Edible DNA Models

One of the goals I have had in science is to incorporate more food - and let students eat it!
Food can create an emotional response and help students to remember information.
After an evening on Pinterest I came across this great DNA model activity from the University of Utah. I modified it for my students and added an explain & share component.

Students were engaged in this activity and enjoyed sharing their models through Facebook and Instagram. Some students' friends and family even commented on the pictures they posted.

Sample work:

https://voicethread.com/#q.b4935632.i0.k0

Science Project

1. Dna can be found in the nucleus of cells
2. Dna determines the charactorisitics of species
3.They are made of sugar, guanine, cytosine, adanine and thymine
4.Its called double helix
5.The arangement of four chemical letter that can be aranged into words that form the intructions for making a organism.
~@ Mrs. Harris

Genetic Code DNA Model

New Year's Resolutions

For teachers the new year doesn't start on January 1st, it begins when summer ends and the new school year commences.
At my school most of the teachers have been coming and going for over a week already and we will be at school this week preparing our classes and lessons and sitting in meetings and learning through organized professional development activities, but the real first day is when we get to meet the children we are about to spend the next 10 months with. For me, that is September 3rd.
This year there are few things I would like to try in my classroom and will be attempting to blog about them weekly:

1. iPads - Last year a colleague received a BP A+ for Energy Grant and he bought 20 iPads for his grade 7 class to complete the project. This year we have decided to use these iPads for the grade 9 Knowledge & Employability (K&E) class. I use an iPad in my personal life and I am very excited to show students how these devices can be used to enhance their learning and to help them demonstrate their understanding. I have been downloading apps that I think will be useful for students (thank you Apps Gone Free) and have begun thinking about how I will incorporate the iPad in meaningful ways.
2. Exit Slips - One of the criticisms my student teacher received from the university facilitator was about not doing exit slips or some kind of closing activity. This has always been an area of weakness for me and this year I hope to make some significant changes. I have done some reading about exit slips as a method of formative assessment and I think that it will be something I can do with my students regularly. It will be especially helpful for the science 9 K&E class I am teaching for the first time to help me figure out student strengths, weaknesses, lesson pacing and what concepts I need to spend more/less time on. On the iPads, Socrative will be a great site/app to use for this purpose. I would also like to use more than just pen and paper for the responses though, maybe a video or voice recording, drawings, pictures, etc.
3. Interactive Student Notebooks - I hadn't heard about these until this summer. I don't have my students take a lot of notes but I could see a lot of benefits of this type of notebook. First, they are very well organized and many of my students need assistance in this area. Some of the activities students can do for the notes section of the notebook are things I have tried already (like foldables), but this just gives the students one place to put them all. Second, I love that students will have a place to express their personal connections to what we are learning. It is like a journal in that respect. This seems like it will take a lot of planning and class time so I may only try it with my grade 8 and grade 9 K&E classes. This notebook could also be used as a formative assessment tool to see how students are thinking about the scientific concepts

What I Hate About June

1. Awards
Ever since I read Chris Wejr's post Death of an Award's Ceremony I have been thinking of how we could change how awards are given in my school. This year there was a lot of controversy and conflict over how awards are given.
At HRS we use 4 core + Physical Education averages for honours. Students get an award for the classes they receive over 80% in. If they get all 4 core over 80% (not an average of the 4 classes, but over 80% in each) they get invited to an evening awards ceremony where they receive a medallion. We also have top achiever awards for each grade (boy and girl) and for overall top mark in the school. At the evening ceremony there are also special awards for various other achievements.
There are several philosophical issues for me with this whole process.

• There is no consistency for giving marks or how they are weighted. Some teachers grade behaviours like participation or organization or effort. Some teachers give zeros, some don't. Some teachers give bonus marks, some don't. Assignments, quizzes, tests etc. are weighted differently by each teacher. Some teachers average percents and others do a running total of raw score. You can see how this could create an inequality between students in core classes taught by different teachers.
• Many of the special awards have "outgoing" as one of the criteria. We do not have any special awards for introverts. Susan Cain's book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking has reminded the educational community that we need to value the contributions and achievements of these students as well.
• Why are we still segregating boys and girls!? We have had to give a boy with an 80% an award for top grade 9 male, but not give an award to 3 girls who had averages over 95%. He deserved to be recognized but those girls didn't?
• The cut off to submit grades for analysis is the end of May. So any assessments in June (including final exams) are not "counted". This means some students actually end up with less than 80% (no, we don't take away their award) and some get over 80% (they are invited to the ceremony in the following year).

