New Adventures... and Challenges

Since the school year ended in May, I have accepted a teaching position in a different district.  I loved my old school, but the chance arose to move to a school where I would have more room for professional growth.  I couldn't turn down the opportunity.  Although I'm not going to lie, in this first administrative week before classes, I have had moments where I have seriously questioned my decision!  I increase my stress-level by about ten thousand!

My new school has many absolutely amazing attributes.  There is a strong history of academic excellence here.  My colleagues and I truly work as a collaborative team.  While I have yet to meet the students, I hear terrific things about them, specifically their academic motivation.  I'll have the opportunity to teach a lot more upper level students, and possibly upper level electives (which were almost non-existent at my old school).  And have I mentioned that I finally have a classroom of my own again?

The main challenge is that I have something I've never had before:  a pacing guide.  It is giving me heart palpitations.  Not only does it not jive with the modeling curriculum, but it does not jive with my overall style of teaching.  The more I try to lesson plan using the dang thing, the more hostile I become towards it.

What the pacing guide feels like to me

On the pacing guide, things I've never covered in depth are given numerous days.  Things I've spent a good bit of time on are barely touched upon.  The guide has us flying through the curriculum, then spending what I feel is an excessive amount of time on review.  My students have always done exceptionally well on the Chemistry EOC, so in my opinion, I was giving them the knowledge that they needed.  While there's always room for improvement, such a dramatic and forced change to my own pedagogy style scares me.  Am I still going to be an effective teacher?

The fast pace also leaves little time for labs and activities.  I hate that.  Students don't learn science by reading and hearing about it.  I refuse to give up labs and hands-on activities.  I also refuse to give up inquiry and critical thinking, although with this pace, I don't see how I'm going to have time to think, let alone my students!

I may just keep this blog going as I experiment with trying to adapt MI pedagogy to a district-implemented pacing guide.  We'll see what happens...

Reflections on my year of Modeling Instruction

It's the last day of school for the students!  One thing I love about teaching in Tennessee is getting done school before Memorial Day... although we pay for it when teachers have to report back at the end of July!

Let's talk about my experience with the Chemistry Modeling Curriculum:

The Good

• Scope & Sequence:  While it needs some further tweaking to better match my state standards, I still find the scope and sequence far superior to the traditional textbook order.
• Motivation:  My students, for the most part, worked well for me all semester.  While they may have not been quite like the eager students I had for biology, I still did not have the typical complete shutdowns that I so frequently see with standard level students.
• Curriculum:  I felt the majority of worksheets, assessments, and activities were really strong.  There's a difference between having the students do a fill-in-the-blank textbook worksheet and actually having them draw out their thought process on paper.  The latter describes the modeling curriculum assessments.
• Emphasis on Particles:  I loved the constant connection back to particles.  Don't get me wrong, many still struggled conceptually with the particulate nature of matter... but I really believe they struggled less than usual.
• Energy Bar Charts:  I also grew to love the energy bar charts.  I feel like that is a great way to have students thinking about energy and endothermic/exothermic processes.  I hated them at first, but I honestly think they help even me better understand energy transfer.
• Improved Understanding:  The students who "got it" seemed to really get it.  In both biology and chemistry I had students achieving some of the highest individual EOC scores I've ever had in my career.
• Understanding of Labs:  I still love the "lab first" style of pedagogy, as the students are making constant connections back to the phenomena they see in the laboratory.  Also, I feel like doing the labs first improves their observation making and conclusion forming skills, since they don't truly "know" what they are supposed to be seeing from the get go.

