Initially, I was going to write: I don't know if I can do this, it might fail, blah blah blah, but you know what? Screw the negativity! Let's make this more positive and just start it off right. I'm going to do this, it's going to be a thing, and I'll do my darn best.
I'm going to attempt to Blog 180. But my way.
Basically, they told us about this in grad school. The concept is to write a post every day of school, which ends up being about 180 days.
Here's my plan and goal: I'm going to Cartoon 180. I have some new notebooks ready to go, and this will be a way for me to reflect on this year and stay creative and push myself to think about my teaching practice. I have been teaching for 5 years and it needs to happen. I need to try new stuff and this is how I'm going to attempt to do that and actually record it. Here's a few things.
1. I want to do a daily doodle.
2. Posts will be short. Usually anyway.
3. I want to reflect and how things went and not vent.
Hopefully, this will happen, I will love it, and I won't be making extra work for myself.
Ha. Ha. Ha.
Anyway, who else wants to Blog 180 with me?
Friday, August 16, 2019
Wednesday, May 8, 2019
End of Year Entertainment
This is going to be a short post, but I had to do it. Initially, I was making this playlist on Youtube, but I moved it over to Google Music for less ads/interruptions. If you didn't know, I love puns, so I decided to make a physics punny playlist, and yes I will be updating it for a while. It's May, how else will I survive? I will be posting a few other things later this week, but for now, enjoy a physics class playlist.
Thursday, January 24, 2019
Podcasting in Science Class?
We recently got an email about an NPR competition where you could make a podcast with your students. Now I don't know if you knew this about me, but I really want to make a podcast. My sister and I have been working on a crafting podcast, and I feel like it would be a great way to do some cool educational stuff. The competition is about either having the kids do the interviewing or to interview kids or something like that. Basically, with your students, make a podcast.
And this led me to thinking: how else can I use podcasting? So I did a little research, and the NPR website had some helpful links and ideas. However, I found it a little disheartening to see that their lessons were like an hour to 40 minutes long each, and I realized they were designed for elementary school students assuming they didn't have any idea of what a podcast is. I'm assuming my students have seen/heard of one before, so that barrier doesn't super exist.
The next level of research was to try and find lesson ideas. Here's where stuff gets crappy. There are tons of ideas for language, English and History teachers, which makes sense. Those are classes where you sometimes have to put yourself in the place of characters or imagine living in a different time and place. Science can be like that, but that's not usually what or how we evaluate student learning. So I'm coming up with my own list of ideas for having students use podcasting in my class, and I want to try a few of them out.
And this led me to thinking: how else can I use podcasting? So I did a little research, and the NPR website had some helpful links and ideas. However, I found it a little disheartening to see that their lessons were like an hour to 40 minutes long each, and I realized they were designed for elementary school students assuming they didn't have any idea of what a podcast is. I'm assuming my students have seen/heard of one before, so that barrier doesn't super exist.
The next level of research was to try and find lesson ideas. Here's where stuff gets crappy. There are tons of ideas for language, English and History teachers, which makes sense. Those are classes where you sometimes have to put yourself in the place of characters or imagine living in a different time and place. Science can be like that, but that's not usually what or how we evaluate student learning. So I'm coming up with my own list of ideas for having students use podcasting in my class, and I want to try a few of them out.
- Instead of writing out arguments, record them
- Research on a topic and share it out
- Give results of an experiment
- Share out about a volunteer experience (specific to something like APES or Environmental Science)
- Interview family members about energy usage or for some kind of genetics project
- Observing a physical concept in daily life
This list is not nearly as extensive as I would like, so hopefully I can add to it and get more ideas soon.
Sunday, January 20, 2019
Let's Make Grading Homework Smarter-Better-Faster-Stronger
I'm a new mom and a teacher, both of which are time consuming and rewarding. Saying that, I've been trying to find ways to squeeze as much out of my workday in terms of time as I can to make it so I have more time at home focused on family. I also want to find ways to give students better, more timely and more focused feedback. Now herein lies a conundrum: what can I use to do this? Should I stick with my tried and true homework grading method or should I try a new application of edtech? Which has the highest benefit to students and myself?
