list of all the important curriculum connections from each of the job descriptions. Their plan needed to include a general description of what would happen in each scene and also a list, or description of which curriculum points would be discussed in that scene. I told all the groups that they would not have class time to actually work on their project until the plan was complete and was approved by me. As groups were building their plan, I regularly checked their document and gave some feedback. The biggest stumbling block here seemed to be that the students would write all the curriculum points in one scene rather than trying to make it flow with all the information mixed together. I explained that it would probably be quite boring if for a whole scene the doctor talked only about all the health challenges. All the groups got the hang of it eventually and designed a plan in about 3 classes.

As students finished their plan, I talked to each group about the importance of getting the science into their project and then making an entertaining and educational presentations. Most of the groups in my class are either making movies using iMovie or animation using goanimate.com. Since then, students have been filming and designing the animation and they seem to be having lots of fun and are generally working well together.

So far, I would say that the two best features of this project are that students are really working collaboratively and that there are lots of opportunities for formative assessment both in class and in the google docs. The students only have one more class to work on their projects, but I have given them an extra week before the project is due.

Because all 8 grade 9 classes are doing this project we have decided to have presentations with students from different classes. We couldn't have them all presenting to each other because it would have taken too long. Instead, we decided to have 6 classrooms with about 8 groups in each class. This will take about 2 class periods and so the staff at the school has allowed all the grade 9s to be in our science classes for those 2 periods. I am really looking forward to seeing the presentations, it will be the culmination of a lot of work on the part of these students. Students and teachers who are observing the presentations are going to evaluate each presentation and we will tally the results and the top 6 presentations will be shown to the whole school at our lunchbox theater.