2. PATs and Final Exams
I know how my students score on their PATs (or final exams) isn't necessarily a reflection of their knowledge, skills and attitudes and it doesn't show the growth the students have achieved over the year, but I have been catching myself say "This will be on the PAT" and I feel compelled to spend time reviewing before the exam. Reviewing instead of engaging my students in learning something else. I don't want them to do poorly on this test because of course some of my students really care about how well they do on tests and some are putting a lot of pressure on themselves (and me) to do well.

3. Meeting Student Needs
I teach science to 64 students and I feel like I have just started to fully understand how to meet some of the complex needs they have. The class I struggled with most at the beginning of the school year has finally started to engage. And I only get to teach them for 4 more days (and we are doing review!).

4. Grades
I have to give a student ONE grade that sums up an entire year of their learning. There are over 200 outcomes in the science curriculum. What does this grade even mean!?

Of course there is a lot to love about June too.

Change With the Times

I have been to four PD days in as many weeks and I still have Convention next week (although since I am on the Convention board I don't get to as many sessions as I would like to). This month's PD has inspired me to completely change the technology in my school, once again.
I know change is difficult for many teachers, I remember when it was for me, so I am a bit nervous about even suggesting some of these ideas.

5 years ago I bought a SmartBoard with some money I received from BP Energy's A+ for Energy grant program. It was awesome and within a year all our classrooms were fitted with one. We were renovating/building a new school so we had a good budget to do it and the AB gov't was kicking in funds for the technology too. I am not sure that all the IBWs are being utilized to their full capabilities. I use it sporadically, sometimes a lot and then not for a long time, depending on what I am teaching. A projector would certainly do the trick for most things.

But I am thinking not just a projector and desktop computer. A projector, desktop, Apple TV and an iPad (or several iPads in the hands of students). That is still cheaper than a SmartBoard and more interactive for more children. And apparently we are starting to replace SmartBoards already (I thought they would last at least 10 years...) so why not consider this alternative. At yesterday's PD session I also learned about some apps and a stand that will turn the iPad into a document camera. There is a lot of value in that compared to a SmartBoard.

So at Monday's staff meeting Darren and I will be starting a tech needs assessment to see where our staff wants to go. It is so difficult to predict technology. I didn't think I'd be willing to give up my SmartBoard so soon.

Main course or Dessert?

At the final student engagement session with Roland Case, from the Critical Thinking Consortium, we had a chance to look at some projects that were designed to support project based learning (PBL).
I wasn't very impressed with many of the projects, they were mostly research-then-summarize type projects, but some did offer some good ideas that I could use in my teaching.
The Buck Institute for Education is the leading source for information about PBL and they maintain that the best projects are those that are "The main course, not dessert". So without the project, the learning doesn't take place.
Traditionally many projects are done at the end of the learning, a chance for students to demonstrate knowledge, skills and attitudes. This seems to be more of what the Alberta Assessment Consortium refers to as performance assessment:

a meaningful, real-life task that enables students to demonstrate what they know and can do in situations like those they will encounter outside the classroom as well as in situations that simulate how people do their work

After viewing what some teachers are refering to as PBL projects, I think that I much prefer the performance assessment task. I teach junior high and it is difficult for my students to be given a task for which they are expected to do the learning on their own, independetly or in groups.
It would require a lot of time to ensure they developed the prerequisite skills to complete these projects. Students need to be very good at finding accurate information and then they need to be able to analyze and synthesize that information. These are not skills that many of my grade 8 or 9 students have mastered. I have tried these projects and they have not been very successful for the students who have difficulties reading, who are not self-starters and who have difficulties staying on task for sustained amounts of time.
I am in the process of transforming assessment in my classes (not by leaps and bounds, but it is in the process) and I have stopped grading students while they are in the process of learning. I only grade a task at the end of their learning, once they have had many opportunities to master the content and skills. With PBL it seems like you would be grading a product that was created during the learning process, which contradicts what I have been attempting to accomplish.
Or maybe I am just not understanding PBL and how I could use it to enhance learning in my class. So, for now, I will stick to the performance assessment tasks that allow students to demonstrate their knowledge and skills after learning has occured.
Everyone likes dessert better anyway, right?

