END OF SEMESTER SUMMARY
The dilemmas book taught me that there are issues that teachers deal with that have no easy answers. These dilemmas force teachers to choose between poor choices, hence their name. For me, the dilemmas that I face are making sure I don’t overwhelm my already very busy students and connecting my big idea to all of my students despite their great variety of skill levels. In my focus group and teaching demonstration I learned that my students are very interested in the connection between statistics and science and that they want to better understand how similar data can be read in so many ways. They also showed me that they enjoy seeing real life connections between math and science. By meeting with my colleagues I was able to refocus my ImagineIT project into a project about collaboration between math and biology teachers. Through my conversations with members of the math department, I found out that they are working on many of the same skills that I am interested in for my project. These colleagues expressed interest in working together on statistical concepts. Students would learn the calculations in the math classes and then apply the concepts and skills in my class towards data we collect through lab practicals.
Since submitting my implementation report and now, I have developed some insights on my ImagineIT project. First and most importantly, I have realized that I don’t have to do this alone. My colleagues have been extremely supportive and eager to partner with me on instruction of statistical skills. This has freed me up to worry more about the conceptual side of statistics versus trying to teach the calculations. A second insight is that students will better grasp a concept when they can connect it to a real-life experience. For example, during our osmolarity lab, students could really grasp the meaning of variation and confidence intervals when they drew the huge error bars that resulted from the wide range of data the collected as a class.
Looking forward, some key items that I would like to chance for round 2 are technology and student voice. I want to become much more intentional about the use of technology in the ImagineIT project. I plan on using online lab simulations and google sheets for statistical practice. Also, I want to be better about capturing and sharing more of this process through tweets and facebook posts. Finally, for student voice, I want to give students a chance to explore concept that are most interesting to them and share their work using platforms of their own choosing.
Since submitting my implementation report and now, I have developed some insights on my ImagineIT project. First and most importantly, I have realized that I don’t have to do this alone. My colleagues have been extremely supportive and eager to partner with me on instruction of statistical skills. This has freed me up to worry more about the conceptual side of statistics versus trying to teach the calculations. A second insight is that students will better grasp a concept when they can connect it to a real-life experience. For example, during our osmolarity lab, students could really grasp the meaning of variation and confidence intervals when they drew the huge error bars that resulted from the wide range of data the collected as a class.
Looking forward, some key items that I would like to chance for round 2 are technology and student voice. I want to become much more intentional about the use of technology in the ImagineIT project. I plan on using online lab simulations and google sheets for statistical practice. Also, I want to be better about capturing and sharing more of this process through tweets and facebook posts. Finally, for student voice, I want to give students a chance to explore concept that are most interesting to them and share their work using platforms of their own choosing.
PHase 6 - Implementation of ImagineIT & Report
My imagine-it project is off to a solid start and has the potential to grow into a powerful math-science partnership at Kennedy HS.
My meeting with the math teacher led to a coordinated approach to teaching the statistics needed to complete an important osmolarity lab. In biology class I covered the conceptual aspects of mean, standard deviation, and range. Meanwhile, the math teacher had the students practice using their graphing calculators for stats calculations.
I then had my students apply the skills they learned in both classes during our potato osmolarity lab. In this lab students had to collect precise mass measurements on potato cubes before and after being soaked in varying sucrose concentrations. Then students had to combine their data with other groups' data before calculating mean % change with 95% confidence bars. The ideas of range and accuracy were brought into clear focus when students completed their graphs and saw the huge error bars that resulted from mistakes in data collection.
Moving forward, I plan on continuing in this manner for the rest of the school year adding on new statistical tools and concepts with each new lab before having students tackle creating presentations about statistical concepts of their choice.
My meeting with the math teacher led to a coordinated approach to teaching the statistics needed to complete an important osmolarity lab. In biology class I covered the conceptual aspects of mean, standard deviation, and range. Meanwhile, the math teacher had the students practice using their graphing calculators for stats calculations.
I then had my students apply the skills they learned in both classes during our potato osmolarity lab. In this lab students had to collect precise mass measurements on potato cubes before and after being soaked in varying sucrose concentrations. Then students had to combine their data with other groups' data before calculating mean % change with 95% confidence bars. The ideas of range and accuracy were brought into clear focus when students completed their graphs and saw the huge error bars that resulted from mistakes in data collection.
Moving forward, I plan on continuing in this manner for the rest of the school year adding on new statistical tools and concepts with each new lab before having students tackle creating presentations about statistical concepts of their choice.