In order to stay current with the times, I need to begin this blog with something related to the election results that came in last Tuesday night. Although I was saving this blog topic for a later date, I think it might just be apropos right now.
With an incoming Trump presidency, the promotion of education about global warming, mass extinction events, and human interaction with the environment becomes even more necessary for all science educators to teach to their students. The idea that the United States will relinquish some, if not all, leadership on the global efforts to scale back the damage being done to the planet is equally frightening as any of the other ideas put forth during the Trump campaign. So, what am I going to do as an educator? I need my students to understand:
The curriculum I will highlight today is my Coral Reef Project, which we are about to embark in Life Science. I came up with this project many years ago and am quite proud of this piece of curriculum. This is the kind of project-based, phenomenon learning that exemplifies a new approach to science education within a traditional science classroom. Set-Up: My students are finishing up the Classification and Evolution unit next week. Students are learning about the Permian Extinction event today in class, in fact. They are learning about how climate change seems to be a universal factor in all five of the last mass extinction events and that we need to understand those changes in order to survive. This will set us up to begin studying our next unit on Ecology. The Coral Reef Project is the culminating activity to that unit. There is no test for the Ecology unit, just the project results. Introduction: This project allows students to bridge science with policy making and it enforces the idea that science is applicable to the real world. Coral reefs are an important ecosystem and biome of the world. Humans depend on healthy coral reefs for their economic, social, and biological value. This is the stage in which a congressional-style hearing or debate on its management takes place. Students incorporate role play and debate in a jigsaw structure that ultimately provides the scaffold necessary to come to the understanding of how politics, economics, and biology are inherently connected to society. Student Roles (The Jigsaw):
Outcomes For This 80 Point Project: All students write a research paper on their topic. It is worth 30 points. All students give a short and collaborative speech before the Politicians. Students are told that the more the group comes up front as a team, the more sway it has with the Politicians. That effort is worth 20 points of participation. All students are to submit the index cards that collected their research data. These cards must be cataloged and are restricted to only 12 words per card of information. No copying entire paragraphs and a minimum of 25 cards are needed for an A. The index cards are worth 10 points. So, that leaves the last 20 points entirely dependent on the budget set forth by the Politicians. Of course, there is no way for all four groups to earn an A on this portion of the project and the Politicians typically feel the weight of that impact to their friends very heavily. After the class presents their unified speeches, it goes into debate mode. We spend one and a half class periods for the debate. Politicians kick start it by asking the first questions. The groups are given the opportunity to ask questions of their own to the other teams. I allow only a response, a rebuttal, and a close before moving onto another question. Politicians are allowed to interject questions at any time. I remove the Politicians from class to deliberate on the budget and this is usually to the many groans of students who want to continue the debates. The Politicians give me the budget the next day. They, too, have to write a research paper summarizing all of the interest groups’ pros and cons, efforts and outcomes. They have to turn in their index cards. They give a speech to the class by reading aloud the decided budget. And then, the class decides if they would like to re-elect the Politicians or not. The re-election is based on the ability of the Politicians to raise $200 for it. Re-election is able to be funded by a special amount of money each interest group has stored away for this purpose. The Commercial Fishermen have $70 allotted. The Coastal Developers can fully fund a re-election campaign with $200. The Tourism Industry can fund up to $100 and the Ecologists can fund only $30. I felt that those figures represented the real world fairly accurately. So, during the entire process, the Politicians and the interest groups engage in real world discussions because they are getting a dose of reality. If the Politicians cannot raise $200 for their re-election campaign, they all automatically get 14 out of 20 points…a C- grade. Anyone actually keeping track of the points will notice something. If a student, Politician or otherwise, gets full credit on the research paper, the index cards, and participates in the speech and debate, that they would get an A overall on this project, even if they were given a C- grade by a Politician or the class. When I created this project, I knew that all students needed to feel some level of power and influence in order to get full buy-in. But, I definitely didn’t want retaliation for any of the outcomes. Therefore, the lowest grade a student can give another is a 14 out of 20 points for this project. I only reveal this fact at the very end of the project to upkeep the appearance of power. Wrap-up: Students get a taste of reality and learn to empathize with many differing viewpoints on this project. They come away realizing that to conserve a coral reef, the local politics and economics must be accounted for along with current scientific understanding. It is the only way that effective conservation efforts can be done. It was heart wrenching to hear Kate McKinnon sing ‘Hallelujah’ on Saturday Night Live. It makes me feel that now one door has closed, educators need to be searching for all windows of opportunity in discourse and action. Without doubt, we need to ensure students have a chance to open their minds and think about the enormous task at hand to save the world.
