Living Environment Course Outline

Here's the planned sequence of my living environment course:

Unit 1: Introduction to Mental Models, Scientific Method & Living Environment

Unit 2: Evolution: Darwin's Model

Unit 3: Principles of Reproduction & Heredity – Mendel's Model

Unit 4: Cell Biology & Homeostasis

Unit 5: Modern Synthesis & Evolution of Life on Earth

Unit 6: Ecology

Unit 7: The Future & Human Impact on the Environment

Unit 8: Human Biology & Homeostasis

Rationale:

I would like to begin the year with a unit on evolution, since I truly believe the Dobzhansky quote about biology only making sense in the light of evolution. At the same time, I know that my students do not yet have the requisite background information to appreciate how evolution happens - heredity, genes, DNA, mutations, etc. I thought about the least number of steps I would need in order to get to evolution. I decided to break up the evolution unit and do a "simple," natural selection unit before heredity & cell biology. That will require revisiting modern synthesis after cell biology. On paper this makes sense, I'm just not sure my students will be able to handle the back-and-forth nature of such an approach. 

Of course Darwin formulated his theory of natural selection knowing nothing about genetics or simple Mendelian rules of heredity. Mendel, for his part, knew nothing about the actual mechanism for passing on traits - no idea what a "gene" was. He used the term "factors," a rather vague term for some unknown entity that was responsible for carrying traits. So why then must students know what genes are before studying heredity? Why must they understand heredity before they study evolution? I suspect that time is the issue. It simply takes longer to "cover the material" if we start with observable patterns and phenomena, then work toward the unobservable mechanisms. It seems easier to work from the mechanism, since the mechanism explains the phenomenon and is ultimately necessary to understand the phenomenon. But this is the reverse of how science usually works, and leaves the teacher open to the constant whining of "Why do we need to know this?" I want to start with the big questions - How did we get here? What makes us "us?" How do our bodies work? These are questions that students are genuinely interested in, and the answers to those questions require dabbling in some areas of study that are not otherwise immediately "interesting."

So, start with big ideas that arouse curiosity, then move to the details that are necessary to understand the big ideas, revisit big ideas. That's my approach to the extent possible. Learning is and teaching should be an iterative process.

The other difficult decision was whether to finish the year with ecology or human biology. Both are heavily tested on the exam, and both offer great opportunities to revisit major themes of the course. I decided that ending with human biology would be the most enjoyable for my students.

Planning the Course

My school uses a "looping" strategy for teacher rotation. What that means is that teachers follow their students from grade to grade: from grade 6 through grade 8 and back to grade 6 again.

This is a marvelous idea in theory and in practice has many benefits. Teacher get to know students much better, children feel more secure in having familiar faces in front of them every September, parents have fewer teachers to get to know and stay in contact with, just to name a few pluses.

On the other hand, (you knew that was coming) the policy is murderously difficult for science teachers. Planning and executing science instruction is unlike planning and execution of any other subject area. In New York State, the content is rigorous and unrelenting (a mile wide AND a mile deep if you read through the core curriculum objectives!). Science instruction demands not only a deep understanding of the content, but quite a bit of materials gathering before class, materials management in the classroom, and materials clean-up after class. No othe subject area teacher is faced with such a burden of planning, materials management, and cleaning-up.

Extensive planning goes down a lot more easily if you know that it will make your life simpler next year - you can build on and improve existing plans rather than starting from scratch. The logistical workload decreases and you can concentrate on doing a better strategic job in the classroom, polishing your presentation, anticipating student difficulties, etc.

With looping, that strategy breaks down and every year is like starting over. It's nearly impossible to store plans and materials from this year, not to be used again for 3 years.

I have spent most of this Memorial Day weekend planning for next year. It takes a tremendous amount of effort to plan a new course. I am enthusiastic about it, however, as I fully expect to be teaching Regents Living Environment for some time to come. I will be updating my website with new resources as they become available. My major accomplishment this weekend was to develop a vocabulary database for the living environment curriculum (with thanks to Bill Siebert via Mr. Comet). I am also creating a list of links to other science teachers who are teaching Regents Living Environment. Stay tuned.

Posting audio files

I had hoped to let students post audio files of their voice overs - looks like I will have to do a little extra work to get that to happen. I forgot that they cannot upload a file from the comments form. So, either I make a separate post for each voice over, or I upload the audio files to my website and place hyperlinks to the uploaded files in the comments section (which is what "upload" does anyway). At any rate, I have uploaded my own voice over - I wanted to play around with the recording aspect, and see how hard it would be to actually do a voice over. Not professional quality audio, and I'm not giving up my day job, but here's how to synchronize the voice over & the animation.

Both of the links below are designed to open up new, separate browser windows. Open the animation window first by clicking the link below:

Transpiration Animation

Then open the audio file below. Change the size of the windows so that both the animation and your audio player can be accessed at the same time. I've allowed a second or so at the beginning of the audio file, so press the play button for the audio, then the play button for the animation.

transpiration.wav

You may have to let both files run their course first, then synchronize. For some reason the files run automatically when open and I've not found a simple way to stop them before they are finished.

My timing on this recording isn't perfect, and with a slight adjustment I could make it better, but it's only here for illustrative purposes, so I'll leave it as is. When student recordings are ready, I'll post a link to them.

