Unit 4-- An ecological detour

When I did my cursory review of the biology modeling curriculum before the start of the school year, I somehow neglected to notice the utter lack of ecology included.  I guess I assumed when I saw food chains/food webs that the curriculum would somehow address ecology and interdependence in that section.  Well, you know what happens when you ASS-ume...

I believe something like 18% of my state's end of course exam is on ecology and interdependence, including human effects on ecosystems, carrying capacities, and succession.  Not to mention it's its own entire section in my state standards.  And uh, none of this stuff is anywhere in the curriculum as written.

So, the past few days have been "cram everything about ecology into a few days while pretending we're just learning about food chains."  Yay.  But it fit better here than anywhere upcoming.

I keep trying to relate everything back to energy, so it kind of makes sense with the unit.

Here's the cool part:  I'm reusing some of my previous ecology materials, but with a modeling spin.  And it seems to be working decently.  For example, I gave my students a what I think is an easy handout entitled "Deer:  Predation or Starvation" which has them analyzing and graphing the data of a standard wolf reintroduction scenario.  Oh, how my students moaned and complained about this activity last year!  The had so incredibly much trouble with manipulation and graphing of the data.

But this year, even my standard students got through it relatively uneventfully.  We used it for a segue into defining the term "carrying capacity," and they got it no problem.  I threw all sorts of carrying capacity scenarios out at them, and at least 85% of the students could predict and analyze what would happen.

Succession is another topic that we went through at warp speed, but I think they just might have gotten it.  (We haven't finished it yet with my standard class, which will be the true baseline for comparison)  We spent days on succession in previous years-- looking at pictures, drawing flipbooks, reading scenarios, etc.  Last year, I remember one of my brighter students telling me succession was the hardest thing in biology.

This year, I literally just cut up succession timeline pictures and put them in baggies-- I did one bag of pond succession and one bag of forest succession.  I told them to put each baggie of pictures in order and storyboard it on their whiteboard.  We discussed our observations and what we thought was happening, and defined the terms "ecological succession" and "climax community."  Then we discussed what might have caused the succession, divided the causes into categories, and voila!  We gave the categories the names primary succession and secondary succession.  And I sent them home with a Mount Saint Helens article for homework that will hopefully embed a few more related terms in their heads.  I mean, I would have loved to have done more, but we spent maybe 30 minutes on the topic.  From the discussion, the understanding seemed as good or better as compared to the years I've spent days on the topic!

It's the small battles, I suppose.

The downside:  we are seriously behind now.  Like, majorly, will-not-get-through-all-the-curriculum, what am I going to cut behind.  The only upside is that I'm not any more behind than I was this point last year, and my students did fine on the EOC...

Unit 4 Reflections: What is Energy and Energy in an Ecosystem- A Vital Commodity

Unit 3 tests are finally graded.  I was THRILLED to see a narrowing of the "great A/F divide" in my standard class.  Grades were higher than usual on the whole, and the number of failures was cut in half.  Some progress is better than no progress!

Verbal and diagrammatic representation of the energy in the "What is Energy" Lab

Unit 4 started off with a lab:  What is Energy?  Like many of the other activities, I found it took an excessive amount of time for a concept that the students were already pretty solid on.  There were 10 stations for groups to observe.  If I do it again, I think I may reduce the number of stations in half.  I found my students were familiar enough with the concept that energy cannot be created or destroyed and that it can transfer forms.

The teacher notes recommend reading the book, "Zoom" by Istvan Banyai before jumping into the next activity.  We didn't for two reasons:  1) We are really, really, really running short on time, but more importantly 2) I ordered the book last week off Amazon and it still hasn't arrived.  Maybe next time around.  My segue was just telling the students that we would be observing energy at the ecosystem, organism, and cellular levels.

