More Rigor in Electricity

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Since I have been teaching IPC, the electrical unit has been a paint-by-numbers sort of affair.  We have board with metals pegs, various electrical components that fit over the pegs, and ‘lab’ sheets that say, “do this, then do this, then do this.”  The booklets that came with these kits include questions that are at the most basic level.  The hardest thing about the whole unit was distinguishing Ohm’s Law from the electrical power calculations and inverting the resistance for parallel circuits.

The unit has always seemed like a curriculum afterthought, something to do to keep students entertained during May, after the state test and before final exams.  It has been a yawn fest for both the students and me.

The actual state standards that mention electricity say:

n   Examine electrical force as a universal force between any two charged objects and compare the relative strength of the electrical force and gravitational force.

n   Demonstrate that moving electric charges produce magnetic forces and moving magnets produce electrical forces.

n   Evaluate the transfer of electrical energy in series and parallel circuits and conductive materials.

http://ritter.tea.state.tx.us/rules/tac/chapter112/ch112c.html#112.38

When @whowe67 and I planned the year-long IPC PBL unit, the electro-magnetic standard was the only one that we couldn’t fit into the scenario.  We had vaguely said that we would work it in when we did power, but we started the year not knowing exactly how we would manage it.

This is a great example of the necessity of flexibility when running a PBL unit.  The plans that @whowe67 and I made over the summer were complete, but over the course of the year, many of the units have changed from our original concept.  Some have been a natural change as we’ve gotten a better idea of the how the year is progressing, and some of it has been at the request of the students.

In the case of electricity, when I was writing the power unit, I realized that electricity would fit into it perfectly.  The challenge for the students became, “How can we design a way to turn a turbine that will generate electricity, given the resources on the island?”

The sources of power on the island would be wind, tides, geothermal, solar, and hydroelectric.  We bought lots of copper wire and magnets, so the students could make simple generators.  The challenge here was two-fold – use one of the renewable resources to move the turbine, and build a generator capable of turning on a tiny light.  The students would use their previously built shelters and wire them either in series or in parallel.

When the students had to actually build an electrical generator, we had many conversations about the very basics of electricity – what it is, how it moves, what a magnet does to electrons, and how the forces between the two interact.  They went far deeper into the concept than I have ever seen in my years of teaching IPC.

Not all the generators were successful.  Some could only measure the electricity produced with a sensitive multi-meter.  But the struggle to design and redesign is where the true learning took place.

We still covered the series versus parallel issue and electrical calculations, so they weren’t missing anything from what students in previous years had done.

What we gained was an enduring understanding of the concept and a way to apply it to other situations.  I have never felt that the electrical unit was rigorous enough until this year.

The Point of Learning Logs

 

One of the buzzwords in my district is ‘innerput’.  This is the process by which we take information and internalize it in order to use it – to apply to a new situation or allow us to optimize our creativity.  The progression of learning using this paradigm is something like this:

INPUT  - information from various sources including research, teacher, reading, or videos

→

INNERPUT – reflection, writing, internalizing, processing INPUT

→

OUTPUT – the information can be applied to a new situation, whether on a standardized test, a new problem, or any other student product

Innerput or reflection is equally necessary for teachers.  Writing these blog posts is one way that I gather my thoughts and put my ideas in order.   There are other ways, but for me, nothing connects learning to understanding quite like typing or writing things by hand.

In a Project Based Learning classroom, innerput becomes even more crucial.  My students are exposed to a vast amount of information via their research and design activities.  If they do not take the time to slow down and process what they are encountering or doing, then they will not get to the deep learning necessary to understand the concepts in my class.

To give my students a chance for innerput, one of the methods I use is the daily learning log.  This is a document that they create and keep, and they should write down what they have done or thought about or learned for that day. 

A learning log can be just about anything that shows information being processed.  Some examples included data tables from testing, design ideas with drawings and explanations, facts from research with summaries of why they are important or relevant, and further questions that their research has uncovered.

Convincing my students that a learning log is crucial has been a battle.  Most students didn’t really produce decent logs until the start of the second semester.  Next year, I think I will try to scaffold the learning log requirement, gradually letting them have the freedom and choice as to how their learning log will look.  I may do something like have questions related to each mastery concept for them to answer or a concept map to fill out.

Another issue has been that students will copy something directly into their log without stopping to think about what it might mean.  This is where my conversations with students become so critical.  Usually my biggest clue that they don’t know what they wrote is use of ‘big words’ or overly complicated sentence structure.  When this happens, I need to have several methods of assessing students’ mastery of a particular concept so I can tease out whether they really understand it.  Many times I will question them, they’ll reply, and I’ll ask further questions.  As we dig into the details of the concept, the student will gradually get a deeper understanding of what they had researched.  At that point, I will tell them to write down what we just talked about in their own words.  Then I look at their learning log again and ask additional questions if necessary.

When I see them pull their notebooks out for reference, then I know that they have produced a good learning log that they can use to apply the information to other situations.  They are gaining a deeper and more enduring understanding of the concepts when they can use their own writings as supplementary materials.

Shelter vs. Heat

During my year-long PBL for my IPC classes, we have been working on trying to survive on an uninhabited island.  We started with water, evaluating which type of water would be easier to use.  Then we moved on to food, which all students agreed was the next critical component of survival after potable water.