Tried and True
I can't take credit for my current system. I totally stole parts of it from my mentor teacher when I was a student teacher, old and current teaching team mates. Each table has a folder. One side is for students to turn in work, the other side is for returned work. In the folder are also their Plickers (plickers.com) which they use every day for feedback and attendance. Right now, I do a quick skim of their homework for completion, give them the appropriate stamp and then enter it into my paper gradebook. My paper gradebook is actually the seating chart, and I highlight any grade that isn't full credit. That way, I enter those grades into our online system and autofill full credit for every other student.
Pros: It's fast and efficient to do marking by seating chart. Students get feedback faster, and I have less of an issue of late work not getting marked as late. I also have two copies of grades (hard copy and digital) in case a student has an issue and needs to check in with me.
Cons: I have to go through and transfer information from one source to another, which means mistakes happen. Also, when a student submits late work, I have to mark it on the paper and then remember to transfer it to the digital gradebook. Basically, there's a larger margin of error with this method. Anything that has human input tends to have this.
A New Idea
Our school uses a multiple choice system called Gradecam. It's great for tests and we've just started using for quizzes, and there is a rubric option which we will be using for giving students point values for their short answer questions on tests to eliminate the human adding error I usually have. I'm pretty good, but I'm not perfect. I've seen some interesting applications of Gradecam to do lab notebooks and homework by giving students a laminated copy of the form, and I'm curious about this. The basic idea is you mark their score on the form with an Expo marker, scan it and give them their notebook back.
Pros: Grades get quickly entered into the digital gradebook, and you still have some separation based on like different parts of the criteria if you want if it's a rubric form. Data is nice. I like data. Plus, the lab notebook part sounds awesome.
Cons: There's a lot of work to set up, and I wonder if it would be a new assignment every time and how much planning would it take. Also, like making Plickers work, would I have to do a ton of paper set up as well? Like the laminated ones sounded fantastic, but how much work is that for me.
Online Homework
A few other options could be based around the concept of online assignments. One would be to buy a license through a company and have students complete all work through that. Another would be to have them upload those assignments to Google Classroom or Turnitin.com, both which have really strong submission softwares. It's becoming increasingly easy for kids to do work on their computers, and with an increase in touch screens on like everything (including this laptop), showing work is easier than ever.
Pros: Less paper is always good, for me and them. I already use Google Classroom for a ton of stuff, and Webassign has a database of problems that we could just pick through. I also had a few students submit their homework accidentally on Google Classroom early on, so they already have a concept of how to do it.
Cons: Programs like Webassign are costly, and I wouldn't want to make a ton more work or equity issues for students who might not have the ability to scan/photograph work and upload it. Kids are also so used to turning in hard copies, I feel like a few weird errors would come up that I couldn't foresee.
My Conclusion as of Right Now
As it stands, I'm sticking with tried and true. I am going to meet with some teachers that have used some of these methods to streamline work submission and get advice for next year. I might try a few things out, like making some online Google Form quizzes and see if that would be realistic to do. I also have made a form for students to create like "problem write ups," so that could be fun to play around with. Basically, we have a work in progress, but I like feeling inspired by this kind of stuff.
Because I am a weirdo.
Tried and True
I can't take credit for my current system. I totally stole parts of it from my mentor teacher when I was a student teacher, old and current teaching team mates. Each table has a folder. One side is for students to turn in work, the other side is for returned work. In the folder are also their Plickers (plickers.com) which they use every day for feedback and attendance. Right now, I do a quick skim of their homework for completion, give them the appropriate stamp and then enter it into my paper gradebook. My paper gradebook is actually the seating chart, and I highlight any grade that isn't full credit. That way, I enter those grades into our online system and autofill full credit for every other student.