I think the Energy in an Ecosystem- A Vital Commodity was great, except for one pesky detail.  In every single class, one of the trophic levels performed "better" than it should have despite me adjusting the numbers of each organism.  In both my honors classes, for some reason the dolphins acquired more energy than the cod:

Dolphins have more energy than the cod and the shrimp!

This has been easy enough to address through discussion, but I am still worried it is reinforcing a big misconception that the top organisms have the most energy!  I was trying to wait to stop the simulation until some dolphins died, but the problem was that my shrimp and cod were dying faster than the dolphins despite sufficient numbers of plankton.  If I waited for the dolphins to die, we would have had very little data.

In my standard class, who hasn't white-boarded yet, the cod were higher than the shrimp, which may make a huge mess when we graph.  I told them we might repeat the simulation tomorrow.

So we don't have that perfect graph to tip on it's side to make a nice half of an energy pyramid, because our data is off.

In the future, I might plan to repeat this simulation a few times until we get usable data.

Classroom Tip: Concept Cards

For the modeling workshop this past weekend, the participants were asked to prepare 1-3 questions on 3"x5" index cards about topics or issues that may have come up in our modeling classrooms.  We then had a Q&A session with the workshop leaders where they addressed the questions and shared their experiences and possible solutions.  Let me tell you, I went well beyond my 1-3 cards requested.  I gave them a stack!

One of my (many) questions was about keeping students' notes more structured and organized:  as I had mentioned in previous posts, I really feel my standard students need more structure to be able to make the best use of their interactive lab notebooks.  Also, my honors kids have been craving more organization-- they are the rare types that actually would like to be able to refer back to a textbook or a body of work.  Only being able to refer back to a hodgepodge of handouts and notes scattered in their notebook has been throwing some of them off their game.

An experienced modeling teacher had what seems to be a great solution for this:  concept cards.  For each unit, she has her students prepare index cards for each of the major concepts.  They have the concept on one side, and the important information about the concept on the other.  This may be related vocabulary, a summary of the idea, diagrams, etc.  Anything to better help the students quickly review to main points of the concept.  This way they can flip through the cards in their downtime and refresh on the most important points and concepts from the unit.

While this isn't a new invention, I LOVED this idea and hadn't even considered it on my own.  I think it may be the solution I so desperately wanted.  Plus, with having a state end of course exam, I feel like these have potential to be a fabulous study tool later down the road.  So today as a review activity, I'm had my students create concept cards for Unit 3.

And to really incorporate the modeling instruction, I divide the topics up among the lab groups and had them whiteboard their ideas of what they think should go on the cards for each concept:

A whiteboard from my standard bio class

The whiteboarding was really dual purpose-- this allowed them to take some ownership in the concepts, but also made sure everyone recorded all of the important and correct information.  We had a board meeting where we came to a consensus on the most thorough and useful summaries.

I hope to keep up with this idea, and I hope it works.  I also thought it was an effective review activity.  I'm always trying to come up with better ways to review for tests.  Games are fun, but they can be time-consuming to create and the brightest students often dominate the competition.  Just completing a study guide can be dull and ineffective.  This seemed to be a nice middle ground.

Catching up on Unit 3...

Are we really nearly done Unit 3?  Wow, I've gotten behind.  It's been a hectic week.

I was actually out of the classroom last Friday to attend our final two-day chemistry modeling workshop through Project TIME.  It was great to see everyone who I went through the program with in the spring/summer and to hear everyone's experiences!  I also got some fabulous advice and ideas from our leaders and other teachers that I feel will really help fine-tune my classes.

I also had an administrator observe my classroom last week.  I don't get nervous about observations-- I actually enjoy them for the feedback and advice.  I'm my own worst critic, so usually I'm a thousand times harder on myself than any outside observer has ever been.  However, I had never been observed by this particular administrator before and I had heard she can be tough. The day she observed was the day my class spent the majority of the block working on/white-boarding Exercise 1- Natural Selection.  Of all the cool things in this unit, I thought to myself, "she's going to walk away saying I did nothing but make my class do a worksheet the entire period."  I even had a stress dream the next night that she gave me straight 1s in every category.  Ha!  She actually loved what she saw.  I received some of the highest scores I have ever received on an observation.  I received especially high scores in questioning, which has traditionally been one of my weak categories.

