This chapter was a wonderful story of perseverance…by Tovani. As I was reading her problem in the beginning, I thought to myself, how many problems can these kids have, and how is she going to get to all of them. She surprised me by saying “you don’t have to”. She had kids who were homeless, sleeping, fighting, and yelling about stupid assignments. This is a fear I have always had in my classroom and my one thought is “well thank God I’ll be the teacher and I can send them to detention. Seriously, this has been my one missing piece in practicums and I thought it will all get better once I can threaten them. This is what I have always seen in classrooms when it gets out of hand. Threats about what will happen if they don’t stop. Tovani plays it off very well in this chapter and whether she does anything at the time, I don’t know, but what I do know is eventually one of her kids writes her a personal note in his homework, asking to redo some of his earlier work. I have always thought to myself “man I got lucky” when I ask a teacher if I can turn in work late or redo it and they let me. Now I realize that a teacher isn’t just out to get the students grades down or be there to say I told you so, but they are there to encourage and get the students to do the work for themselves. Yes, in some small part I realized this before but in all of the Evangel teachers I have seen a different style than my public schools. Public schools are driven for making the grade because you have to or you will fail. I want to find a different way to motivate, a better way, and a healthy way. I want to find a way that helps kids learn from their own writing and ponder questions themselves. Not everyone likes answering questions created by a teacher, but everyone likes finding out answers to their own questions.
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Tovani Chapter 8
What do I do with all these sticky notes?
This chapter, Tovani focuses on how to grade student work, and how to get them to want to do the work for you. In the beginning of the chapter, she talks with a group of seniors that think this class is much like the rest, big test they study for the night before. She informs them that it is more participation based but it is basically tests every day. She also goes into different forms of assessment, like the reading log I am doing right now. She talks about getting kids to be interested in what they are doing instead of just doing it for teachers or parents. All this is again a great strategy to make students feel valued. However, I reflected on this chapter and how it applies to me and it seems to hit home for my assumptions for my classroom. I will be a Biology teacher in about a year. Will I do notes for 3 weeks and then hit the kids with a test? Will I be the teacher that doesn’t think outside the box and stresses kids out? Maybe, but at least now with this chapter in mind I can help create some “padding” as she calls it for the students grades. One of my greatest weaknesses in school is skipping assignments. If I know that I only lose 25 points for an assignment, and I don’t want to do it, it won’t get done. However, if I know that an assignment is work 100 points, that sounds much bigger and worth my time doing well. If I can harness this thinking and mentality of my own, then maybe I can help students not to have that internal battle of “can my grade survive this”. If all my assignments seem too heavy to skip then they may just surprise me and do them well. I will also have to have serious craft with creating my assignments. The more mundane and normal they are, the more students will debate doing them because they get bored doing the same thing over and over.
Tovani Chapter 7
Group Work that grows understanding
In this chapter, Tovani focuses on Small group learning. She is very good at analyzing her own successes and failures in all areas because she reviews it openly in this book. She talks about organizing small groups in class and how it used to be harder. She talks about the ease of small group setup now that the rules have been established and all the students have come to a consensus. Overall this chapter was a very enlightening small group organizer that I can refer to when I try to set them up. I especially liked the areas on student input, when she describes how she asks the students what they want to see in the small groups. Input like this is a good motivator to show the students that they have power and can contribute their ideas and wants. When a student feels valued, they will do a lot for you, including not goofing off in a small group. A scary thought for me has always been highschool classroom grouping, and trying to keep kids on task. I know it was a problem for me; I reflect to a time when we used to go into the hall and read a chapter a day in a book. After 13 chapters, or rather after 13 days, the teacher caught my friends and I trading pokemon cards in the hall as we had been doing the past 13 days during reading time. This was a gross waste of time and could have been handled if we were monitored, or had been told what questions we should ask ourselves when reading. I used reflection, relativity, and decided how I was going to utilize this information while I read this chapter and feel like I can retain it better now.