New Assignment for Students

I have posted another question for my (pilot) students. This is another animation but this time without a voice over. The students' assignment is to write a voice over for the animation.

Question 2 for Pilot Students

I'm not sure a blog is the best format for this type of assignment, but we will see how it goes. It is essentially a writing assignment, with the final results posted on the blog. As written, there isn't much room for dialog, which is the beauty of the blogging format. I suppose to make it more blog appropriate I could add in a collaborative component, in which students offer feedback to each other.

What I would really like is some way to record their voice overs, post the audio file, and find some way to open up the animation window and an audio window at the same time. Synchronizing should be simple enough. Just hit the play button at the opening cue from the voice over. I will work on that idea this week and see what I can come up with. I do have the ability to upload files, since the blog is hosted on my personal website.

Parental Consent

I sent a parental consent package home with the students who are participating in my "pilot" blog program. I have modified the NYC Internet Parental Consent Form for my specific purposes. The package also includes a cover letter from me to the parents, and a listing of the privacy & etiquette rules, which must be signed by students & parents.

I've decided on my strategy for addressing the sometimes ambiguous, often overly paranoid Internet Acceptable Use Policy. Firstly, it is rather vague about rules for teacher websites:

Subject to district-wide policies and procedures, teachers may establish Web pages for use with class activities or to provide a resource for other teachers. Teachers will be responsible for maintaining their class or educational resource sites. Teacher web pages will not be considered official material, but will be developed in such a manner as to reflect well upon the Department, district and school.

Secondly, there is a prohibition against interactive chat rooms and "live bulletin boards" (whatever they are):

Bulletin Boards and Chatrooms
Since we cannot monitor live bulletin boards and chat rooms to assure safety of content, we will not accept any Web pages containing bulletin boards or chat rooms.

The way I read this statement, however, is that the DOE will not HOST these services, but I don't see the statement as an outright prohibition against students accessing a bulletin board. But what if we do read it as an outright prohibition? What exactly is a blog? Does it fall in the same category as bulletin board? I would argue that it is more like a website, since I have control over what gets posted and what gets deleted and so on. Of course this is also true of a bulletin board, so I'm not sure what the DOE is thinking. They can monitor a bulletin board or a blog for safety of content just as easily as an any other website. I'm guessing that by "live bulletin board" they are really referring to a chat room, but by using the term bulletin board, they have created a terribly ambiguous policy. I could easily see an administrator telling me to shut down my blog based on a misreading of this policy.

I can also argue that the blog format I am using is nothing more than a way to display student work on the web. I could conceivably accomplish most of my goals using traditional teaching methods - assign students to view the animation, then assign them to write a response, collect the student work that resulted, and post it on a website. Doing this would be unambiguously conforming to the IAUP. It would also be terribly inefficient and less effective.

First Comments from Students

This is exciting. The first student responses to my test assignment are up. The very first comment shows at least two important results in using the blog as an educational tool. First, I can show very targeted, specific images to students related to a subject we are learning in class - in this case it was an animation of a virus infecting a cell - and be pretty sure that every student who does the assignment will actually be looking at the image, paying attention to it, and even thinking about it in terms of the classroom instruction on the topic. Secondly, every student gets to comment on the image and get feedback from me. It's like an individual tutorial.

I have to coach them to use the spellcheck or even compose their comments in a word processor first, then copy & paste into the comments box. I'm sure most of my students who have internet access at home probably are using dial-up, so it would probably be a good idea to compose comments offline, especially when the assignment calls for a more detailed response. At the same time, I have to find the proper balance between nit-picking their grammar/punctuation/etc. or enforcing the etiquette rules and keeping it fun.

Update

In the interest of efficiency, I will not repeat posts here that are on my class blogs but simply link to them. I'm getting a little concerned already about the redundant work involved in keeping separate blogs for two classes. I am trying to maintain each individual blog so that both classes have a sense of "ownership," but I'm quickly realizing this creates a bit of extra work for me. On the other hand, I don't see how it can work if 60 students (2 classes) are commenting on the same posts in the same blog.

I may at some point train an assistant to perform the redundant tasks.

I have recently posted to the class blogs:

A Note to My Students
outlining some rules about privacy & etiquette.

A Test Question
for a small group of students to do a little informal pilot program between now & the end of the school year. I want to see how it works on a small scale before launching at the end of June. My students will love the fact that I plan to engage them over the summer already for eighth grade science!

Welcome

It is only May 17, 2004, and I am so excited about teaching Regents Living Environment next year that I am planning furiously for September. I have begun reorganizing my website- originally a teachers-only resource - to take on a dual role of continuing to provide resources for teachers and now Living Environment students.

My goals in planning are:

• Develop a comprehensive syllabus


• Create a list of labs


• Prepare a list of materials needed


• Produce an information packet for students and parents to be delivered before the end of the current school year


• Develop a list of homework assignments for the year


• Create an online grading system so students & parents can always have access to progress, grades, assignments, etc.


• Develop worksheets and other templates for assignments


• Prepare notes and PowerPoint presentations


• Place as much material as possible on my website

This is probably a partial list, and I'm sure other ideas will pop into my head between now & September. So to the students I say, be prepared!