Water Analysis

Continuing my report of the year-long PBL project with my IPC classes . . .

Having anticipated that all groups would decide that drinkable water was their number one priority for survival, we planned that the second unit would cover water analysis and water purification.  Focusing on theses issues allowed us to cover the TEKS that dealt with solution chemistry - pH, boiling point, concentration, acids, bases, and salts.  We also pulled in changes of state and transfer of thermal energy.

This unit was the first that would get into the substance of the project. I was a bit daunted by the task of trying to come up with a list of items from the cruise ship that the students would be allowed to use.  It was a fine line between making the task solvable and challenging at the same time. For instance, we didn't want them to be able to use an aquarium filtration system, but we would let them pull out mattress batting if they wanted to use it.

The solution was another brainstorming session with Wendy Howe. This time another instructional coach, Phillip Lentz, joined us. Together, we devised a set of rules that would govern any materials that the students wanted to 'salvage' from the ship for the entire year. They could use anything they wanted as long as 1) they could justify its presence on a cruise ship, and 2) they were using it for something other than its original purpose. I would have final say on whether an item qualified under the rules.  This transferred the burden of listing the items from me to the students and made the whole exercise more learner centered. It also allowed for multiple correct ways to solve the problem of water quality.

Wendy and I bounced around ideas about what we would give them to test. Our immediate thought was 'fish guts' but after consideration decided that we would rather 'contaminate' the water ourselves so we could keep it safe (no amoebas) and so we could control what was in it.  We made two types of water - ocean and fresh. The ocean water obviously had salt, but it also had an oil slick from the wrecked ship. We put sand and coffee in it for particulates. The coffee also discolored it pretty well.  Fish food made it sort of smelly.  For the fresh water, we had previously decided that the island was volcanic for an upcoming geothermal energy unit, so we put powdered sulfur and sulfuric acid in the water.  The water also included coffee and sand.

Neither type of water was perfect so the students had to make a judgment as to which type would be easier to purify.  Part of the project required them to design a test that would identify the particular acid and particular salt in each type of water.

Some of the lessons I've learned from this project – there aren't enough clean beakers in the school (I've offered community service hours to the honor societies I return for dish washing).  More importantly, after years of 'lab safety' tests, these students don't have any idea how to actually use a MSDS sheet when they are choosing the chemicals. They don't realize that they need to analyze the products of the reaction for safety in addition to looking at the reactants.

This serves to prove the point that the teacher doing the work, the thinking, and the planning doesn't really embed the learning about it in the students. There's no enduring understanding about how to work with the chemicals or how to conduct a chemical reaction safely.

Another thing we've learned is that Critical Friends is a crucial piece of the process.  One group was just wrong about some of their test results, but were able to get on track by the time they had to present. Other groups were able to fine-tune their work and get a higher grade. The kids are pretty much brutally honest with each other, and are good about giving legitimate and constructive criticism.

Overall, I was pleased with the presentations and conclusions. Some of the groups showed truly inventive thinking about how they could implement their ideas with the limited resources on the island.  Many students are already looking ahead and anticipating the next steps.

As for me, I'm looking forward to my room no longer being messy and stinky.

(Next up . . . Nuclear power!)

Tsunami Mini-Project

With a years worth of STEM projects ahead of them, Wendy Howe and I decided to start the students out small with an analysis of the tsunami that trapped them. This project would serve several purposes.

First, it would be a review of 8th grade science from the previous year and give us a picture of how much they had retained.  Second, it was a gentle introduction to both PBL and a new way of functioning in the classroom.  The last thing was that we hoped it would accomplish was to give us an idea of whether we had done a good job creating the groups.

As a review of the previous year, we discovered that these accelerated students had a pretty good grasp of most of it. Two problem areas showed up however. The first was that they had a shaky grasp of the Law of Force and Acceleration. They could recite and even do the math, but they couldn't flip it around and apply it to a non-standard situation.  The second issue was their inability to apply convection to anything besides water. I'll be sure to work on both of these and check for understanding over the course of the year.  Both of these concepts will come up later in the year.

As an intro to PBL, the project gave a good snapshot of how comfortable they felt with independent work. Most of them were thrilled with the opportunity but a few were insecure about the lack of direction. I can solve that issue on a group-by-group basis by talking individually with each set of students. If they need more guidance, I can give it to them and thus each will have individualized learning.  Those that can run off without me are free to do so.

The most critical aspect was probably the grouping issue.  We had given the students the Color Quiz and tried to balance the groups with representatives from each personality type.  Most of it worked, but after the end of the tsunami project, we were able to adjust the groups slightly as we saw the need.

It has become clear as we proceed further with this project that we need to have workshops on interpersonal problem solving and  conflict resolution.  Wendy and Terry Ward, the campus learning liaison, will work with my classes on that before we get much farther in the year.

As a snapshot of the future and an introduction to a whole new learning paradigm, the Tsunami project was a great way to get started.

Year-Long IPC Project

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In the summer of this year, I approached @whowe67 about turning the traditional IPC curriculum into an all STEM project based learning class. The other thing I wanted was to put the 'integrated' back into IPC. In past years, we have taught one semester of chemistry and then one semester of physics.  She was interested in both ideas and we got together before school started to hash out a way to combine chemistry and physics into one class.

To this day, I wish I had been recording our conversation so I could describe the steps that lead us down the path to stranding my students on an uninhibited island for a whole year.

I don't remember how we got there – who said what that triggered the whole burst of creative energy. What I do know is that we wanted to start with something fairly concrete rather then some of the more abstract concepts in the TEKS. At one point, we discussed the water table and how parts of it always cause problems on tests. Our idea then was to look at solution chemistry, perhaps as an investigation in the water-strapped West.

Whatever energy was in the air that day inspired both of us. Soon we were batting ideas back and forth so quickly that we could barely write them down fast enough.

We decided to strand the students on an island ten years into the future. We created a scenario where a tsunami hit their cruise ship, wrecking it on the island. We considered the reasons why they were there, the topography of the island, the latitude and longitude where the island was located, and what materials they could salvage from the ship.

Once we had our scenario, we starting fitting each and every TEK for the IPC course into our narrative. We rearranged the units several times and used energy as the thematic concept that would unite the whole year unit into a continuous, on-going story.  By next May, the students would have a portfolio of information covering the entire year that wouldn't include science only, but would touch on math, English, and ultimately social studies.  Their final task would be to create a system of government that would administer the colony.

What we hoped for was that a project covering the entire year would unite the disparate parts of the IPC TEKS into an integrated whole instead of being taught one disconnected piece at a time.   We hoped that the students would be able to see the common themes and concepts that run through all science disciplines.

We anticipated that one of the problems with a year-long project would be grouping. With each group potentially taking different paths through the year, then switching groups midway through wouldn't be a viable option.  That meant that the students might be uncomfortably stuck with each other.

One thing that we didn't anticipate was the difficulty of having many different groups working on different things when the class size is very big. My largest class is a lot of chaos. The other issue is the squabbling that goes on with certain personality conflicts. My school Learning Liaison is working on helping with that one.

My plan is to report on this complex project over the course of the year.