Take the Time

Teachers across Canada have been getting some negative press lately. Teachers in BC, Ontario and Saskatchewan have faced challenges trying to improve teaching and learning conditions and negotiating contracts over the last year and have been subjected to a lot of public criticism. In Alberta, teachers have been blamed for the breakdown in negotiations with the government and Alberta School Boards Association. To punish teachers for ending negotiations (after the teachers' offer was turned down by the premier Nov. 30) the Minister of Education has brought up the ideas of legislating contracts and merit pay.
Despite this media attention I find that many teachers are not fully informed about the issues. I think that it is very important for teachers to be a source of information for the public. Teachers should be sharing their perspectives with parents, friends & family but to do so they need to be fully informed. This is a major challenge in our profession.
The Alberta Teachers' Association (ATA) website is a great source for information about teaching and education as well as current news items and it still publishes a hard copy of the ATA News and ATA Magazine for teachers. The ATA and many ATA Locals are also active on twitter and Facebook.
As the communications director for the Teachers' Convention in my area, and a former communications officer for my ATA Local, I have struggled for many years trying to ensure that teachers are informed. I have tried email, websites and social media to reach member teachers but none of those is as effective as a face-to-face conversation.
When I first started teaching I remember having more opportunities to have these conversations with other teachers, which I believe has made me a better teacher. Teachers would be in the staffroom before and after school and at lunch, talking and sharing ideas. I rarely make it to the staffroom anymore and from what I hear neither do the other teachers. Now that I have a family I use every free moment I have at school completing work (which also seems to have increased). Because of student busing issues we also only have a 20 minute lunch break (if we don't have lunch supervision) and only two four minute breaks throughout the day, hardly time to engage in any sort of discussion.
Teachers face a conundrum. We have no time to share and discuss but the only way we are going to change that is to share and discuss. Teachers need to take every opportunity they have to inform themselves and share with others.
That is one of the reasons I am so appreciative of professional development (PD) days. They are a rare opportunity for these face-to-face conversations to take place. I am fortunate to be attending one PD day a week this month culminating with two days of Teachers' Convention March 7 & 8. During these days I plan on trying to engage as many teachers as I can in conversations about teaching and education. What opportunities will you have? Will you take the time?

Edcamp GP

Saturday I attended the first ever EdCamp for the Grande Prairie area, sponsored by the Educational Technology Council of the ATA. I love the EdCamp concept and wish that teachers could do this in their schools every week, or at least once a month.
Teachers need to be given these opportunities to share. To hear others' successes and not-so-successes. Teachers need someone to bounce ideas off of and debate professional and philosophical perspectives (which is always my favourite thing to do!).

What I took away from this activity:

1. New Tools! (and some I have forgotten about)

• Polleverywhere.com - online and SMS polling
  and
  Socrative.com - web based student response system
  I like the idea of using these tools to check student understanding during an activity. Socrative.com provides more options and would probably be my choice between the two.
• TodaysMeet.com - create a chat room
  Useful to have students engage in a conversation when they may not be able to talk, like during a movie, presentation or lecture. Would be good for the teacher if students had questions during a lesson, I can see potential for hearing from the introverts.
• Flipboard app - social media and news aggregator
  I love Zite and this is like Zite but I can add my Facebook, twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, Google Reader etc. and it is very visual.
• Qwiki app - turn pictures and videos into a movie
  I could definitely use this in science, students could take pictures of concepts or during experiments and put them into a video to share.
• Educreations.com and app - make a video of a lesson and share online, browse already created lessons as well
  I would love to get students to create these videos explaining concepts we are learning, and then I would also have a collection of lessons for students who may have been away or need a review.
• Storify.com - curate information from social media and turn it into a story
  I love this. I see so many uses for students to create current event stories while requiring students to analyze and synthesize information. This is a tool that could be used for developing many 21st century skills.
• Piktochart.com - create drag and drop infographics
  When I briefly tried it out I was having some issues, they seem to recently have updated their site so maybe there are things being worked out still, but this could be a useful tool for teachers and students to display information and data. This tool would also require significant higher order thinking skills to determine what information should be displayed and how.

2. New Ideas and Challenges

• Standards based assessment in high school, especially for grade twelve. I can't wait for it! Although I can see some students having a problem with it.
• Should we have no zero policies? Can't believe we talked about this, but we did, and it was a great conversation which also led to a discussion about the value of marks and grades (which leads back to standards based assessment).
• High school credit recovery - this was a totally new topic for me and I found it a little contradictory to want to give zeroes but then allow students who have failed into a credit recovery program. How many students who end up in the credit recovery program are there because of unnecessary zeroes?