Improvements To Be Made

• Engagement:  My biggest criticism of the chemistry modeling curriculum is that it is not very engaging for your average, low-performing chemistry student.  There are some great, engaging labs in the curriculum-- like the exploding can, the mass & change lab, describing chemical reactions, etc.  But then there was this lull from the 2nd half of unit 1 through about unit 6 were there is nothing but demos or overly complicated/dull labs and complicated worksheets.   Also, the videos and "discussions" were not well planned for the average teenager who doesn't give a darn about school or chemistry.
• Difficulty Level:  I also thought a lot of the curriculum was too advanced for the average standard chemistry student:  the vocabulary, the numeracy skills expected, the prior knowledge assumed, etc.  I'm all for having high expectations and challenging students, but at the same time, you have to meet the students at their ability.  The lesson plans read like they were written for an AP chem class, not a class full of ELL students or kids coming out of resource math.  There were a lot of the notes, articles, and activities that I just could not use.  Interestingly, I actually had the opposite problem with the bio curriculum.  I thought it was just right for standard students, but too easy for honors.
• Math Pedagogy:  The factor/label method used with the PVTn and BCA charts still makes zero sense to me.  I didn't teach it, because to me, it seemed more confusing to teach someone who already struggles with math a totally new way to solve equations as opposed to reinforcing what they already know.
• Achievement Gap:  This was a big one.  The modeling curriculum created an achievement gap with both my biology and chemistry students.  My brightest students thrived, while the lowest performing students just could not "get it."  The low performing students appeared to do worse than they would have with traditional instruction.  Some of these students who struggled are good students who do their work and try, they just have very weak critical thinking and conceptual skills.  While the EOC class averages were still good, I had an increased number of EOC failures with the modeling curriculum, which is a HUGE problem that needs to be addressed.
• Scope & Sequence:  While I like the scope and sequence, there are definitely some revisions that need to be made to work with a block-scheduled, single semester, EOC-based chemistry course.  For example, I just did not like unit 1.  Something about the way it was arranged made simple topics incredibly difficult.  I think I damaged my rapport with many students right off the bat in unit 1.  And then I had to cram a lot of incredibly important standards into my "unit 8," since those topics are not covered in the modeling curriculum until units 10-14.  While I thought these topics worked well together at the end, I do need better pacing so I'm not flying through such critical topics with so little time.  And then there's the fact that my students didn't even touch a periodic table into over halfway through the semester.  There were points at this semester when I felt like my students were doing more physics than chemistry, which only bothered me because of our limited amount of time.
• Absences:  At my school, standard-level juniors just don't come to school very much.  They have cars, they have jobs, they are involved in extracurricular activities of all types, good and bad.  It is SO hard to "make up" an inquiry-based lesson.
• Pacing/Sticking with "The Model":  Pacing issues caused me to more or less abandon the modeling curriculum for quite a few topics.

With all of this said, I still find Modeling Instruction far superior to traditional instruction.  I had wonderful evaluations by my administrators this year.  I found that the majority of the time, the days flew by for both me and my students.  I LOVED the biology curriculum and can't imagine ever going back to teaching biology the "traditional" way.  I feel like with a little tweaking, I can make the chemistry curriculum work wonders for my classes.  I can undoubtedly say that learning modeling instruction has made me a better teacher.

I really want to take a Level II workshop this summer, but there aren't any in my area.  I do have great intentions of taking some time to improve the curriculum for me next year.

One thing I'd like to do is go through the textbooks for biology and chemistry and align the chapters/sections to the modeling curriculum, since the obviously go in drastically different orders.  I want to do this for a few reasons.  Firstly, it will make my life easier for absent students.  "Go read pages 20-25, and 141-144" is a whole lot easier than handing them a stack of random notes created in class.  Secondly, I truly believe that textbook reading is a skill needed for college readiness.  We barely got to read this semester in chemistry and I think my students are worse for it.  Lastly, I feel like having the textbook connection may help some of my low performing students.  I've noticed with most of these students, they take beautiful notes... but they just can't make the connections from them.  Since so many of the low performing students have been victims of their education being only rote memorization, maybe referring to bold face words and chapters in the textbook will help them out.

Another thing I'd like to do this summer is to create a thorough PowerPoint for each unit that can be posted on my website.  Last year, I posted all of my notes on my website in advance so students could print them out if they so desired.  I ended up not liking that, because students would follow along on their technology devices instead of taking notes in class-- a good skill, but they weren't making the connections and recalling as well had they written it down.  But, I do like students to have the ability to refer back to the PowerPoint in case they missed anything.  I did not use PowerPoints consistently for every unit, and still don't really plan to do so, but I'd like to have them prepared.

