Common Core: Key Details

Key Ideas and Details:

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RST.6-8.1
Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of science and technical texts.

Honestly, I have no idea how to interpret this. Does anybody have any insight into what a lesson might look like to cover 6-8.1?

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RST.6-8.2
Determine the central ideas or conclusions of a text; provide an accurate summary of the text distinct from prior knowledge or opinions.

 The "Tree Octopus" article would be a great way to teach 6-8.2. Prior knowledge and opinion would dictate that octopi don't live in trees, but the article concludes that they do. Teaching kids to provide evidence directly from the article to support the conclusion. 

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RST.6-8.3
Follow precisely a multistep procedure when carrying out experiments, taking measurements, or performing technical tasks.

Achieved with any laboratory procedure. Make sure to include an experiment with measurements and daily observations during the year. 

P3- Practice standards-based assessment.

P3.- Practice standards-based assessment. Teacher-candidates use standards-based assessment that is systematically analyzed using multiple formative, summative and self-assessment strategies to monitor and improve instruction. For each unit taught, teachers should monitor student understanding throughout the whole unit. Some of the monitoring will come in the form of quizzes or tests, other monitoring may be informal during class or through self-assessment assignments for students to complete. I have included two documents showing how the units I write incorporate various methods of assessment to improve student learning. Document 1 (bacteria unit overview) shows the progression of the bacteria unit as it occurred in class. Document 2 (assessments) shows the various methods of assessment I used throughout the unit to monitor student learning. The assessments include summative, formative and self-assessment strategies to gauge student understanding from day one until the unit quiz. While writing the unit and compiling the assessments, I noticed how natural assessing students in various ways occurs during instruction. What does not come as natural is creating alternative summative assessments that allow students at various levels to succeed in class. In future units, I would like to prepare multiple forms of summative assessment to ensure students who learn in different ways are able to be assessed appropriately. I would also like to include more opportunities for students to self-assess their progress as self-assessment is a key skill for success in academia and life.

Bacteria unit overview                                                         Assessments

H3- Honor the classroom/school community as a milieu for learning.

H3.- Honor the classroom/school community as a milieu for learning. Teacher-candidates implement calssroom/school centered instruction, including sheltered instruction that is connected to communities within the classrom and the school, and includes knowledge and skills for working with others. For students to really learn, the classroom must be a place where students are encouraged to work together. When students work together grappling with a difficult concept, a classroom community is formed. The job of the teacher is to foster that community in a healthy way. During the unit I taught on cells, I had students present their cell analogy projects to the class. They were allowed to work in groups, but each person had to be part of the presentation. While presenting, I made notes about both the presenters and the audience. I was likely the most excited audience member. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to the creative ways my students talked about cells. The next day, I came to class with individualized comments for each student. They were celebratory in nature, but a few of them did have suggestions for increasing their success at presentations. by offering students compliments on their work as presentors, my goal was to enhance the learning environment and encourage students to share in their learning together. Typically there are papers strewn everywhere when my biology students leave for the day, however no comments were left in the room, indicating that the comments were important to the students. I learned through this experience that students appreciate praise for the learning they do in class. They respond to a learning community when the community is accepting of various opinions. Student learning will increase due to the positive nature of the classroom, alongside the high-level thinking that occurs. In the future, I could have students write comments to each other as a way to show that students have the power to make a difference on their peers and their learning environment as well.

Fifth Period Cell Analogy Evals- no names

E2- Exemplify collaboration within the school.

E2.- Exemplify collaboration within the school. Teacher-candidates participate collaboratively and professionally in school activities using appropriate and respectful verbal and written communication. Teaching can often be a solitary task.  However, collaboration among teachers can give insight into new and innovative ideas as well as create a space to share in the joys and sorrows of teaching.  At my placement school, there are days where students only attend half-day to allow teachers to participate in professional development. This may look like training sessions on various topics or collaborating with other teachers. I have attached a sheet of notes I took during a department meeting where the focus was on what students should be introduced to during Freshman year that will be helpful in advanced Science classes.  From this meeting,  I saw  several themes that can be taught through every year of high school science. From this conversation, it became clear that collaboration as a department can only lead to students maintaining consistency throughout high school science. I learned through meeting with other teachers that state standards are vague enough for teachers to be creative, but too vague to easily go from year to year and prevent repeating information. However, repeating information is not necessarily a problem for high school age students. Hence, the collaboration within a department can alleviate some of the ambiguity. Students may benefit from some repetition, but collaborating with other teachers in an effort to minimize repeating information can only serve students better in broadening their breadth of of knowledge about science. In the future, I plan on giving a beginning of the year pre-test covering various topics in science to gauge where students are at. Doing so would give me as a teacher a better idea of what information students are coming into class with to help determine where the class is going to go throughout the year.

