Living, Non-Living, and Everything Else

Another busy week, and still not caught up. Decided not to go in this Saturday, but next weekend (sandwiched as it is between two holiday-filled weeks) my science department is coming in to get the supply room in order after the chaos left in the wake of summer renovations to the 3 adjoining science classroom-labs.

I put together a "lab" on living vs non-living things. I still don't like the way this subject is treated in texts and I still haven't got a good lab to go with it - and yet I think what could be more fundamental to a biology class than understanding what a living thing is? I think I know why I'm having trouble. My pie in the sky curriculum would incorporate this question into a culminating activity, rather than an opening activity - yes, begin with the question "what is "life," but let the students develop the idea over the course of a year's study rather than cramming the "characteristics of life" down their throats (OK, drumming it into their heads? Pick your cliche) as a content objective to be more or less memorized at the beginning of the year.

So I've spent several days in class on the activity and devoted ridiculous amounts of time to thinking about and planning it, only to realize that it just doesn't fit in or work as a one-shot lesson or activity. It's not too late to salvage some things from it, but I need to think more long-term about how to keep the question alive, no pun intended, throughout the year.

I have this tendency also to overcomplexificate. I have too many things going on in the activity and that, in part, leads to a lack of a clear message to the students. So let me summarize the lab. It's a pretty standard sorting of things into categories. Some are living, some non-living, and some - heck, I'm not even sure how to classify within that dichotomy. In my mind I had created a different set of categories that includes living/non-living, but adds a group of "dead" things such as beef jerky and a dried bay leaf, and a group of things "derived from living things" like milk, gummi bears, and apple juice*. At the time I thought it would be a great idea to incorporate some dichotomous sorting strategy into the lab. I also thought it should be an open-ended task. Big mistakes for a couple of reasons.

First, a lot of the sorting criteria used by the students generated ridiculous amounts of discussion - I know, that sounds like a good thing, but remember the objective here is to introduce the idea that living things share certain characteristics yadayadayada. So now I've opened up whole other areas of debate including natural vs. unnatural, edible and non-edible, etc. Great topics for discussion and ultimately relevant, but a distraction from the objectives of the lab/unit at hand. I guess that underscores why we prefer to use observable features as sorting criteria.

Secondly, students don't have enough information in front of them to really get into the content I want them to get nor do they have the prior knowledge to focus in on it. There's no way they are going to infer or observe most of the characteristics of living things going on in front of them, especially not in a single lab period or two. Or to know that gummi bears are made of gelatinous proteins and sugar, neither of which is "alive" but both of which are derived from living things. How would they know or observe that? Again, this is an argument for thinking of this question as a long-term inquiry investigation that should be infused into the course and revisited at appropriate times.

At the suggestion of my science coach, I did include a section of the lab worksheet for students to write down any of these questions that came up. I will pick the more interesting ones to put up (A "Wonder Wall") around the room and return to them at appropriate times during the year. I had done this kind of thing in the past, but for some reason I stopped doing it in the last few years. It's a good habit to get back into.

*Items for sorting included a mealworm (live), a sprig of mint (alive I think), acorns (freshly harvested from the park), a glass marble, a rock, a paper clip, coffee beans (roasted), and the above mentioned beef jerky, dried bay leaf, powdered milk, and apple juice. I would post the lab sheets, but they were frankly a disaster in practice. I will simplify in the future and ask students to categorize each item as living or non-living. This would lead to some speculation about what criteria must be met to qualify as "living." It might also lead to an idea that paper clips and beef jerky just don't belong together. There's something fundamentally different about them. Using foods as the "dead" materials was probably a mistake as well. I should have included wood, perhaps, or a preserved specimen. Again, I would leave it at the question stage here, and revisit the materials as the year goes by and ask students to refine their categories.

Annenberg/CPB - Learner.org

I just re-discovered this resource for teachers while looking for an activity on living vs non-living things (I still haven't found one so I will probably have to make one up).

The Annenberg site contains a library of "on demand" streaming videos. Some of them are appropriate for student viewing (either in class or as homework assignments) while others are more strictly professional development videos. I'm currently watching a video on a teacher doing an inquiry (High School level) investigation of crickets. It's given me some ideas on improving my mealworm investigations, which I will post a little later.