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I have just done my first podcast! The audio is a little off, so I will be using a headset next time I record a podcast interview with Doris Korda. You can download our conversation at http://doschoolbetter.com.
As I begin to write a proposal to the Miller Community Education Foundation (MCEF) for money to purchase equipment for The Playground, I think an important exercise will be to define what Maker Education is to me and how I find ways of its incorporation to what I do in the classroom.
This is what I want for my students:
As a Life Science teacher, I have standards to abide by and timelines to meet. I am held accountable to ensuring that we cover ground on foundational concepts so that my students can be successful in successive coursework at the higher levels. I read of a metaphor once that really stuck with me about this issue of needing to teach to the standards. It goes something like this… Teachers are like architects. The standards are the building codes that must be enforced and followed. But, what kind of architect would you rather be? One that is only capable of building a typical house that will just do. Or, would you rather be Frank Lloyd Wright and create houses that are still structurally code abiding buildings, but simply have something recognizably magnificent emanating from it? Of course, I want to be the Frank Lloyd Wright of curriculum designers. But, I’ll take this metaphor even further. I want to build a magnificent curriculum to which my students can come to occupy themselves in for the year or semester and within that time, I want to provide them the opportunity to make this house their home. To customize some of the internal aspects and asethetics. To provide them the means for which they can imprint themselves onto its grandeur. So how do I accomplish such lofty desires? First, I learn about my subject matter deeply and I build my curriculum on the themes that persist as the cohesive string tying all concepts together. In Life Science, those themes are the characteristics of living organisms. Everything learned by students stem from that list and validates the reasons for why we learn the concepts that we cover in class. Next, I create or collect only the labs, activities, and projects that serve the above goals. That is how I vet all value that is added to my curriculum. How does Maker Education fit into all of this? To me, Maker Education is more than just having students build stuff using technology. Maker Education is the philosophy I take to ensure that my students have the opportunity to create their own homes within the houses that I provide. My students engage in activities to create, to recreate, or to design key aspects of their learning experience. The timing of those actions don’t have to be constant to be effective. It is ok to have students make, tinker, and develop their own designs sporadically throughout the course. The key is to deliberately incorporate some of this perspective with enough frequency that it is relevantly instilled into students as something they value. Additionally, the student-created designs should not be free of form in a Life Science class. When my students create their own dichotomous keys for sharks, they are creating their designs in a structured format. I want a dichotomous key, after all, as the product of their efforts. This key is equivalent to a computer program with binary choices. In having students create their own dichotomous keys, as opposed to simply reading the key to identify a shark, students engage in computational language development as they make and tinker with their designs. Students bring their personally constructed keys to be peer edited as a final cap to this activity. This is when they discover how important clarity in language and usage of evidence is so important to science. I consider this exercise a form of making. High tech machines are not always required to do such work. After students create their own dichotomous keys, they appreciate far more deeply the work involved in classifying life on Earth. Teachers of any subject matter can develop a student-centered learning experience where students make in order to demonstrate learning. I wonder how many teachers employ this approach to their teaching? Please share your stories with me and let me know. Terry Chou |
AuthorTerry Chou is a science teacher at Joaquin Miller Middle School in San Jose, CA. Three years ago, she fell in love with the idea of teaching innovation as a way to bring a unique research experience to her students and SEARCH class was born. This further developed her keen dedication to the advancing of science education. Archives
January 2017
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