[caption id="attachment_417" align="alignleft" width="225"] Notes from Science department meeting[/caption]

In addition, I think it would be interesting to administer a similar test to students every year to see how they progress through four years of high school science and see how much repeat, etc. there is.

P2- Practice differentiated instruction.

P2.- Practice differentiated instruction. Teacher-candidates apply principles of differentiated instruction, including theories of language acquisition, stages of language, and academic language development, in the integration of subject matter across the content areas of reading, mathematical, scientific and aesthetic reasoning. As students come into science, they are at all different stages of growth and knowledge of scientific workings. In order to reach each student individually, a certain amount of tailoring must be done for each student in order to give students their best shot at acquiring the academic language necessary to survive in the academic world. To demonstrate differentiation, I have included two versions of a conclusion I asked students to complete during the bacteria unit of Biology. One was offered to the majority of students and the alternative version was offered to students that needed additional guidance and alternative expectations for the assignment. By offering two versions of the same assignment, I was able to appropriately assess more students than if I gave only one version of the assessment. While going through the submitted work offered by students from the standard and alternative assessments, I noticed how helpful simplifying the expectations was for the students of the alternative assessment. I would not have received as high quality of work if I hadn't done so, because these students were able to show me what they really knew by completing the alternative assessment. Student learning  would have suffered if every student had the same expectations in this situation. In the future,  I hope to make an effort to create alternative assignments for each major assessment (such as tests or lab reports) to offer students I feel need streamlined expectations to show me what they really know. Bacteria Lab Analysis Questions

microbe modified lab rubric

Energy of Matter Unit

The first unit I taught in Chemistry was probably one of the hardest content areas of chemistry to teach. The entire unit is completely abstract. I am so thankful my mentor teacher is as prepeared as he is and literally handed me the material every day to work with. I was able to write several of the warm-ups, but only some. My personality definiely shined through in places as well, just ask the students about my bad energy equation jokes. I enjoyed teaching this unit becuase it is coherent and student progress is really easy to follow. One day they are complaining this makes no sense at all and the next they are writing electron configurations like pros. In the future, I would make sure that I spend more time gauging the algebra skills of my students. Maybe going slower through the light and energy equations to make sure students have a solid understanding of how to manipulate the equations to do what you want them to. I felt rushed through this portion of the unit, understandably becuase I needed to take the time to go through it myself and refresh my own understanding. There were also many instances of questions asked that I couldn't give an answer to, my chemistry skills are not graduate level.

H1- Honor student diversity and development

H1.- Honor student diversity and development. Teacher candidates plan and/or adapt learner centered curricula that engage students in a variety of culturally responsive, developmentally and age appropriate strategies. Each student is vastly different from the next. As a teacher, it is so important to see "the student" as an individual versus "the studentS"  all blurred together. One way to honor student individuality is to offer activites and projects that allow indiviudality to shine through. Each student is in a unique stage of life. Giving them the opportunity to express their own thoughts is critical to the high  school population. One way to honor student individuality in Biology involves project-based work. I assigned my students the "cell analogy project" (figure 1) to complete with their table groups.

[caption id="attachment_384" align="alignleft" width="257"] Figure 1. Handout/rubric for cell analogy project.[/caption]

This project is based off of an article I read outlining various ways student diversity may be honored in the science classroom (attached as "Culturally Relevent Teaching in Science"). This project is great for all age and developmental levels because it leaves room for excelling students to go deeper and other students to gain an understanding without as much work. Through this project I was able to gauge student understanding of the central focus (cells) and give them an opportunity to relate what we were learning in biology class to their own lives. From this project I learned several things about classroom culture. Students were able to choose both the analogy they based their project off of as well as the way they presented their analogy. I found that students were engaged with the other presentations because I made sure all presentations were different. Not only was student individuality honored, but I as the teacher was in control of classroom engagement. Students worked intimately with the various components of cells and gained a well-rounded understanding of how the cell works. As an audience, students were asked to write down three things they learned from the presentations. I read through these comments when I graded notebooks after this unit so I had physical evidence that students were learning during the presentations.

In future years, I would be interested to work out a way for each student to do an individual project. Although table groups were effective for this project, I would be interested to see if individualized projects would impact students (and their grades) differently while still working out logistically.

culturally relevent teaching in science