Definitely a website worth exploring when you've got an hour or so to just sit and watch someone else teaching.

Annenberg/CPB - Learner.org Home Page

Science Page

Teaching High School Science Page (Includes Cricket Investigation)

Quick Run-down of the Week

I still like the black box activity to generate lots of discussion about the nature of science and how we know what we know. Today we also brought up some ethical issues relating to scientific honesty - someone couldn't help him/herself and cracked open a corner of a box to peek inside. In the course of our discussion a student mentioned the just discovered Kuiper Belt object, EL61, and the accusations of scientific dishonesty around it. I hadn't read the Times article yet, so I looked into it after school today. It's an interesting story and the website I linked above is quite readable and discusses a number of interesting points. See also the same group at Caltech who discovered the "10th Planet." They discuss the definition (or lack thereof) of a "planet," for example, and the issue of following standard scientific protocol in terms of sharing information and so on. It is from the point of view of the scientists who feel they have been wronged, so keep that in mind. Read it!

I know it's still honeymoon time, but I'm in love with my new school. It's a totally professional environment among the staff, the admin is supportive and positive, the students are lively but mostly hard working, even when they have self-control issues and difficulty curbing their enthusiasm. It's a small school - I have 4 science department colleagues and we are all specialized, for the most part, although each of us has at least one class outside our main area of expertise - I have Health (which obviously overlaps a lot with biology, but it's a little different), the Chem teacher has a 7th grade Physical Science class, and the Earth Science teacher has a 6th grade Life Science. The Physics guy has a Math program. All the middle school kids (one class per grade) have science at the same time, which is probably why I didn't get the 6th grade class, since the 8th graders are taking my regents class.

I could say so much more about the school and what is right about it, but I don't want to raise anyone's hackles. I also don't want to jinx anything. I will, however, post some pictures of my classroom as soon as I get a few moments.

Swamped

Transitioning to my new school has been unexpectedly time consuming. I'm thrilled about the school and will write more about it soon, but I'm still settling in, getting used to the new location, a new culture, and even a new curriculum - I've got a section of Health to teach now. Fun, but extra work. My classroom was still under construction the first two teacher days back, so what already ridiculously little time the DOE made available for teachers to set up was even shorter for most of the science teachers in my building (they are still putting on the finishing touches after school). On top of that, all my materials are still sitting in boxes at home. We weren't able to get a permit to come in last Saturday, so it'll have to wait till this weekend. I could bring things in during the week but I don't have a DOE parking permit yet. I expect another week of 10-12 hour days and 7 days a week working until I get my head above water here.

Blogging

With the beginning of the new year upon us, I thought I would post a little discussion of my rationale and approach in starting and maintaining this blog.

First, a little history.

A few years ago, around the time my twins were born, I rediscovered an old photography hobby. I was never particularly talented at the art, and never devoted the time necessary to improve beyond pretty amateurish efforts, but I always enjoyed it. In looking for advice on buying a new camera (so much had changed since I gave up the hobby in the early 80's I didn't even know where to start), I stumbled upon photo.net. It was my first exposure to "online communities" and featured a number of services to keep people with a common interest connected. I particularly liked the bulletin board interface that included e-mail notification and thought it would be a great model for getting science teachers together to share information. In my brief stint as staff developer in my district, I spent a lot of time trying to create something similar, which is still up and running but at this point almost completely dormant as other services with larger pools of potential users have proliferated (NSTA listservs, e.g.). The forum never really took off. It was useful mainly as a mailing list, since I could post information on the forum and the message went out as an e-mail to about 100 teachers in the district who "signed up" for the forum (I collected e-mails at every PD activity and let them know they would be added to the list).

I still think the majority of classroom teachers of science are behind the times in terms of taking advantage of all the web tools out there and continue to think of the internet solely as a place to look up information rather than a place to form a community. How many teachers have websites to support their instruction? How many regularly read science-related blogs? How many know how to take advantage of subscription services like Bloglines (it's free dammit!)? How many are signed up for NSTA's listservs? What about Podcasts? Google Alerts? And those are just the ones I know about. I'm sure others out there can point to plenty of useful services that I don't even know about. So one goal of this blog is to spread the word.

