Gas law card sort..the aftermath...

WHAT AM I DOING TO HELP KIDS ACHIEVE?

HOW DO I KNOW WHEN THEY ARE THERE?

WHAT IS THE EVIDENCE?

     Just finished the gas law card sort...interesting results.  First, I had them do the sort in pairs and then some more quantitative gas law problems on their own.  They then had to check and critique each other's gas law problems (think peer edit).  About the card sort..

     Students had some great interactions.  Sometimes they can teach each other far better than I can.  They seemed to do very well on the sort and answering the questions.  I found that we need to work more on specifically answering the questions and working on short answers.  They got many of the correct answer but did not necessarily answer the entire question.  Every question always has two parts...essentially "What is the answer and how do you know?".  They did a good job of answering the first one but on the "supporting data" they would just say "see data card".  My fear is this is not enough for most short answer standardize tests.

     The big question is, "How did I know they learned anything?".  I think next time I would do some sort of formative assessment in the beginning to know exactly where they are at with gas laws and these concepts.  I am pretty sure it is new to them but with some fast "formative" assessment drills in the beginning (from Paige Keeley's books) I think I would get a better feel for the progress gained.

     So what are the "take aways" from this one???  Next time and in the future...work in formative assessment and discuss and model how to answer short answer questions.

Click here to see the video.

WHAT AM I DOING TO HELP KIDS ACHIEVE?

HOW DO I KNOW WHEN THEY ARE THERE?

WHAT IS THE EVIDENCE?

    We are finishing gas laws and I have been inspired by Mary's story.  I found a "Card Sort" activity from a 2007 Science Teacher magazine.  Students will work in pairs and sort 12 cards.  The first four will be placed in a column.  These are the "Data" cards.  They then need to find the "Interpretation" cards and place the correct interpretation next to the correct data card.  The last four cards are "Question" cards that should match the "Interpretation" card and the "Data" card.  They will tape down the cards once they agree on the order.  There should be four rows of "Data", "Interpretation" and "Question" cards that all coincide.  They will have to answer the question cards....with as few words as possible...and defend their choices.  They then will finish it off by doing some stoichiometry problems that involve gas laws.

     We are getting close to break and they are getting hammered with tests.  I thought this would be a different type of assessment that involves a different skill set as well (verbal and conceptual)....I will keep you posted...

ESL...not just for second language students!

WHAT AM I DOING TO HELP KIDS ACHIEVE?

HOW DO I KNOW WHEN THEY ARE THERE?

WHAT IS THE EVIDENCE?

Mary Palmer has a great idea.  She took a course on how to teach to students who have English as a second language.  In a nutshell (I talked to her in between classes) here is the idea.  Have students not only use the written word, but the spoken word and pictures to explain a topic.  After thinking about it, it made perfect sense.  If they have trouble with English, ask them to explain concepts through several other "modalities" (sorry for the eduspeak...).  She discovered a funny thing..it doesn't just help the ESL kids, it helps them ALL.  

So she had them take notes on a whiteboard with a few rules.  Take notes but use as few words as possible.  Explain it to someone else. Four people put it on one whiteboard. Check out the photo below...

So if a teacher is walking around, they could easily see these boards and know if kids are on the right track AND they could hear the kids.  I think she answered all three of the above questions...I might have to try this in chemistry...more later and KUDOS to Mary.

What am I doing to help kids achieve?

How do I know when they are there?

What is the evidence?

I had all of these amazing insights that I thought might help myself and other teachers...and then I bumped into a colleague by chance and she told me what she was doing to help her ESL students...and how it helped everyone else as well.  Let's cut to the chase...if it is good teaching and it will help others, I'll post it.  More later.