Using the energy TEKS, I gave the students the problem of providing a safe and nutritious diet for the survivors of the cruise ship disaster.  The IPC TEKS ask students to evaluate different sources of energy including fossil fuels, geothermal, moving water and wind, and solar.  Additionally, when they were doing the water cleaning unit, most of the groups had decided on some form of heating, condensing, and distilling their water, so a ‘heat’ unit seemed to be the logical next step.

I wouldn’t say that the unit was a total failure, but it didn’t fire their imaginations the way the water unit or the nuclear unit had.  They did the work, but they pretty much slogged their way through it with getting a good grade as their only motivation.  They didn’t put in any hours outside the classroom and they didn’t drive their parents crazy with their obsession with the project.

Bummer.  I’m always sad when a PBL unit falls on its face because I’m addicted to seeing student ideas take flight, where they take my conception of what they should do and turn it into something remarkable, something I never imagined.

When this happens, I’ve found that the problem usually lies in the driving question.  For whatever reason, the problem I posed in the heat unit didn’t resonate with them and they didn’t much care about the project other than the grade.

Driving questions are hard, and I’ve written quite a few of them.  But sometimes no matter how carefully I craft them, they just don’t work.

And sometimes, I feel the question is lame and not my best effort, but the students take off with it.  Just shows that I don’t think like a teenager.  Also, it shows me the importance of getting student input into lesson design.

In contrast to the heat unit, the student response to the shelter unit blew me away.  First of all, this was the unit that they had asked for.  The students clearly understand that this entire year is a complete story, and certain elements should appear in certain order.  My plan was to do it at the end of the year, but when they insisted that it had to come next, I revised my lesson plans and worked it in.  Perhaps that student choice had something to do with the success of the unit. 

Second, for this unit, one of the requirements was that the students build a scale model of their shelter design.  Kids love building things.  And even if a particular student wasn’t into construction, they could do other things to support their group, such as research or writing.

Their final presentations reflected their enjoyment of the project.  I saw many different ways of solving the problem and some in-depth thinking about the issue.  The students maintained a high level of interest in their work throughout the unit.

If I could harness that energy and enthusiasm every time I write a unit, I might think I actually know how to do this.  As it is, this shows me how much more I have to learn!

Just in Time Education

Back in the last century, when the United States was worried about competing with Japan, and I was in industry where inventory mattered, I read several trade publications about a whole philosophy called ‘Just in time inventory.’  It was meant to reduce overhead costs associated with keeping lots of inventory on hand, thereby increasing the profit margin.  The other thing it was supposed to do was to make businesses more flexible and more able to respond quickly to the needs of their customers. 

This latter aspect of it makes a lot of sense to me as an educator.

If our ‘customers’ are our students, then what is the point of trying to give them a product (knowledge) before they are ready for it? 

Granted, many of us are constrained by standardized tests, district expectations of our scope and sequence, or other conditions that may reduce our flexibility. However, within those boundaries, I think it is absolutely possible to deliver knowledge to students when they need it and when they are ready for it. 

This goes along with what my district is moving to as a learner centered platform as well as working in with what I am trying to accomplish with PBL.

When I was doing a unit on chemical reactions with my on-level classes, they had a list of skills they needed to master in the form of ‘I can’ statements.  They are allowed to do these statements in any order that they choose.  One of them was in regard to the Law of Conservation of Mass and balancing chemical equations, which is a difficult skill for lots of people, not just middle school students.

What they did with it was research the concept a bit, and when they thought they understood it, they came to me to show what they knew.  So I would stand at the board, with two or three students, give them problems related to balancing equations, and they would talk each other through it.  I asked them question to clarify their knowledge or if they were stuck, I would give them pointers about what to do next.  In some cases, they really didn’t get it, so I sent them back to look at it again, with either manipulatives to help them or suggestions for things to do.

This gave me an incredible opportunity to talk to them in very small groups and to individualize their instruction.  Also, they came to the session with a bit of background information about the concept, which is something that wouldn’t be possible if all of them were getting the same instruction at the same time.

In another case, we were wrapping up a unit with one of my IPC classes and the discussion turned to what the next unit would be.  I told them what I had planned, but they disagreed, saying that a different unit should be next. 

First, I was amazed that they were that invested in the curriculum that they had an opinion on the sequence of units.  And then, I thought that level of engagement should be rewarded.

I rearranged the units I had planned, went back to my TEKS, and designed ways to apply some rigorous TEKS to what the students wanted to do next.  I have to get all the TEKS covered before the end of the year; it doesn’t matter to me in which order we do them.  Additionally, I was able to work in some TEKS from the lower grade levels to give them a review of some of the concepts that they will see on the STAAR exam.

I’ve talked about the structure for this year long project  before.  My IPC classes are doing units that are part of an overall narrative and I don’t want to take them out of that story by doing things in ways that don’t seem logical to them.  In this case, I’ve rearranged my curriculum to give them what they have told me directly that they need.

A few caveats – this is an advanced class where the students already have the foundational knowledge of physics and chemistry that they can apply to other areas of science.  Also, while they still have to take the STAAR test, they are not facing an End-Of-Course exam for this class.  I believe that other physical/Earth science disciplines build on physics and chemistry, and to get into those disciplines without the proper foundation is a mistake.

With Just In Time Education, I can adapt to the needs of my students, keep them in engaged in what we are doing, and give them ownership in their learning.

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.