Anyway, reflections:

1. I'm starting to appreciate the Thirsty Bird activity more and more as this unit has progressed.  It has given the students a great connection to tie new concepts back into.  I may just slug it out again next time around.

2.  I thought the Whales In Transition Activities generally went well.  The activities were well aligned with my state standards, specifically some standards that I have not done justice to in the past.  They have also given the students great examples and chances to make connections.  Their favorite part of the entire thing?  Making their predictions about the creature between 50-46 MYA.  As you can see, they became quite fond of their creatures, naming them and all:

 

 

 3. We just did the Sneaky Cricket reading today-- HILARIOUS!  It seemed to really help the students tie everything together.  One girl in my standard class remarked, "I finally understand this now!"

4. The "What is fitness?" article I also thought was really good.  Even though it wasn't in my original files I received, I was able to find it online.  I'm glad I did.  Very readable.  Scientific enough to make my honors kids happy, but with language my standard kids could relate to.  They mention a cricket's sperm-packet, which had the standard class' boys rolling on the floor laughing!

One thing that has surprised me about this unit is just how difficult evolution is for many of these students.  I have always sort of glossed over evolution in the past.  To me, I thought the concepts were pretty basic and that most students already understood the general idea.  Oh boy, has this unit opened my eyes!  The misconceptions are rampant and deeply ingrained, even among my brightest students.  But I truly do feel like they are coming around.  We are testing Friday and I'm curious to see the results, especially in my standard class.

My only real criticism of this unit is the included quiz-- it's vague, yet incredibly redundant.  I'm not sure if the quiz is intended to be executed "as is" with all 5 pages of storyboarding, or if it was made for teachers to pick/choose/modify one of the five portions.

One more thing-- my "teacher mistake" for the unit.  At the end of today, I tossed in a quick PowerPoint on types of behavioral adaptations.  The teacher notes call for the students to research and do jigsaw presentations on different types of behavioral adaptations.  Other activities in the unit went longer than expected (imagine that) and we flat out ran out of time for students to research and present.  So... direct teaching it was.  Oh my gosh, did the students ever complain.  All that negative stuff that I've barely seen all year came out in full force.  We went from excellent discussion and engagement during the Sneaky Cricket cartoon to shut down/heads on desks as soon as I started talking.  And not to toot my own horn, but I am a better-than-average lecturer.  I just think the MI pedagogy is so far superior that it is almost impossible to go back to lecturing.  I've gotten a bit "talky" in the later part of this unit for the sake of time, and seeing the students today was a great reminder that I need to back off and focus on questioning instead of telling.

Unit 3 Reflections: Thirsty Bird Simulation Part 2

An example of some of our class data

Graphs for the first three conditions (different class).

You can definitely consider me "not a fan" of this activity.

Pro:  The data from the activity very clearly shows natural selection and genetic drift, and introduces the students to quite a few other terms and concepts.

Con:  The amount of effort and time that went into obtaining that wee bit of data for example did not seem worth it.

Pro:  The kids had a blast trying to "feed" with their forks.

Con:  By day 2, not only had we soaked the entire lab and gone through all of our paper towels, but many of the kids were beginning to get sick of doing it over... and over... and over...

The teacher notes recommend repeating every condition (no pressure, selective pressure, drought, no pressure with spoons, selective pressure with spoons, drought with spoons) for 4-6 generations.  Whoever came up with that idea must teach 18 hour days at a year round school.  At the rate my students were moving, which was pretty fast towards the end, we would have had to spend the rest of the month on this activity to acquire all of that data.

