Every day I feel like my students are playing a twisted high school game of musical chairs. I painstakingly created a well thought out seating chart, pairing high achievers with students who need help, bilingual students with ELLs, and considering the IEP recommendations for "Preferential seating up front," separating those who get rowdy when they are together and the students could care less. As soon as I've finished taking attendance they are out of there seats and next to that empty one by their friend, chatting away and often disrupting class while I try to lead discussions. One kid doesn't even sit. He spends most of the period standing and milling about between two tables. Part of the problem is the empty seats. The classroom has seating for 42 but this particular class has only 32. That's 10 empty seats. While this is an improvement to the not-enough-seats I was having at the beginning of the year, it seems to create more temptation and ability for students to sit wherever. On the other hand, why shouldn't they have some autonomy? In our classes we have studied how the authoritarian environment of high school makes for unpleasant learning experiences. In college no one tells you where to sit. And if they aren't there for a particular reason (like helping their peers) then why not give them some choice? Maybe next seating chart they sit wherever as long as they aren't disruptive.
Having arrived in education fresh from a multiyear stint in pharmaceuticals, it's easy for me to address what [actions, writing, text] are authentic to the field of chemistry. With to Common Core coming and my own experience with how unfamiliar [students/ interns/entry level chemists] are with texts and procedures authentic to the field, I aim to make my classes simulate real life science. One way to do this is through text. In my current classroom, this is what we work with:
Lecture slides are surprisingly authentic. Chemists of all types rely heavily on powerpoint presentations to share their research, create webinars, and present new techniques in industry. As a research chemist and as a quality control analyst I gave as well as attended numerous powerpoint presentations. As a researcher these were focused on sharing research, but in pharmaceuticals they were new equipment training, introduction of new techniques, explanations of changes in regulations, or presentation of a troublesome drug product with ideas on how to overcome the issues. Students should not only be able to follow a presentation but they should be able to give a good presentation as well. Lab activities are also somewhat authentic in form. Perhaps not for research chemists, but for scientists working in pharmaceuticals or biotech following protocols and test methods is crucial. The pharmaceutical industry is very highly regulated and especially in quality control it is imperative for the analyst to follow test methods exactly. A test method will list materials needed (even specifying brands to be used), then have sequential steps for performing the procedure. Now this is not to say that students should not be responsible for designing experiments. A research chemist would be designing experiments, so students should get exposure to both modes of experimentation: following a prescribed procedure as well as R&D manipulation of variables and experiment design. Worksheets are markedly less authentic. I am personally not a fan of drill-and-kill problem sets. Students should of course work through a problems so they can master the procedures, but unlike the worksheets that only present problems out of context (something that I noted to be an issue before) they should be in context or even intertwined with a lab procedure, as often equations need to be balanced and calculations need to be made to figure out how to do a particular experiment. Textbooks are authentic in that chemists do tend to have a library of heavy books to reference reactions, equipment troubleshooting, or in the pharmaceutical industry the multi-volume United States Pharmacopoeia which contains descriptions of appropriate testing, equations, and conditions. The way the textbook was used, however, was far from authentic. The students had several pages in a guided workbook, a series of fill in the blank questions which were iterations of sentences in the textbook. A chemist would use the book as reference, to aid in remembering an equation or how to perform a reaction. It is more of a supplement than the focus of the chemist. After some assessment it is clear to me that we need to refocus how we are teaching these students. They have excellent procedural knowledge, and the strategies my master teacher has implemented do a fantastic job of having the students master these procedures. It is clear to me, however, that they have no idea how to apply these procedures outside of the box. For example, if you phrase a question in an unfamiliar way they are lost. This past months we have focused on metric conversions and scientific notation. While students know what scientific notation and metric conversions are, it appears that they are unable to apply the concepts. For example, as a warm up the students were asked, "What is 4.2x10^3 km in meters?" While any student in the class could convert the number from scientific notation to 4200, and they could convert km to m, they were totally lost when asked to do both at the same time. They had knowledge of the procedures but an inability to use their knowledge to solve a multistep problem combining two concepts. The problems the students are exposed to in their worksheets present these two concepts as isolated entities, causing the students to compartmentalize the procedures rather than thinking about them in a larger context. This is why we need to refocus our teaching. Having tricks for remembering procedures is all well and good, but if students don't understand the concept behind the procedure it loses its value. Time to reflect on my students' most recent lab experience. This lab was designed by the chemistry teachers here at my high school and it explores the property known as density. The students recorded the mass and volumes of 1, 2, and 3 bars of a metal (aluminum, brass, zinc, or copper), compiled the class data, performed calculations on the data, and produced a graph of the compiled averages. They then wrote a conclusion using lab report guidelines provided by the teacher. 1. How should lab journals be structured? Coming from a background in industry, I would like my students to strucure their lab notebooks in a professional way that reflects industry standards. This would include the following:
In this model the data collection is separate from the lab report, and I would expect the lab report to simulate the format of real world scientific papers, with introduction, methods and materials, results, discussion, and conclusion. This view differs drastically from what I have seen implemented in high school chemistry classrooms, which rarely distinguish between lab notebook and lab report. Indeed I have never seen a high school chemistry classroom where the students keep a separate "lab notebook." I have two-fold reasoning for this format of lab notebooks and reports. First, being that it is consistent with what scientists in the field would be doing. Lab notebooks are, in fact, legal documents and proper notebook keeping is something many of the trainees at my company struggled with since it is not really taught in schools. Second, writing full lab reports are important not only to again simulate real-world scientists, but also to promote literacy through researching and reading as well as writing. Literacy is a huge issue and science is notorious for ignoring that aspect of education. Back to the experiment... 2. Is this appropriate for the ability and understanding of the students? Yes and no. The data collection portion of the lab was very appropriate and built on skills the students had been working on for the previous lab. The analysis is where things got sticky. The students encountered percent error calculations and graphing procedures that had not been introduced in the class. The lab was supposed to be the modality in which the students learned these topics, but rather than performing the task independently they had to copy the instructors model since they had not yet learned the procedures. 3. What type of research do students need to do to extend their understanding? Students should research density, how it is used to determine characteristics of a material, whether it will sink or float, how it is used to identify unknowns, just general applications for the concept of density. They can measure density but to extend their understanding they need to wield this skill in context. 4. Is the curriculum unit appropriate for this group of 10-12th grade chemistry students? This unit introduces students to scientific measurement and allows them a safe and simple space to practice these critical lab skills. It would be more appropriate if slightly more time was spent discussing proper measuring technique and allowing the students to explore potential sources of incorrect measurement. 5. Do students have the opportunity to devise their own experiments? In this case, no. Students follow a very cut and dry step-by-step procedure. It doesn't appear that there will be many opportunity for the students to devise their own experiments due to the perceived pressure to cover the quantity of content required by the current standards. 6. Are all students participating equally? In general I would say no. There are a handful of students that are very obviously detached from the activities and sit back while their lab group does the experiment for them. In the class there is an imbalance in discussion participation, with 3-4 students dominating the conversation and the other 30 remaining silent. |
AuthorAlyssa Navapanich. Chemistry teacher in training. Archives
December 2013
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