I'm still not sure what else would be best to help my low performing students who fall into the achievement gap.  Graphic organizers?  Vocab lists?  The chemistry curriculum has these pretty cool list of topics covered for each unit, but I found the wording on the lists a bit advanced for my students.  I definitely plan to brainstorm more for next year!  At this point in my career, I feel very blessed to be at a public school that has not yet mandated canned curriculum.  It gives me the freedom to constantly improve my teaching skills!

Chemistry EOC and CCI Results

I think I've earned all of the above after this semester.  It was dreadful.  But I want to reiterate, it was not the chemistry modeling curriculum I found dreadful.  Rather, it was the combination of a lousy group of especially unmotivated students, attempting new curriculum, and a number of other factors out of my control.

I'm not going to lie, I was truly worried about my students' EOC scores.  As I have said before, a large portion of our annual teaching evaluation comes from student growth on their state exams.  Across the board, my students were not showing the strong mastery I usually see.

The EOC results:

Spring 2015 - Modeling Curriculum

58 total students (all standard)

Average Score:  83.5

Median Score:  84

Lowest Score:  66

Highest Score:  96

Failures:  3

2013-2014 - Traditional Instruction

79 total students (all standard)

Average Score:  84.0

Median Score:  83

Lowest Score:  66

Highest Score:  94

Failures:  3

As you can see, the differences are minuscule.  My class average was half a point lower, but my median was a point higher than last year.  My lowest scores were the same, but my highest scores were higher.  I think it's worth noting, last year's junior class was collectively one of the highest performing groups of students we've ever had at this school.  Overall, they were a bright and motivated bunch.  This year's juniors are collectively considered to be the polar opposites of their preceding class.  I only say that to illustrate why I'm not kicking myself over the half point drop in class average.

What I am kicking myself about is the failures.  I had the same number of failures this year, but with less students.  It works out to a 5% failure rate this school year vs. a 4% failure rate last school year.  If that wasn't bad enough, 2 of those 3 failures were complete surprises to me.  I had targeted a list of about 8 students whom I was seriously concerned about.  Of those 8, only 1 failed, which I had unfortunately anticipated.  But my other 2 failures were students with B and C averages in class.  They performed well on my assessments and the practice EOC.  I am dumbfounded as to why neither passed.  While neither were child prodigies, I had zero indication that they were at risk of failure.  One student actually scored higher on her practice EOC than the actual EOC, and she's not one who I would suspect of even cheating.  Consider me stumped.

I gave the Chemistry Concepts Inventory as my final exam.  This is a hard test geared towards college level students, so I don't base their "grade" off their score.  Instead, I give it to them as a pre-test/post-test and they earn a 100 on the final if they show improvement (I don't tell them their pre-test scores).

I plugged their data into another homemade Excel data tracker, hoping to identify some trends on where my students are weakest and strongest:

Pre-test data... with unit/topics listed at the top for each question.  Blue indicates something I felt was strongly covered.  Yellow were students who I had no data on because they transferred into my class late.

Post-test data, including the difference in score.  The student with a -8 was absent and didn't take the post-test yet.  The -3 difference on another student is correct, though.  The #VALUE indicate students who I didn't have data on or were exempt from the post-test due to school activities.

The data:

Pre-Test

54 students

Average Score:  5.6 out of 22 questions

Highest Score:  11 out of 22

Lowest Score:  0 out of 22

Post-Test

52 students

Average Score:  6.8 out of 22 questions

Highest Score:  12 out of 22 (not the same student who had the highest pre-test score)

Lowest Score:  1 out of 22

Average Gain:  1.2

Highest Gain:  6

Number of Students with Gains:  35

Number of Students with No Change:  10

Number of Students with Regression:  7

One student (whom I've had severe behavioral/disciplinary issues with all year) actually scored 6 points worse on the post-test than the pre-test.  Lovely.