As seen in the photo above, we completed three generations of each of the following: no pressure (forks only), selective pressure (forks only), drought (forks only), and selective pressure with forks and spoons.  We were all spent after that much.  Not to mention that it took nearly 180 minutes to complete, graph, and discuss just those four conditions.

We still have not completed our consensus model in any of the classes.

There was a trifecta of time lost in: 1) the explaining, 2) the massing of cups/water, and 3) THE MATING.  By the end, there were still some students who didn't fully grasp the concept of exchanging genes during mating.  I explained it to them, I showed it to them, their friends explained it to them, their friends did it for them... and they'd still be confused the next time around.  Without having any formal genetics or cell reproduction instruction yet, they had little to fall back on.

This activity also tested my classroom management skills in a way they hadn't been tested yet this year.  I nearly lost my temper on one of my classes.  The students are constantly going from high energy feeding/mating to having to stop and listen carefully for lengthy instructions every couple minutes.  It's hard, especially in a big class.  I felt like I was shouting for 2 days straight.

While the simulation was a neat idea, and very entertaining at times, I still feel like the same concepts could have been introduced equally effectively in other (read: faster) ways.  There are some great computer simulations online.  I've also done similar activities using forks, spoons, knives, and Pepperidge Farm Goldfish.  Next time around, I may adapt one of those activities to meet modeling pedagogy.

On a more positive note, one observation I've made over and over through the past month is how fast the class periods fly by with the modeling curriculum.  And the students are working the entire class period-- right up to the bell.  While attitudes fluctuate, I've heard none of the usual end-of-the-class-period complaints. (Like:  "Do we really have to do this now?  We only have 10 minutes left!")  They're usually just as surprised by the bell as I am.

Unit 3 Reflections: Thirsty Bird Simulation Part 1

Oh my... talk about chaos.  File this activity under "activities you definitely need to do at least once before deploying."

This is another activity that is hard to conceptualize on paper.

Tip #1-- buy PLASTIC, not paper cups.  Paper cups do not hold up well to aggressive feeders well, and the get soggy.
Tip #2-- run off a packet of at least 3 copies of the Activity Data Sheet #1 back to back. (I'm going to do the same for sheet #2)
Tip #3--  have plenty of paper towels on hand!

In my first class, we only got through the random color matings.  We applied selective pressure in my other two classes, but did not get beyond that.  I suspected I wouldn't finish everything in 90 minutes...

There is something that still has me scratching my head about in this activity:  each student has 4 allele cards.  I'm not entirely sure why-- I'm imaging to increase diversity while mating?  Or was the designer trying to simulate gametes?  But here's my problem with having 4 cards:

Say a pair of heterozygous gold birds mate and produce two blue offspring, thus needing a total of 8 blue cards for the offspring.  But the pair only has 4 blue cards and 4 gold cards in their hands.  Should they swap out cards so the offspring have all blue cards as the genotype indicates?  That's what I was having them do, but I was worried it was possibly creating misconceptions.

Unit 2 Wrap Up

I'm sitting here in the process of grading my students' unit 2 tests.  Mood:  perplexed.

So far, I have graded tests for one honors class and one standard class.  The honors and standard tests were the same-- I really didn't feel there was much to differentiate material-wise in this unit.  What little differentiation I have applied has been in my grading, with me expecting the honors students to use more vocab in the short answer to receive full credit.  I used the AMTA test for both honors and standard, with the addition of 3 extra multiple choice questions from our state EOC practice material and one extra short answer question on prokaryote/eukaryote cells.

From what I've graded, the honors students' grades are as expected, with the class average being a bit higher than normal.  Lots of As and perfect scores, nothing below a high C.  I really need to challenge these students more...

But the standard biology students:  11 took the test today (small class, 2 absences).  6 As, 1 high C, and 4 failures.  Of the 2 students that still need to take the test, I expect their grades to be closer to failure than As.  The grade split seems more dramatic on this test than the unit 1 test.

