Maybe they are learning after all.....

WHAT AM I DOING TO HELP KIDS ACHIEVE?

HOW DO I KNOW WHEN THEY ARE THERE?

WHAT IS THE EVIDENCE?

     Lately, it has been a bit crazy....first...remember the gold leaf demonstration?  I also did a quick "clicker quiz".  Students were asked review questions about nuclear chemistry, they would respond electronically and once all answered I could immediately post and discuss the answer as well as see how the class was doing as a whole.  Most did well and they did well on the test.  The "clickers" were a weird type of formative and summative assessment.  Not sure what to call it in education lingo...but I felt as if it worked well and the test scores seem to be half way decent.

     Got a great idea from Jim Smanik.  He does "Mini Posters" in his A.P. Bio class as lab reports.  Students make mini posters  with two file folders.  They first do a Intro, Abstract, Methodology.  This counts as the pre lab.  They do the lab and get data and finish with data and analysis.  The cool part is the rubric.  Students grade students with a rubric.  They could then accept the rubric, take the lab home and fix it before they turned it in.  I am going to give it a try in Academic chemistry.  It will be an inquiry lab on the amount of sodium bicarb in alka seltzer based on the loss of carbon dioxide.  The mini poster fits well into the "CER" method.  I will keep you posted.  Tomorrow the kids are having a percent comp, empirical molecular quiz.  It will be neat to see if the little books worked.