I decided from the beginning to specialize. I pretty much limit my posts to discussing the teaching of high school biology. I generally avoid topical political events and school issues unless they are directly relevant - I have complained a few times about the facilities and policies that I think are detrimental to teaching science. I have not written much about biology in the news, but that will be something I work on this year.

I write first and foremost as a means of reflection on what I am doing in the classroom. This helps me to analyze my practices and, I hope, improve upon them. I try not to sugarcoat and I am pretty self-critical, which may or may not be a good idea in a public forum. I think, however, that an honest, critical assessment is important both for my own needs and to let any other teachers who might stumble upon this blog know that we aren't all super teachers who know exactly how do handle every lesson and students always come away both enjoying the activity and learning what we wanted them to learn. Teaching and learning are both iterative processes, to throw a little jargon around, and I've always been a little skeptical (or is it resentful?) of published educational materials that make it seem like a straight-forward linear process: Plan - implement - assess - success! It just isn't that easy.

Lastly, most of my posts will be rather short. I find writing a rather laborious task, which should be pretty evident to the average reader. I obviously will also not be the most prolific writer around - for that you will have to check out PZ Myers at Pharyngula - the man must never sleep or there are two of him. If I post once or twice a week I'm doing pretty well. Because of this, I may be asking other science teachers to contribute here. Annie Chien has already contributed and if I find any interest, I will re-configure the blog to make it a group project - much as Sean Carroll did with Preposterous Universe which morphed into Cosmic Variance.

UFT Launches Blog

I am always a little slow about posting this kind of "news" information on my blog. Edwize is the UFT sponsored blog that's been a round for a couple of weeks now and looks pretty promising as a way for the UFT to get ideas out there and to get feedback from members and the general public about those ideas. They do allow comments, but I'm not sure to what extent they are moderated. They do not appear to be deleting comments they don't like.

The official announcement of the blog is coming out next week, but it is up and running. Check it out and make your opinions known!

First Day Dilemmas

I have these conflicting impulses for how to handle the first day.

On the one hand, I would like to jump right in and start teaching, to show that my classroom is about the business of learning. Start right away with classroom academic routines, set the tone, demonstrate high expectations, learn something concrete and significant immediately, don't smile until Christmas, and all that.

On the other hand I am inclined spend a little time getting to know my students, introducing myself, letting them introduce themselves, setting the tone that my classroom will be a nurturing, caring place, minimizing anxiety so that students feel comfortable sharing and helping one another.

If either approach were equally effective, I would probably go with the first option. I'll get to know my students over time, and I always hated those overt attempts to produce a positive affective environment in classes I take or in places where I work - you know, the icebreakers, the sketches, the company picnics or office parties, etc. And yes, I have had to participate in all of those activities in different organizations I have worked for.

I hate them, but they can be effective when the goal is to have people interacting with one another and working in teams. And therein lies the dilemma. My teaching style is generally geared toward group work and students working together. As such, it is imperative that they feel comfortable talking to one another. This doesn't happen by simply putting people in a group and telling them to get to work. The ice has to be broken and a non-threatening conversation about any sort of silliness is a good way to warm things up.

So my first day will include the usual introduction to the course followed by some silliness. We will do a little icebreaker activity with "Getting to Know You" playing as background music. I have recorded 15 minutes worth of music from 4 different versions - Deborah Kerr/Marni Nixon from the original MP Soundtrack, Bing Crosby, a piano instrumental version (Fred Hersch), and finally Della Reece. I'm hoping the tongue-in-cheek corniness of it all will be appreciated.

Of course I still need to establish some routines and set the academic tone, but I think I can do it through this little activity by treating it as a serious pedagogical tool - setting it up, establishing a rationale for it, monitoring everyone's participation, and holding everyone individually accountable for it.

UPDATE

After reading Annie's comments below I realized I had forgotten to give proper credit to the source of this activity. The basic idea came from Fred Jones in an article in Education World. It's also a nice discussion of the importance of icebreakers. Scroll down the article and there are several other examples discussed. This one is called Scavenger Hunt. I stole the basic idea but I made up the questions and came up with the background music.