Change of Heart?

I had always opposed teaching regents (high school level) science courses in grade 8 in most of our District Six middle schools (Washington Heights, Upper Manhattan, NYC). My reasoning was based on a few observations.

1. Most of our students are deficient in a number of basic science skills and habits of mind, partly from inadequate science instruction in elementary grades, partly from # 2 below.

2. Most of our students have not had any accelerated science instruction in any previous grades.

3. Combining 1 & 2, most of our students have not mastered basic middle school level science concepts & skills by the time they enter grade 8. This is a particular problem because, of course, the regents curriculum assumes that the student has certain requisite background knowledge from middle school science. As an example, in regents bio, students jump right into DNA structure & replication, protein synthesis, & so on. It is assumed that students have already mastered Mendelian genetics - dominant & recessive genes, Punnett squares, pedigree charts, etc. Of course we don't teach that topic until grade 8. So that's an additional topic for my students to deal with in taking regents next year.

4. Most of our middle schools do not have adequate facilities (science rooms with running water, space, lab tables, etc.), nor do they have adequate materials for teaching a rigorous regents class with required laboratory hours. To the extent that it is done well, it demands a lot from the teacher in terms of drumming up materials, labs, activities, etc.

Most schools are unwilling to provide the number of hours per week of science necessary to address the problems outlined above. To be more precise, I’ve been looking at the science programs in a number of high schools. Most of them program 7.5 periods per week for 10th graders to complete the Regents Living Environment course. I found one high school that actually offers a 10 period per week section for students who are struggling academically and at risk of failing the exam in a regular 7 period setting. I’ve seen regents offered here at some of our middle schools at 5, 6, or 7 periods per week. And that’s for 8th graders! Granted, these are usually higher functioning 8th graders, but still, most have not had the benefit of the full range of middle school topics before being thrust into a high school biology class.

So why am I teaching regents biology next year?

1. My school has scheduled 8 periods per week for the regents classes next year. That increases the odds of success.

2. I want to teach the kids I have this year (in grade 7) again next year. In spite of my reservations about looping, there’s something special about “graduating” (it’s a NY thing I suppose – 8th grade graduation isn’t something I am familiar with from NC) with a group of students that you’ve been with for a couple of years.

3. One way or another I plan on teaching regents living environment from now on – that means one way or another I will not be looping anymore. That probably means moving on to another school after next year, probably a high school, where I can settle down and become proficient at teaching biology.

4. I think I can do the job well and I’m willing to invest a considerable amount of time, energy, & effort to make it work – see #3 above.

So really, I haven’t had a change of heart per se. I still think that under current circumstances most students would be better off taking regents in high school. But my students are getting regents next year with or without me, so I will make the best of it, in the interest of my students as well as myself.

No News is News

As this school year winds down, it becomes more & more difficult to get things together for next year. Report cards demand attention, which means final exams need to be prepared, grades need to be computed. At the same time, students are being treated to numerous end-of-year activities, treats, field trips, and the like. Makes it difficult to maintain any semblance of organized instruction. Perhaps a good time to reflect on what went right or wrong with the current year and use that knowledge to prepare for next year.

A look at my preparations for next year betrays an ambitious attempt to be exceedingly organized. This derives from a realization this year that I never got a grip on the curriculum, never was clear about where I was going or how I was going to get there. Actually, I knew conceptually where I wanted to go, and I was clear in my mind about the content and the links from one content piece to another, but I had only a vague idea about the instructional part of it, how to get the students from where they were to where I wanted them to be. I was also over-optimistic about what the kids would be able to do themselves in terms of keeping a notebook, actively engaging in an activity, and so on. I relearned this year, after 3 years out of the classroom, how much our students demand structured instruction. They need tremendous help getting and keeping themselves organized. In order for me to provide that structure, I need to be doubly organized. Hence the planning and fretting about next year.

The Living Environment curriculum helps. It’s a rigorous program (especially for 8th graders). There’s lots of resources, including required labs, practice exams, review books, etc. There’s a good balance of pure content, broad conceptual understandings, process skills, and lab techniques. There’s a pre-determined final exam that will keep me focused, and it provides a great incentive for the kids – if they pass it they will enter 9th grade with one year of high school science and one of 5 required regents exams under their belts.

For next year I want to know ahead of time exactly what a notebook should look like – how it should be organized, how many sections they need, what to put in each section. That basically means I need a notebook of my own that will mirror theirs. I wish I could create a standardized lab report format for their lab notebooks, but so far I haven’t found any that are general enough for the wide variety of labs that we will do. Not all labs, for instance, are controlled experiments. I’ve seen too many lab report format samples force that structure onto labs that aren’t controlled experiments. A lot of labs involve building models or require simple observation of some phenomenon and inference about what’s going on, with little or no data per se, no real “problem question,” very little in the way of controlled variables. And don’t get me started on the misuses of the term hypothesis. So I may give up on the hope of finding a single lab report format and come up with 2-3 different formats and post them around the room for students to use as appropriate to each particular lab.

I also recently learned that I will have some help in the classroom in the form of a Columbia engineering student. He will work with me to plan some activities, about one every week, most likely involving the use of Vernier Probeware, which the Columbia program will provide. That’s exiting news, I’m just hoping we get some Co2 or Oxygen probes to do some photosynthesis/respiration labs. That would be way cool. I'm so looking forward to next year.

Student Voice Over

I have one example of a student voice over posted in the comment section of this post:

Test Question 2

I'm not happy with the restrictions on comments in my blogger account, which don't allow a commenter to post a target="_blank" tag, which would allow the animation and the voice over to pop up in their own respective windows, so now viewing the animation and voice over takes too many steps. I'm looking into using haloscan as an alternative comments handler.

For the sake of convenience, I'm posting the animation voice over here complete with pop-up windows:

Transpiration Animation

Voice Over