Imagine IT – Phase 2
The audience which I will be implementing my Imagine IT will be my 8th grade physical science class. Each class will have approximately 30-35 scholars. Dr. Jorge Prieto Math and Science Academy is roughly 95% low income of which, 37% are limited English and 19% are diverse learners. Being that I am a Science teacher, I will not have a classroom aide and there will be no co-teaching with a special education or bilingual education teacher.
With the above describing the teaching environment, I ultimately hope to have my scholars demonstrate their understanding of scientific laws, theories, terms and concepts using models. I have always felt that kids are naturally drawn to science because the vast majority of it is hands on learning. For the most part, labs have gone well for me throughout the years. The scholars are great when it comes to documenting results and sharing out with the class. Typically, there is a data analysis segment and then we move on to the next topic in the book. What becomes frustrating is when you refer back to a lab, where there was a rich discussion, and they look at you as if you are speaking a foreign language. I want to figure out what I can do better to help with retention and also applying that into a real world context.
Another issue that plagues my classroom is that scholars get upset when they look around and their results are different than other tables. It is always a question of who is doing it right and who is doing it wrong. It is maddening trying to explain to them that you can follow directions, step by step, and your results may not be as you expected. The most important thing is that you stay true to your results and do not fabricate data.
Now that the demographic and issues I want to solve are out there, the question becomes how do I plan to do this? First, I think I have to focus more on depth rather than breadth. Throughout the summer session, Team Juno had a lot of good conversations relating to this topic. Second, I will still incorporate the data analysis section of my teaching but as an added assessment piece, I want the scholars to start modeling their understandings in my class. As I think about the NGSS practices and how they are implemented in my class, the one that always comes up short is “Developing and Using Models.” As I think about the lack of retention in my class, I wonder if developing models to demonstrate their understanding would help. It doesn’t have to be anything terribly fancy, in fact, it could be something as simple as drawing a picture next to their vocabulary words along with the definition.
I plan to spend more time in my class this coming year focusing on the science and not how much we can get through. If everything goes according to plan, I want to give the scholars the autonomy to develop their models for understanding. I want to spend time on illustrations, diagrams, basically artistic forms to explain their learning. I want to give them extra credit to explain why they got the results they did during a lab so that they understand the world is not perfect and that there are error percentages. Something down the lines of the Stopmotion Quickfire we did would be an awesome aide for accomplishing this.
The audience which I will be implementing my Imagine IT will be my 8th grade physical science class. Each class will have approximately 30-35 scholars. Dr. Jorge Prieto Math and Science Academy is roughly 95% low income of which, 37% are limited English and 19% are diverse learners. Being that I am a Science teacher, I will not have a classroom aide and there will be no co-teaching with a special education or bilingual education teacher.
With the above describing the teaching environment, I ultimately hope to have my scholars demonstrate their understanding of scientific laws, theories, terms and concepts using models. I have always felt that kids are naturally drawn to science because the vast majority of it is hands on learning. For the most part, labs have gone well for me throughout the years. The scholars are great when it comes to documenting results and sharing out with the class. Typically, there is a data analysis segment and then we move on to the next topic in the book. What becomes frustrating is when you refer back to a lab, where there was a rich discussion, and they look at you as if you are speaking a foreign language. I want to figure out what I can do better to help with retention and also applying that into a real world context.
Another issue that plagues my classroom is that scholars get upset when they look around and their results are different than other tables. It is always a question of who is doing it right and who is doing it wrong. It is maddening trying to explain to them that you can follow directions, step by step, and your results may not be as you expected. The most important thing is that you stay true to your results and do not fabricate data.
Now that the demographic and issues I want to solve are out there, the question becomes how do I plan to do this? First, I think I have to focus more on depth rather than breadth. Throughout the summer session, Team Juno had a lot of good conversations relating to this topic. Second, I will still incorporate the data analysis section of my teaching but as an added assessment piece, I want the scholars to start modeling their understandings in my class. As I think about the NGSS practices and how they are implemented in my class, the one that always comes up short is “Developing and Using Models.” As I think about the lack of retention in my class, I wonder if developing models to demonstrate their understanding would help. It doesn’t have to be anything terribly fancy, in fact, it could be something as simple as drawing a picture next to their vocabulary words along with the definition.
I plan to spend more time in my class this coming year focusing on the science and not how much we can get through. If everything goes according to plan, I want to give the scholars the autonomy to develop their models for understanding. I want to spend time on illustrations, diagrams, basically artistic forms to explain their learning. I want to give them extra credit to explain why they got the results they did during a lab so that they understand the world is not perfect and that there are error percentages. Something down the lines of the Stopmotion Quickfire we did would be an awesome aide for accomplishing this.