Pros: It's fast and efficient to do marking by seating chart. Students get feedback faster, and I have less of an issue of late work not getting marked as late. I also have two copies of grades (hard copy and digital) in case a student has an issue and needs to check in with me.
Cons: I have to go through and transfer information from one source to another, which means mistakes happen. Also, when a student submits late work, I have to mark it on the paper and then remember to transfer it to the digital gradebook. Basically, there's a larger margin of error with this method. Anything that has human input tends to have this.
A New Idea
Our school uses a multiple choice system called Gradecam. It's great for tests and we've just started using for quizzes, and there is a rubric option which we will be using for giving students point values for their short answer questions on tests to eliminate the human adding error I usually have. I'm pretty good, but I'm not perfect. I've seen some interesting applications of Gradecam to do lab notebooks and homework by giving students a laminated copy of the form, and I'm curious about this. The basic idea is you mark their score on the form with an Expo marker, scan it and give them their notebook back.
Pros: Grades get quickly entered into the digital gradebook, and you still have some separation based on like different parts of the criteria if you want if it's a rubric form. Data is nice. I like data. Plus, the lab notebook part sounds awesome.
Cons: There's a lot of work to set up, and I wonder if it would be a new assignment every time and how much planning would it take. Also, like making Plickers work, would I have to do a ton of paper set up as well? Like the laminated ones sounded fantastic, but how much work is that for me.
Online Homework
A few other options could be based around the concept of online assignments. One would be to buy a license through a company and have students complete all work through that. Another would be to have them upload those assignments to Google Classroom or Turnitin.com, both which have really strong submission softwares. It's becoming increasingly easy for kids to do work on their computers, and with an increase in touch screens on like everything (including this laptop), showing work is easier than ever.
Pros: Less paper is always good, for me and them. I already use Google Classroom for a ton of stuff, and Webassign has a database of problems that we could just pick through. I also had a few students submit their homework accidentally on Google Classroom early on, so they already have a concept of how to do it.
Cons: Programs like Webassign are costly, and I wouldn't want to make a ton more work or equity issues for students who might not have the ability to scan/photograph work and upload it. Kids are also so used to turning in hard copies, I feel like a few weird errors would come up that I couldn't foresee.
My Conclusion as of Right Now
As it stands, I'm sticking with tried and true. I am going to meet with some teachers that have used some of these methods to streamline work submission and get advice for next year. I might try a few things out, like making some online Google Form quizzes and see if that would be realistic to do. I also have made a form for students to create like "problem write ups," so that could be fun to play around with. Basically, we have a work in progress, but I like feeling inspired by this kind of stuff.
Because I am a weirdo.
Monday, September 3, 2018
Going Back to School...Kind of
Here's the weird thing about this year: I'm currently over 39 weeks pregnant. Now, if you are doing any sort of math around pregnancy overall, that means that I am just about at full term. I'm actually past full term, I'm just almost at what is considered my due date. Now, I've done something with this pregnancy that not a lot of teachers do: I worked up until the last day before my leave started. Which means today is my last day working for a while. This is a truly bizarre feeling for me to have such a major shift in my identity because being a teacher is so much of who I am and what I think about all the time. Now, I'm going to have my own little offspring depending on me not to let them die and eventually I'll have to entrust another human with their education, but that's a longish way off.
The big thing is I have to trust my classroom to someone else. I got so lucky that my longterm sub is actually a skilled science teacher and has been a long term sub quite a few times at our school, but I still want to do my best to set him and my kids up with as much stuff as possible. Here's a couple things I did so that I could give my students all the support they might need.
Resource Website
A few years ago with the help of Google Sites, I sat down and created a website where students can look for contact information, tutorial videos from Khan Academy and practice problems all organized by unit of study. There is a ton of stuff on there, and I encourage students to explore it as much as they can because it always happens that I get panicked emails around finals week for what to study. It's on the website, believe me. I started expanding it to include materials I actually made and more things that are just fun, like advice from former students and fun physics videos from Youtube. I even have posted homework solutions up there.