I tried to track the questions for strongest/weakest topics and patterns on what students answered correctly and incorrectly, but the data was all over the place.  I couldn't identify many real patterns.  Overall, I think the majority of my students were completely guessing both times they took this test.  The students who had no change didn't even answer the same questions correctly both times.  

The only two questions where I saw a noticeable change in results were questions #7 and #8, which were related questions.  Question #7 is true or false about matter being destroyed when a match burns.  Question #8 is the reason for the answer in question #7.  75% of students answered those questions correctly on the post-test, as compared to 46% and 52% on the pre-test.  Nice gains, although I have to shake my head about the 25% who still managed to answer those questions wrong...

Flame Test Fun

Filling the time between the end of course exam and finals is always a challenge.  I have been using this week to catch up on a few of my favorite labs that didn't quite fit in with the modeling curriculum.  Today, we did flame tests.

I'm not sure if flame tests are included in the later units of the modeling curriculum.  The level 1 chemistry modeling workshop only goes through the core units and doesn't cover the current model of the atom.  I had to rush through the model of the atom so quickly before the EOC that I barely looked at the lesson plans for those later units.  But I was sorry we didn't get to this lab, since it is always a hit with the students.

I usually do it as an "identify the unknown" lab:  I give the students a list of ionic compounds and the color flame that each compound produces.  Then I give them about 6 very benign "unknowns" to identify (in the numbered weighing dishes in the picture).  I put a beaker of wooden splints soaked in DI water at the table and just have them dip a splint into a compound and hold it in the flame.  The burners don't get quite as crusty using the wooden splints as they do when using wire loops, and the disposable splits prevent cross contamination.  This method seems to produce the best colors for me, safely, with minimal prep and minimal wastage of chemicals.

Tomorrow, I'm thinking we might make rock salt ice cream.  In the past, I've done it with ice/rock salt and I've done it with dry ice.  The dry ice is fun, but it can be a pain to deal with since I have to pick it up on my way to school.  And one year I had a student manage to somehow get a piece of dry ice down their sock and irritate their skin.  I'm not even kidding!

EOC Prep

This Thursday is my student's EOC.  They are not even remotely ready.

Friday I had my students take our state's only EOC practice test that they have available for Chemistry.  You can see the test HERE.

In the few years we have been implementing the chemistry EOC (it began in 2013), I have always found the actual EOC to be much easier than the practice test.  Which is a good thing, because my students scores are always depressingly dreadful on the practice test.  Their scores end up being okay on the actual EOC.

I really liked how I created a Biology EOC data tracker last semester, so I did the same for chemistry.  I had them complete the test on Scantron, and then entered their scores into an excel spread sheet:

Obviously I left the student names out of the screen shot.  Each question is color-coded by Unit 1-8.  A "0" indicates they answered incorrectly, "1" for a correct answer.

Entering in this manner allows me to not only see the students' raw scores, but also determine their strongest and weakest units:

A group of students raw scores are at the lefthand side of the photo above.  The color coding indicates below basic, basic, proficient, or advanced based on the state's criteria of # of questions correct.   Yellow indicates the student did not complete the entire practice test.  The "curved" is my own curve-- I factored out the questions I felt that I did not sufficiently cover to give the students the ability to answer them correctly.  The red text color is for me to see who was still failing.  To the right, you can see the students performance by unit.  Also, the number of questions that I classified to be from each unit is listed.

Tracking the test in this manner also allows me to see the percent of students who answered each question correctly, so I can see where students are collectively making mistakes:

For example, in the questions shown above, only 13 students or 22% answered question #12 correctly.  Question #12 had students predicting the products of the following reaction:

Al + Cl2 -> _____ (I can't seem to get subscripts to work on Blogger)

Almost all of the students chose "AlCl2" as the answer, because that would be a balanced equation.  So we revisited ionic compounds and how the subscript tells you how many of each atom you need to cancel the charges.

