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