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
choice reading 15
How a Collapsing Scientific Hypothesis Ended in an Arrest
A recent discovery, or at least a thought of discovery, was made with the retro virus called XMRV. This retrovirus was implicated as the cause of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome(CFS) and a cause of prostate cancer. Both were discoveries made in labs while testing mice with this retrovirus. A scientist was put on the task force to find out if CFS is caused by this retro virus. This is a huge concern because CFS was thought to be psychosomatic or self caused. After investigation, the scientist was arrested, and the hypothesis was disproved by 9 labs all testing both infected and blind trials. This is an interesting article and classroom application would be useful to say that not all results are concrete. Even in the professional world, scientific labs can get it wrong, and further trials must be done to ensure our results as well as we can. This is a good example for students to use repeated trials to gain their results, double check their work, and take their time. Discoveries like this can change the way the world looks at treatment, but for the classroom it can mean disproving daily procedures that are in a lab manual and should be right*.Choice reading 14
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/12/yeti-crab-arms-food/#more-88392
Deep-Sea Yeti Crab Farms Food on Its Arms
A new crab was discovered in 2006 that farms food on its arms. It grows bacteria, or rather helps them grow by waving its arms over methane vents on the seafloor. This action provides bacteria with the nutrients to grow, and after they grow the crabs eat them. This is a new discovery where an animal provides bacteria growth tools and literally farms its own food. This would be an interesting animal to present to a class to provide the students with new discoveries. This is important for a classroom because students, or at least I, thought that all the discoveries were basically made in the animal world. Technology changes have improved a lot for discovering every corner of the planet, but discoveries like this may not introduce new animals, but they show different behaviors. Differing behaviors are just as exciting to me, they show a change in animal behavior or an improvement and this shows evolution. Micro evolution is greatly exciting to me and I love hearing about articles like this.
Choice reading 13
Potentially Earth-Like Planet Has Right Temperature for Life
The planet Kepler-22b is a possible inhabitable planet. Scientists have discovered that this planet orbits a star that is much like our sun and keeps this planet at about 70 degrees Celsius. It is still unknown whether this planet has a global ocean on it due to its distance of 270 lightyears away. What scientists are trying to figure out is if it already has life. They figure, if another planet has life, then life is common, and we may find more planets with life on them. I found this a curious discovery. This discovery could show life on other planets and would make it very interesting for a science class to discuss. I believe in a young earth, around 7 thousand years of age. This discovery would probably disprove my belief and make me consider that there are other planets out there with life and God could have spread us out so much more during the Tower of Babel incident. This would be a great discussion in Church as well.
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Choice reading 12
Www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/11/bird-counting-flying-robot/
Huge potential breakthrough appeared in ecological studies with a remote controlled airplane. Ecologists were having trouble analyzing numbers of birds on a particular island as they would fly away when they got anywhere near the shore. They simply wanted to count them and analyze the biodiversity but if the animals get scared it's game over. With a new spin on already created technology, they used remote controlled airplanes with gps trackers and cameras attached to the bottom of the planes. With the cameras they took pictures of the island below and they were able to count up the birds and wildlife without disturbing anything below. This type of research has enormous possibilities for ecologists everywhere to be less interfering in nature. For the classroom, this encourages further examination of already used or unused technology in the ecological field. Students need to think outside the box or even inside the box in the coming years to be able to stay a step ahead of competition. Competition is their peers and any other students that will want jobs in the future. I will make a note to encourage thought of technology like this because it is a good example to rethink old tech.
Huge potential breakthrough appeared in ecological studies with a remote controlled airplane. Ecologists were having trouble analyzing numbers of birds on a particular island as they would fly away when they got anywhere near the shore. They simply wanted to count them and analyze the biodiversity but if the animals get scared it's game over. With a new spin on already created technology, they used remote controlled airplanes with gps trackers and cameras attached to the bottom of the planes. With the cameras they took pictures of the island below and they were able to count up the birds and wildlife without disturbing anything below. This type of research has enormous possibilities for ecologists everywhere to be less interfering in nature. For the classroom, this encourages further examination of already used or unused technology in the ecological field. Students need to think outside the box or even inside the box in the coming years to be able to stay a step ahead of competition. Competition is their peers and any other students that will want jobs in the future. I will make a note to encourage thought of technology like this because it is a good example to rethink old tech.
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