The breakdown of scores is terrifying.  If I wasn't so burned out from this group of students and this semester, I'd be in panic mode.  Although I've hit the point where I just can't care anymore.

The results show that only 9 of my students scored in the "advanced" range.  18 scored in the "proficient" range.  26 were in the "basic" range and while 5 were "below basic," only 2 of those 5 actually finished the test.

I have serious concerns that 3 of my students will not pass the EOC.  Those 3 students all happen to be minorities, which makes me kick myself even harder.  I hate to think that I'm contributing to the "education gap" on paper.  Unfortunately, there is pretty much nothing I can do now.  These students have struggled ALL year.  I've tried to get them to come in for extra help.  I've tried to pull them aside, or group them with a peer tutor.  I've emailed their parents and coaches.  No luck.

The nice thing about data tracking students in this manner is that it allows me to tailor the review material over the past few days.  Instead of making my students review EVERYTHING, we go over the most missed questions in class... then they each have their own set of review material they need to complete.  In reality, I just make a review packet for each unit and the students need to complete the material for each unit that they scored below 75%.

The test is Thursday.  I hopefully will get scores back before the end of the year!

"Unit 8" and venting

I haven't had a lot to update lately because we've been in a furiously of trying to cover the standards before the EOC.

Last week, we did do the Describing Chemical Reactions Lab in Unit 7.  It's a good lab.  It went well.  I took zero pictures.

We sadly got to spend only a block and a half of on stoichiometry.  It wasn't enough, but we have so much more to cover.

We have now entered "Unit 8" which is not the same as Unit 8 in the modeling curriculum.  I've had to create "Unit 8- Models of the Atom" myself for all of those hodge podge of standards that we have yet to cover-- namely protons, neutrons, and electrons.  And unfortunately, we have zero time for inquiry.  It's been a hellacious week of direct teaching so far.  Yesterday we got through Rutherford and Bohr, with drawing Bohr models and determining valence electrons from the Bohr model.  Today, we learned Lewis diagrams and isotopes.  Tomorrow we'll finish up isotopes by talking about nuclear reactions (a HUGE chunk of standards for my state).  Thursday we'll do the quantum model of the atom and e-config (not.enough.time).  Friday we will begin practice testing/review.  Mon-Wed next week will be review days, although I am not guaranteed to that I will see all my students every day because of their other EOCs.  Thursday is our EOC.

Time to freak out?  Um... yeah.

I truly dislike Tennessee's state standards for chemistry.  I have not compared them to other state's standards, but I find them entirely too broad, yet detailed at the same time.  There is no possible way you can teach your average junior EVERYTHING in our chemistry standards to the level of mastery they expect in a single course.  They expect them to understand atomic theory in depth from Democritus thru the quantum model.  They expect them to draw Bohr models and understand, write, and identify electron configuration.  They expect them to know properties of matter, including properties of solutions, colligative properties, molarity, molality-- the later two they need to know how to calculate.  They are supposed to know thermochem and calorimetry-- including solving specific heat problems.  Heat of solvation, heat of reaction, heat of formation, and heat of phase change are all in the standards.  They expect them to understand the kinetic molecular theory of matter and solve gas law problems: combined gas law and ideal gas law.  They need to know about the arrangement of the periodic table.  They need to write the proper and common names of ionic and covalent compounds and understand the bonding.  They need to know polyatomic ions.  They need to be able to balance chemical and nuclear equations.  They need to be able to write net ionics and predict reaction products from the 5 main types of chemical reactions.  They need to know acid/base reactions, they need to use an activity series, they need to do stoichiometry problems.  They need to differentiate between alpha, beta, and gamma radiation and utilize half-lives.  They need to know about heat transfer in both chemical and nuclear reactions.  They need to differentiate between nuclear fission and fusion.  They're supposed to be able to argue the pros and cons of nuclear energy.  And I haven't even gotten to the math standards:  percent composition, percent yield, percent error, graphing, unit conversions, sig figs, accuracy/precision in measurements.  Then there's also inquiry standards and embedded engineering standards.  IT'S TOO MUCH!!!!!!

