Transcript Document

Working to have an IMPACT
Gordon J. Aubrecht, II,
Physics Education Research Group
OSU Marion Campus
AAPT Winter Meeting, Sunday, 15 February 2009
Supported in part by grants from the Ohio Department of Education
(IMPACT2, Ohio Dept. of Education Grant #60018325)
Abstract:
In 2004-2005, I was part of a team that won a Department of
Education grant, known as IMPACT. We worked with K-12 teachers
in Marion and Newark, helping them rethink how they were
teaching, helping them ask more (and better) questions. Some of the
teachers were from the middle school in Marion, Ohio. They
contacted the administration of the City Schools and suggested that
I be involved in improving science scores at the middle school level.
We submitted a seed grant proposal to the Ohio Department of
Education that was funded. We had teacher buy-in; the union agreed
and each teacher agreed to be part of the program. We submitted a
full proposal, with the title “Systemic Change Through Embedded
Professional Development at a STEM+C Middle School (IMPACT
II),” which was funded. We envision our program to involve
teachers in hands-on activities and questioning. This talk will
present more details of the program currently being implemented at
Grant Middle School in Marion, Ohio.
The Marion City Schools (MCS)
have a difficult task. About threequarters of the students get free
or reduced-cost lunches.
The student “churn” is about 25%
per year.
Students in the Marion City
Schools do not score well on
Ohio’s proficiency tests.
Several years ago, I got a grant
with Christopher Andersen of the
OSU Newark Campus.
We called the program IMPACT.
In the usual way, we made up a
fancy wording to fit: Inquiry Model
for Professional Action and Contentrich Teaching
In IMPACT, we did inquiry-type
activities with the teacher-students and
had them feel as students in their classes
might—but they were talking in their
classes, and they were DOING as
students.
It did have some effect.
Most teachers told us at the start
that they believed that teaching is
telling.
Obviously, it’s not for me:
for me teaching is more like
coaching.
The outcome was that some of
the K-12 teachers changed.
Several went on to become math
coaches through another OSU
program.
The coaches later told the MCS
administration that they had
learned more about being math
coaches in IMPACT than in the
official OSU math coaching
course.
Remember that IMPACT was a
science program, not a math
program.
Several science teachers
mentioned to the administration
how they’d changed their
teaching.
The upshot was that the MCS
administration came to us to
enlist us in a grant proposal (then
it was two grant proposals).
MCS even came to me
suggesting building on IMPACT
II for a new Regents proposal to
make one “house” in the middle
school a STEM house. This effort
has been dropped because of too
many commitments.
So, I have reason to believe that
the MCS trusts me and my
coworkers, particularly Bill
Schmitt from The Science Center
for Inquiry in Arizona, who
worked with me on both
IMPACT and IMPACT II.
Bill works hard to be an inquiry
enabler, and we have learned a
great deal from each other as
we’ve worked together.
Our goals are ambitious. We want
to enable inquiry from middle
school science teachers, which is
scary for them because of the
emphasis on control in the
schools.
In a related but partly deplorable
move, the MCS bought FOSS for
the teachers.
It is an inquiry-based program to
some extent, but with a lot of
teacher telling and many science
bloopers.
Despite our
reservations,
our program
is going to
be featured
in a FOSS
Newsletter.
QuickTime™ and a
decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
We had the teachers in a course
last summer for two weeks.
We are currently working with
the teachers several days a week
in their school (we meet during a
planning period).
The program is really just
beginning. Nevertheless, teachers
have told us some things that
were unexpected for them.
On the next pages, we show some
of them.
Rick and I were in class today and Rick came up with an
extension to our lesson. He asked the students to think about
the North Canyon and Nankoweap Canyon as a triangle. If
the height of the triangle is 125 feet and it is 32 miles long,
what is the distance of the hypotenuse and what are the angle
measurements of the triangle? As soon as we got to Math
class, all the students wanted to ask questions about how to
figure this problem out. I thought this was cool that the
students wanted to know what the answer was and were
willing to ask questions to find out.
I have to share this story because it is from my inclusion class, who on a daily basis
amazes me ...
A student brings in a rock from home because it looks like a rock in the kit ... I looked at it
and told him we would discover what it is by the end of the week.
This is a student who for the first four weeks wouldn’t answer a question and
DEFINITELY avoided any sort of eye contact with me when I was asking questions...
Yesterday he comes up to me with the rock ...
Me: “Well, what do you think it is?”
Zach: “I think it’s shale.”
Me: “Why?”
Z: “It doesn’t look like it will absorb the HCl, it’s smooth and it looks like #7 from the
kit...”