Tutorial Videos
One resource I made specifically for this year are problem solving videos. Last year, I had students asking me over and over and over again to show them how to solve the same problems, and so I decided to make a few videos over the summer working through tricky problems so they could just watch them on their own time. Using Screencastomatic and my tablet, it became so easy to record that I kind of cant stop myself from keeping it going. I also left the videos unlisted so students need a link to see them, but some have already found them to be a useful study tool. Plus, this way they hear my voice so they still get a chance to get to know me, even if I can't get to know them yet.
Set Up Draft Assignments in Google Classroom
I think it's fair to say many teachers have control issues. Besides hoarding tendencies, this may be another common thread that unites most teacher personalities. If you don't have either, good for you. I have mad respect for you. But that's not me. So something I did for big projects and things I want students to do in Classroom, I created draft versions of the assignments with the point values I want for each assignment, the appropriate attachments and directions. All my sub has to do is post it to one section and copy it across the rest of the sections and he's set up to go.
Email on My Phone
I have never been the kind of person to have work email on my phone. I don't want to be reachable on weekends. However, having the ability to quickly respond via my phone is going to be necessary while on leave. While I don't want people to have access to me all the time, I don't want to feel cut off from the school community. I did, however, create an auto-response redirecting urgent emails to my sub.
Letters of Rec Over the Summer
The biggest job I had over the summer was to write letters of rec. Usually, during the fall I have appointments on appointments to meet with students to get the process going and my weekends are inundated with writing letter after letter to submit to colleges. This year, I knew writing this fall would be out of the question, but submitting the letters wouldn't be. I let students submit materials end of last school year and told them I would write 10 letters TOTAL for submission this fall. One student did get upset with me about that timeline and cutoff, but I only made it through the first 2 weeks of school before I had to go on leave, so it was actually a realistic issue in terms of time. I ended up writing the letters over a few days this summer, and I'll submit them as students get their requests through the system in order.
Hopefully, through all of this set up, I may stay somewhat connected to work and my students. Next step: labor!
The big thing is I have to trust my classroom to someone else. I got so lucky that my longterm sub is actually a skilled science teacher and has been a long term sub quite a few times at our school, but I still want to do my best to set him and my kids up with as much stuff as possible. Here's a couple things I did so that I could give my students all the support they might need.
Resource Website
A few years ago with the help of Google Sites, I sat down and created a website where students can look for contact information, tutorial videos from Khan Academy and practice problems all organized by unit of study. There is a ton of stuff on there, and I encourage students to explore it as much as they can because it always happens that I get panicked emails around finals week for what to study. It's on the website, believe me. I started expanding it to include materials I actually made and more things that are just fun, like advice from former students and fun physics videos from Youtube. I even have posted homework solutions up there.
Tutorial Videos
One resource I made specifically for this year are problem solving videos. Last year, I had students asking me over and over and over again to show them how to solve the same problems, and so I decided to make a few videos over the summer working through tricky problems so they could just watch them on their own time. Using Screencastomatic and my tablet, it became so easy to record that I kind of cant stop myself from keeping it going. I also left the videos unlisted so students need a link to see them, but some have already found them to be a useful study tool. Plus, this way they hear my voice so they still get a chance to get to know me, even if I can't get to know them yet.
Set Up Draft Assignments in Google Classroom
I think it's fair to say many teachers have control issues. Besides hoarding tendencies, this may be another common thread that unites most teacher personalities. If you don't have either, good for you. I have mad respect for you. But that's not me. So something I did for big projects and things I want students to do in Classroom, I created draft versions of the assignments with the point values I want for each assignment, the appropriate attachments and directions. All my sub has to do is post it to one section and copy it across the rest of the sections and he's set up to go.
Email on My Phone
I have never been the kind of person to have work email on my phone. I don't want to be reachable on weekends. However, having the ability to quickly respond via my phone is going to be necessary while on leave. While I don't want people to have access to me all the time, I don't want to feel cut off from the school community. I did, however, create an auto-response redirecting urgent emails to my sub.
