Following Tute 5

Well, last Thursday's tute started off a little disorganised for me, as I found I was supposed to have signed up for rotating tutorials (d'oh!). Mandi mentioned in her blog it was in the unit guide, but I must have domestic blindness & I hadn't checked into blackboard since the weekend (which didn't mention it). Anyway, apart from 2 minutes of confusion, I really thought the structure was brilliant (again!) & very targeted, given the imminent practicum. In three hours, I went to three different tutes and as a general comment, this really reminded me why I like science. It was hands-on, and just a bit (lot) fun! My only problem is that there were more than three sessions that I would've liked to attend! Oh well...

Middle School Science

Key practical points of note:

• Prac is all about keeping control - otherwise, anarchy!
• Have a word (stop) that makes everyone listen - vital for safety reasons
  
• Always keep the maximum number of students in view at any point in time - when helping a smaller group, be mindful of how to do this (teach side-on)
• Know where the room's main gas tap and electricity switches are
  
• Year 7 students get a bunsen burner licence (lol!). Key features include:
  
  1. Hole closed for yellow flame
  2. Light bunsen burner on yellow
  3. Match, then tap
  4. Only 3 matches in box (or they'll light them all!!)
     
  5. Teacher talk = yellow flame
  6. When away from desk, students must turn off bunsen burner
  7. Blue flame (hole open = more oxygen) for working
  8. Don't put the bottom of the test tube straight into the hottest part of the blue flame or it'll explode.
  9. Always have the test tube facing AWAY from faces
  10. Always have safety gear on (goggles, some schools have lab coats)
  11. Turning off - yellow flame, off at the tap.
• Made a simple circuit. Connected up an ammeter (in series -never parallel or it'll blow up the meter) and voltmeter (parallel across the globe). Always check students' set-ups prior to letting them switch on! I fell for the silly trick of picking out an ammeter, not a milli-ammeter (duh!). It's been a really long time since I played with that stuff.... this would be why Keasty stressed that we should ALWAYS do our experiments before walking in to teach them. At least I actually remembered what I was supposed to do with the circuit though. Rusty, but still mostly there. Perhaps I need to draw a few concept maps to help! Anyway, we drew the V-I graph of our measurements. R is the gradient - as V=IR, R=V/I, which is rise/run, which tells you which way around to draw the graph. This was a nice explanation that links back to simple maths, which I liked. Interestingly I get quite tense still when someone is looking over my shoulder & make dumb mistakes like saying micro instead of milli, and incorrect decimal placement, where I otherwise probably wouldn't Keasty rightfully should think I'm a real doofus, but more importantly I'll have to remember this for my own students & have patience with them.
  

As always, Keasty drew quite a few laughs in the way he explained things. I hope I can manage that!! He also made a point of checking everyone's work - it's hard to observe his pedagogy and 'do' at the same time, but he did explain much of what he thought we should know. I really felt I benefited from the 'doing' though and this was deliberately a prac. to show us how to run them and discuss what not to do.

VCE Chemistry

OK - I'm just not going to re-write my notes of this session here, as they're too huge! Instead, just a reflection (I usually try to do a bit of both).

This was really what I needed - although to be honest I could've listened to Deb talking about VCE chem for much longer than 1 hour! With my supervisor in the upcoming placement being only a VCE chem teacher, the likelihood is that I won't get many (if any) general science classes, and will be teaching 2 chem lessons per day. So, this was well-timed.

As a general comment on the structure, VCE chemistry looks really great, although I personally find it strange that you can do units 3 & 4, without having 1 & 2 under your belt. Not that many people would...just that it's possible. I wonder why? I also like each unit being assessed upon it's completion, rather than saving 2 units up for end of year exams. This is much kinder to the students! It makes much more sense to cover the periodic table at the beginning of the course - looking back to my 1986 text, it was in the last chapter of the book from year 12...makes no sense in hindsight! I'm looking forward to delving into how that will be taught though, because there are useful trends to note in the periodic table that possibly won't have been taught in 1st semester Y11 - something to read up on.

Great that chem has moved with the times by including such things as nanotechnology. I've read a few articles about it along the way, but will have to read the new text to see what's taught.

Deb did highlight that we should download and read the study design, including the rationale. Also the VCE chem assessment handbook (VCAA) is useful & includes rubrics. She mentioned some very good software is out there for structural isomers and covalent bonding lessons....need to look them up!

I thought the practical outline of the structure of VCE Chemistry was useful, but I wonder, will all this be repeated in second semester, as not all the chem pre-service teachers were obliged to turn up to that session & it was pretty important info. Anyway, it was very useful & timely for me!

Lab Equipment

Well, this was just plain fun (and useful). Pulling a Van Der Graaff generator apart and describing how it worked was useful & hopefully I'll be better equipped to fix one if I find it hiding under a desk somewhere! The explanation of how it works was great, and the ideas about activities that can be done with it will be good in class...

• Pie hats - pie plates loosely stacked buiding up negative charge and repelling each other, so the top one blows off, then the next, then the next etc.
• A group holding hands - person at one end earths themselves, person at the other end touches the generator and the electrical charge is felt by all of them.