Me: “Well, you are right ... that’s awsome ...”
Another student walks up ...
S: “What’s that rock?”
Z: “My rock from my backyard.”
S: “What is it?”
and with a glance to me and a sideways smile Zach turns to the student and says
... “What do YOU think it is?”
It looks like we’ll have a great week next week to continue our
weather investigations. On Wednesday, I tried something I had
never tried before, I set up stations throughout my room. One
of them was using the syringes, plungers, tubes, clips, foam,
plastic, etc., another to work in their lab notebook, another to
play with the FOSSweb syringe model and answer some
questions I typed out and yet another to read from the resource
book and answer some more questions. They only had 10
mins. at each station but it went wonderfully! All of the
students were ENGAGED and an administrator did a walkthrough (however, I didn’t get much feedback...). It was good
for me too in that I had plenty of time to go from group to
group and help them discuss (or at least say “what do you
think”?). And KUDOS to Heather and Beth, they are working
their tails off! Love the department meetings to get more ideas
My word of the month to describe my students is
“ENGAGED”!!! The biggest difference I see using the FOSS
Kits is that my students are not always waiting for me to give
them more direction with the daily lesson. Now, we discuss
what we will be doing as class first begins, then as we get into
the meat of the subject matter ... the students are keeping busy
on their own. For instance, I had a discipline situation the
other day, which took my focus and physical presence away
from the class. When I returned to the other students, they were
busy comparing their predictions with the actual data and the
students had no clue I was even away from them. Awesome!!!
Our first big debate was whether or not crayfish molt, or shed their skin--shells? I had no clue but it
was the only explanation as to why I came in Monday morning last week to find 3 crayfish and an
empty crayfish body in the tank. I dried the body out and saved it in a bug-viewer for students to
look at. It turned coral pink and now the link has been made between crayfish and shrimp--go
figure!! Theories were flying about the pink shell!! It was a great opportunity to discuss fact vs.
opinion and why conducting experiments several times is valuable. It was also a great time to
emphasize what we each bring, by way of personal experience, to an investigation. Not only are the
kids learning but I am learning new information too. The questions being asked are categorized as
“future investigation questions” or “easier to find an answer question.”
…
I was amazed at how little the students knew about what it means to be living. The top response was
“moving”. . . if it moves it’s alive! This prompted me to put a lava lamp ( a generous gift right
before Christmas from a student) and a plant (a generous secret pal gift also right before Christmas)
next to each other on my counter. The lava lamp stuff moves but the plant doesn’t-- according to the
criteria the lava lamp is alive and the plant is dead! This opened the door to a whole new line of
thought on how to develop the criteria for living and non-living.
…
I’m pleased with the level of interaction and interest the Diversity of Life unit has already generated
among the students. It has also been an eye opening way to distinguish between the active students
and the “along for the ride” students. I still have many students who struggle with the independent
work, the thinking of their own ideas, and the active reasoning using past experience or information
read parts of inquiry learning. I am still looking for ways to get these students to willingly engage in
investigations.
Well ... Gordon is up to it again ... I have a high school student interning
with me this nine weeks ... she is so sweet and innocent ... and she thinks
I am crazy (go figure).
She is here in the am from 8-10 and on Wednesdays is lucky enough to
sit in on our FOSS meetings with Gordon and Bill. I told her on the way
down not to be too intimidated and that if her brain hurt afterward that it
is a totally normal response ... It happened to all of us. She just giggled
... I don’t think she believed me ...
The real since part of the meeting consisted of Aaron giving his
presentation of Investigation 8 about momentum and Gordon giving us
the science behind it ... The look on her face was priceless ... When we
walked out she told me that her head did, in fact, hurt and that she was
amazed at how much Gordon knows ...
What do you get when you cross 25 6th graders, 7 microscopes, and bunches of
tiny swimming brine shrimp? Complete and wonderful chaos! Today was one of
my best ever science days!
We kind of cheated tho’ - I didn’t do FOSS’ investigation of the Brine Shrimp - I
let the students create their own - we asked LOTS of questions that we wanted
to answer about the mysterious little swimmers in our classroom and then I
asked the students to draw a picture of them as they investigated.
We have been working with microscopes all week - learning how they work,
about the different magnifications, etc., and today was their first real try with
something moving. And what a great time they had!!
At first - when they looked - all they saw was white light of course and I would
hear - “Mrs. ZZZZZ, I don’t see anything” and then all of a sudden I would hear
a scream, shreik, gasp, “Wow”, “OMG” “Look at that” or some other
exclamation and I knew they found them!
This is just the beginning, not
an end …
Wish us luck. We’re going to
need it.