Letters of Rec Over the Summer
The biggest job I had over the summer was to write letters of rec. Usually, during the fall I have appointments on appointments to meet with students to get the process going and my weekends are inundated with writing letter after letter to submit to colleges. This year, I knew writing this fall would be out of the question, but submitting the letters wouldn't be. I let students submit materials end of last school year and told them I would write 10 letters TOTAL for submission this fall. One student did get upset with me about that timeline and cutoff, but I only made it through the first 2 weeks of school before I had to go on leave, so it was actually a realistic issue in terms of time. I ended up writing the letters over a few days this summer, and I'll submit them as students get their requests through the system in order.
Hopefully, through all of this set up, I may stay somewhat connected to work and my students. Next step: labor!
Thursday, December 7, 2017
I really like data
I embarked this semester on a mission. Specifically, a mission for a further learning program through my district, but a mission nonetheless! I was going to use data to analyze my how effective my teaching has been to help foster a growth mindset in students and make them stronger critical thinkers.
The first step was how would I collect said data? Good question, unembodied voice in my head. I decided to utilize one of the tools I used on occasion last year and hadn't really fully utilized until this year: Google Forms. I created a Form for students to fill out after every test reflecting on a few things: how they studied, what worked best for them, how prepared they felt, and later, different aspects of growth mindset based on an effective effort survey I found. About 90% of my students (which is a pretty good percent, all things considered) filled out this test reflection after each of the five tests so far this semester. It became part of the class culture, and I would address any concerns from them during class time and let them know how it shaped my decisions. As I showed them I used the data, they gave me very honest answers and examples.
Here's the thing: the reflection is probably 10 questions long (some fill in the blank, mostly multiple choice) and I have 160 students who have taken 5 tests so far, plus a test to come and the final. To summarize, I have a lot of data. Plus, I have data on their test performance over all to compare it to. That's a lot of stuff to go through, and going through question by question to graph or analyze it is tricking to say the least. I knew I wanted to do something meaningful with this data and draw an actual conclusion (maybe write a paper, who knows?) but the task of going through frankly mountains data with limited assistance sounded like exactly zero fun.
I decided to do some research about how to analyze my research quickly. Turns out the explore function on Google Sheets is a godsend. Just click it. Believe me. You can ask questions about your data, you can get charts about specific questions from the form, you can get counts to use in other things. One thing I plan to do is to graph a change in what students think works best for them to learn and see how it fits Growth Mindset principles and then chart next steps, and I can absolutely do that. The explore function is one of the most powerful data collection tools I've ever seen, and I actually plan on showing it to my students for their own data analysis.
And yes, you read that aside right. I'm thinking about continuing to collect and analyze data and lesson plans to maybe write an article for either NSTA or AAPT. It's a dream more than anything, but it's nice to have a goal in mind for all of this data.
The first step was how would I collect said data? Good question, unembodied voice in my head. I decided to utilize one of the tools I used on occasion last year and hadn't really fully utilized until this year: Google Forms. I created a Form for students to fill out after every test reflecting on a few things: how they studied, what worked best for them, how prepared they felt, and later, different aspects of growth mindset based on an effective effort survey I found. About 90% of my students (which is a pretty good percent, all things considered) filled out this test reflection after each of the five tests so far this semester. It became part of the class culture, and I would address any concerns from them during class time and let them know how it shaped my decisions. As I showed them I used the data, they gave me very honest answers and examples.
Here's the thing: the reflection is probably 10 questions long (some fill in the blank, mostly multiple choice) and I have 160 students who have taken 5 tests so far, plus a test to come and the final. To summarize, I have a lot of data. Plus, I have data on their test performance over all to compare it to. That's a lot of stuff to go through, and going through question by question to graph or analyze it is tricking to say the least. I knew I wanted to do something meaningful with this data and draw an actual conclusion (maybe write a paper, who knows?) but the task of going through frankly mountains data with limited assistance sounded like exactly zero fun.