I have taught standard-level students my entire teaching career (this is the first year I've ever had honors sections of anything).  I can't say I've ever seen a standard class divided like this. There is nearly a perfect dichotomy of students who "get it" and students who don't.  While in any class, there always seems to be a handful of students who struggle, I feel like I have a MUCH higher proportion than usual.  And I also feel like I'm losing those students more and more every day...

I've been pondering the cause, and whether or not it is related to the modeling curriculum or my delivery of it.

This is an unusually small class... so I'm not sure if the small numbers are making the split more noticeable.  Maybe these 5-6 students would be low performing regardless and just happened to be lumped into one tiny class.  But, being a small class, I feel like I have a decent pulse on these students' knowledge prior to the test, yet they keep surprising me with dramatically lower than anticipated grades.  The students who are succeeding are succeeding extremely well, while the other half of the class is crashing and burning.

The students in the failure group are much less motivated than the students passing, with generally poor attitude towards school on the whole.  They are the first to "check out" and be drawn off-task during group work.  They are the first to give up when they don't understand.  They are the students who struggle with thinking critically.  They are the ones who fail to turn in assignments.  And, as I suspected after the first test, I also feel these students read at a lower level than the others.

I am wondering if the lack of "structure" with the modeling curriculum (lack of lecture/apply/repeat) is causing these students to struggle more than usual.  I feel like they may be the type that get by on rote learning and good guessing on multiple choice without ever fully understanding.  This curriculum depends on "a-ha" moments, and if the students aren't paying attention or caring enough to ever have "a-ha" moments, the notes they have aren't going to be particularly helpful.

So.. how can I improve reading and critical thinking skills?  As a science teacher, critical thinking skills are technically my department.  Yet I've never fully mastered how to teach "thinking" to those who, well, don't do it period.

Also, how can I add a little more structure in unit 3 with the hopes that it will give these low-end students a safety net?

I also wonder if having honors students doing the same curriculum is affecting my ability to teach the standard students... maybe I'm taking too much for granted in my delivery and assessment because I can get away with it in my honors classes.

Tomorrow with my standard class, instead of moving ahead with unit 3 and the thirsty bird simulation, I'm going to pull out the students who failed the test.  I plan to do a half-period mini-lesson with them that reviews all of unit 2, then make them retake the entire test.

Unit 2 Reflections: Salamander Dichotomous Key

Pile o' shoes

Pile o' shoes successfully identified!

Now THIS was a fun and effective lesson.  The gist:  without realizing it, students construct a "dichotomous key" of shoes.  They then take what they learned from the activity and apply it to a worksheet where they have to use a dichotomous key to identify several different salamander pictures.

The students were super in to this activity.  My one class even got volunteers out of the hallway to test the effectiveness of their shoe keys (hey, it was Friday before a long weekend).  Cheers, smiles, and good times were had by all.

A few tips for the future:

-This is a lesson that only needs 30-45 minutes at most.  It's fast-- plan to do other things along with it.

-In my small classes, we did the shoe key as a whole class activity (myself included).  In my large class, I broke them down into groups of about 10.  The groups were less effective-- as a whole class, the students really let their boundaries down and everyone participated without prompting.  Not so much in the groups... for whatever reason, the students all went "full teenager" within their groups.  They rushed through the shoe part, making sure to hint at how *cough cough LAME cough* it was every time I circulated through. From the worksheet results, I believe everyone still got the take home message regardless, but I do need to think about how to better implement this if I have to use groups again.

-Since the dichotomous key for the salamander worksheet is so short, many students wanted to use it backwards by just matching up the last description with each species.  It took until my last class of the day for me to be wise enough to address this issue beforehand in our "post shoe" activity discussion.  It fits in really well at that point, since many of the characteristics to differentiate the shoes are similar (color, laces, materials), making it so that they cannot accurately just jump to the end to identify a shoe.