I have never been able to get through all of the chemistry standards in my entire career.  Most of my co-workers have the same problem.  The few that brag about easily completing all of the standards are the "textbook" teachers-- read a chapter, answer the questions, take a test.  They don't spend time on labs (which "perform and understand laboratory procedures" is indeed one of the inquiry standards).  At the end of the course, the students come away with nothing.

I'm not proud of how this semester has gone, but I still believe I can make the chemistry modeling curriculum work for me and my students with some tweaking.

Unit 7 Chemical Reactions - Rearranging Atoms

If you had spoken to me yesterday, you would have heard how proud I was of my students.  But today is not yesterday, and once again I'm slamming my head against the desk.

We spent Monday through Wednesday on nomenclature and chemical formulas of ionic and covalent (molecular) compounds.  It was a lot of direct teaching, and we completed Unit 6 Worksheets 3 and 4 as assessment.  They worked extremely hard on something I would consider pretty boring and they were showing a strong mastery.

Today, we took a quiz on nomenclature.  I didn't use the AMTA quiz, but rather copied question #10 straight off the AMTA Unit 6 test.  (For the sake of time, I'm combing these last units into one unit test so we have more days for instruction before the EOC) They had to identify formulas or names as ionic or covalent, then write the name and/or formula.

The grades... so horrible... oh my gosh.  I would have NEVER anticipated the grades being so terrible based off what the students produced on worksheets 3 & 4 and our other in-class practice.  Most students couldn't even correctly identify the compounds as ionic or covalent, which we've been doing in class for DAYS.  So it looks like I'll be re-teaching the topic tomorrow.

The other plan for today was to begin Unit 7 by completing the Rearranging Atoms activity.  We do not have time for the nail lab, so I figured this would be a good way to introduce balancing equations.  The plan was to do the Describing Chemical Reactions lab tomorrow, since today's activity seemed very straight forward.  I foolishly assumed we'd be able to complete it in about 45 minutes and be balancing equations successfully for homework.  Ha!

First, the activity begins with 5 background questions that should be 100% review (ignore the copier line):

For some reason, these were the 5 most difficult questions in the world and my students SHUT DOWN instead of trying at all.  This caused me to just get ticked off, since none of these should have been a challenge.  There is zero excuse for them not to be able to answer any of these questions.  I basically let them have it and told them if they can't answer these 5 questions, not only have they shown me they aren't ready to go do chemical reactions in the lab tomorrow, but they don't even deserve to pass the course.  I was pissed.  There was a small standoff in just about every single one of my classes over these questions, and I refused to cave until they answered them and explained their answers.  After 14 weeks of chemistry, I should not have to spoon-feed my juniors answers to review questions that not only have been covered in my course, but were covered extensively in middle school and 9th grade physical science.  Maybe other teachers are content giving them the answers all the time, but the students should realize by now that they can't get away with that in my classroom.  Yet they still throw a temper tantrum any time I expect them to think (if you could even call those questions "thinking"- isn't describing like level 2 on Bloom's taxonomy?) and it's getting really old.

Anyways... after the background questions, students are to use atomic model kits to model the reactants given for a series of chemical reactions.  Students are to then build the products from the reactants.  If they don't have enough atoms or have left over atoms, they need to start over using additional reactants.

Once students find the correct ratio of reactants to products, they are to draw a particle diagram of the reactants and products and put the numbers of molecules of each in the blanks.

My first class just did not understand at all and we ran out of time.  My second class also did not understand at all... so I modeled how to do #1 and 2 at the front of the room.  They were still lost and we ran out of time.  By my third class of the day, some groups were sort of getting it, but many were still lost and surprise surprise, we ran out of time.

What was truly amazing to me was that I kept asking random students if they could guess what we were trying to do to the chemical equation.  Every single one of them said "no."  I figured someone would realize we were just balancing the equations, but nope.