I decided to do some research about how to analyze my research quickly. Turns out the explore function on Google Sheets is a godsend. Just click it. Believe me. You can ask questions about your data, you can get charts about specific questions from the form, you can get counts to use in other things. One thing I plan to do is to graph a change in what students think works best for them to learn and see how it fits Growth Mindset principles and then chart next steps, and I can absolutely do that. The explore function is one of the most powerful data collection tools I've ever seen, and I actually plan on showing it to my students for their own data analysis.
And yes, you read that aside right. I'm thinking about continuing to collect and analyze data and lesson plans to maybe write an article for either NSTA or AAPT. It's a dream more than anything, but it's nice to have a goal in mind for all of this data.
Monday, November 13, 2017
Stuff I Like
I feel like this is slowly becoming LOOK AT THIS TECHNOLOGY, LOOK AT IT. But that's not a bad thing. Something both teachers and students struggle with is how to be a citizen in an increasingly digital world? Where can technology help me, and where is it a hindrance? How much money should I invest in good apps? These are questions that come up every day. A big part of my preparation for school is looking at available technology and considering all of those things before I really invest both time and money (hopefully not too much) in said app. And sometimes, that investment pays off.
Planboard
I found this app through a link on Pinterest (can't remember where, sorry, it's November.) and I thought "Oh great, another crappy planning app that says it will make me more productive. And it will have a terrible interface and not do anything better than my DIY notebook calendar." Boy I love eating my words. IT IS SO MUCH BETTER. Right now, we're in the process of changing standards from the California Science Standards to Next Generation Science Standards (or NGSS) and a big challenge is how does our current curriculum already align to those standards. Besides a very easy to use interface, Planboard has a database of standards that is easy to navigate and sort by keywords to much unit objectives. THIS IS AMAZING. Also, it connects with other programs, and while it doesn't connect with Google Classroom yet, I live in hope. It does connect to your drive so you can sort materials out by unit. But the biggest thing is matching units to standards. Now, I can justify what I do to the actual standards. That is a dream come true.
EdPuzzle
I love showing videos in class, but frankly it's hard to know what students got out of them. EdPuzzle is an in video assessment system that now connects to Google Classroom. I haven't used it what I consider "right" yet, I just used it mostly as a video sharing system, but we'll get there. It's, again, a time investment to learn a program, and see where it fits, but this one might be worth it once I figure it out.
Of course there are some of my old favorites like Gradecam and Plickers, and Google Classroom has rolled out some updates, but those are the newbies that I enjoy. Is there some tech you swear by? Let me know some suggestions in the comments!
Planboard
I found this app through a link on Pinterest (can't remember where, sorry, it's November.) and I thought "Oh great, another crappy planning app that says it will make me more productive. And it will have a terrible interface and not do anything better than my DIY notebook calendar." Boy I love eating my words. IT IS SO MUCH BETTER. Right now, we're in the process of changing standards from the California Science Standards to Next Generation Science Standards (or NGSS) and a big challenge is how does our current curriculum already align to those standards. Besides a very easy to use interface, Planboard has a database of standards that is easy to navigate and sort by keywords to much unit objectives. THIS IS AMAZING. Also, it connects with other programs, and while it doesn't connect with Google Classroom yet, I live in hope. It does connect to your drive so you can sort materials out by unit. But the biggest thing is matching units to standards. Now, I can justify what I do to the actual standards. That is a dream come true.
EdPuzzle
I love showing videos in class, but frankly it's hard to know what students got out of them. EdPuzzle is an in video assessment system that now connects to Google Classroom. I haven't used it what I consider "right" yet, I just used it mostly as a video sharing system, but we'll get there. It's, again, a time investment to learn a program, and see where it fits, but this one might be worth it once I figure it out.
Of course there are some of my old favorites like Gradecam and Plickers, and Google Classroom has rolled out some updates, but those are the newbies that I enjoy. Is there some tech you swear by? Let me know some suggestions in the comments!
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