POE was demonstrated - what do you think will happen? Apparently we should have ideally written down our predictions, but I was still committed to my own ideas anyway. I liked having a group discussion about the predictions, but perhaps people could write their ideas down, then discuss as a group, then refine the predictions if we want to. Would this work better than just a group prediction, or just an individual prediction? I wonder.... Anyway, it was interesting.

The ticker tape and strobe were reminders of useful equipment. I really liked some of the ideas that a strobe could be used for - guitar strings, ticker tape machine, (the centrifuge didn't work so well) - anything with regular movement. I can see this working in a maths classroom too. It was an interesting discussion about the use of the CAS calculator vs. the ticker tape machine - the idea of some groups using one and others using the other was good, but it would be good to get all kids using all machines at some point in their tuition, for the purpose of experience. I got the distinct feeling that the ideas floated last year about students learning some maths via discovery with the calculator doesn't work so well for studies of motion (even though the calculator is capable of measuring & plotting graphs of motion). The ticker tape was considered to be more intuitive - it wasn't just an issue of cost/equipment availability. Interesting. I wonder who would agree/disagree with that thought.

This was another very useful and practical session.

Off to practicum next....will be keeping the journal in terms of reflections on each lesson, attached to each lesson plan, so I won't be posting them up here.

Until sesssion 6!

M

Following Tute 4

Well, here is the somewhat belated blog entry, awaiting on my actually making the oobleck with my girls that Keasty set as homework. Disgusting stuff to feel, btw! Interesting how it really feels like a viscous liquid, but when you squeeze it, it seems to be a solid. My understanding is that it's really a liquid - cornstarch is a long chain polymer, and the molecules all get tangled up with each other under pressure (not really bonding), causing the solid-like properties. If I'm wrong (which I may well be!) someone let me know!! Interesting, & my girls had a bit of fun too :-)

Keasty had set another question for his students to follow up during week 3 - what happens if you put a beaker with water on scales, then stick your finger in it? Well, having tried it, it got heavier, which I'm thinking is due to the increased pressure on the water molecules by the finger transferring in part to the scales (and in part, by displacing the water) - you can feel some pressure (it's not like sticking your finger in air!), and every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

The other homework he'd set was handed back & discussed - we from Mandi's didn't really have a handle on what had been set, but got the gist of parts of it via the discussion (the group had to make pancakes, then fill in a worksheet. One e.g. was when drawing particles, students should show them in motion, not stationary).

So I learned about a couple of common misconceptions in those two activities. There was a handout for the common misconceptions of 'bit ideas' to help with assignment 2a. Where Keasty had tricked me on the water in a beaker, very little was in question in my mind with the handout which is a bit of a relief, but makes me wonder how differently I might perform on a multi-choice vs. an extended response test (hope not!). I have come to the conclusion that it is easy enough to get by quite well as a learner in science by mostly understanding an issue, but actually teaching that issue requires a far more comprehensive understanding to do it justice properly. It will require research into the best ways to teach each and every topic prior to entering the classroom, and I imagine it will take years to develop that PCK (if I ever succeed to my satisfaction). This isn't really isolated to science, but it is so diverse that I think it might be a bigger task than most subjects!

It was great to be in another lecturer's tute as something different - got to see a different approach to teaching & the greater the variety in this regard, the more ideas I get. Keasty is a very entertaining teacher, which is immediately engaging. I imagine if the content got a bit dry, Keasty's humour would overcome those moments, and I wonder whether I can ever manage to do this. I suppose I'll find my own style, but it would be good to keep the kids smiling in time to come. I liked the way he got regular feedback and was very inclusive via the 'picking on' everyone tactic. It's a little confronting, but I suspect it breaks down barriers and creates a 'safe' environment within a group in a short space of time. Another tip he shared was to deliberately withhold answers to questions posed in group discussions - even if the first student response is correct ("tell me more"). This helps everyone to get thinking. More craft knowledge to assimilate....

However, the key focus of the tute was on lesson planning. I loved the way we each got up and added to the white board one piece of information about cells. I recalled a few things, but as a group we knew a whole lot about them! This is a really great (and again inclusive) tactic that I will certainly bring into my classrooms. Although, it really only worked because we *did* know quite a bit as a group - it wouldn't be of much use unless you could expect the class to have a reasonable depth of knowledge in the topic.

I also liked the pair and group work structure. Three pairs all working towards one final set of lessons. It allowed sensible conversation (when there's more than two or three in a conversation, it always seems inefficient) but still was involving working in a team of 7. This is the most effective group work structure I've seen yet. Anyway, as to lesson planning, it was really good, and for me the biggest highlight was the excellent ideas that you can get when working in a group vs. on your own. I really think our lesson was significantly better working in groups, than it would've been if any of us had worked individually. This isn't something we're likely to have the benefit of once we're teachers :( The lesson plan structure seemed pretty good, but there will be bits that I might add for myself, when I'm on practicum. For e.g. enabling prompts, extension activities. Assessment - will I only have this in the 'what will I be doing' category? It might be useful to specifically target informal assessment ideas in a separate section. What about my own learning outcomes? I also found last year that a section on anticipated difficulties with associated mitigants helped me focus on individual problems within previous sessions, and how to manage or resolve them. A blend of last year's maths and this year's science plans might work out best for me.

So that's about it for tute 4!

Until next time....