Teaching First: Project Worksheet

Well, here it is.  My first Project Worksheet (pdf)!

I adapted it from several sources to meet the needs of the our classroom.  Teachers, please note the appealing lack of Comic Sans.  I used Arial, a font for grown-ups.
The method of the project I found at the University of Georgia website.  Click here to look at the entire packet; it was created for a much more extensive project that includes a 10-15 minute presentation.
I also took the rubric method from a book on grading from Robert Marzano.

I'm sad that I have to send it to the district copier.  In a perfect world I would make the project worksheet available online and the students could refer to it electronically and print it out themselves only if they wanted a hard-copy.

This will accompany a poster the students will use as a model when I present the project.  This helped keep the worksheet to one page.

I'm really looking forward to the student's response to the worksheet.  I'm sure there will be a version 2 to stick in my electronic filing cabinet to pull out and adapt for next time.  The biome projects should be pretty good.  My students have proved themselves to be rather creative.

Here's how I created the published PDF worksheet

1. Create document in Microsoft Word
2. Save as PDF
3. Upload to Google Drive
4. Find document in Google Drive, select it, and then hit share.  Under the "Who has access" section, click on the "Change" link.
   
5. Click on the "Public on the web" radio button, then click "Save."
   
6. Distribute the resulting link.  Copy and paste it into your favorite electronic platform.
   
   I would use the Google URL Shortner to make communication easier.  Bitly also works nicely.
   See the Wikipedia article on URL Shortening here:  URL Shortening
7. Resolve to print fewer pieces of paper.

Quiz Today: Low Forms of Art

A quiz on Chapter 17 - The History of Life, will take place today.  Tomorrow and Thursday are the unit exams on evolution.  The students are not that happy about this.

Drew this on the board as another means of encouragement.  Drawings of phagocytosis are the lowest forms of art.

Whiteboard Markers: An Experiment in Color

Yesterday, I tried to create a simple model for solving Hardy-Weinberg equations.  It was complex and it was a reach for many of the students.

For today's review, I attempted to use a bit of color to differentiate the parts of the steps.  I'm hoping it will be valuable for students to see the different parts.

Today's Whiteboard - Vocab Art Project

At the request of my wife, I'll post some of my whiteboard drawings.  Today's drawing is an Vocabulary Art Project.

One of my teaching goals this quarter is to include more drawing (or other artistic means of learning/expression) in my instruction.  This project worked right into what we're doing today and tomorrow.  Working with the new words in a variety of ways should help the students become familiar with them enough to understand Monday's instruction.

My master teacher said no stick-figures on student projects.  That doesn't mean student teachers can't draw them!  Ha!

Of Moths and Whiteboards

Like the primal attraction of a moth to a flame, so it is with teachers to whiteboard markers.

I have found that I can't quite write in a straight line.  All of my writing tilts up. My teaching friends have consoled my fear that this problem will never go away.

I have enjoyed drawing things that help as I teach.  Below is how I explained the mechanisms of evolution.  Students grasp the concept of evolution as a gradual change, but have a difficult time answering the "how."  I hope the picture I drew below helped them out.  I'll be interested to see how my drawing (or lack thereof) changes over the years.

A Surprise Artistic Assessment

Still no master teacher, but we're trekking along just fine.  She'll hopefully be back tomorrow.

Today's lesson:  Finish the Evidence of Evolution video and do a Homologous Structures coloring-page for the remainder of the period.  We had a collaboration meeting this morning that pushed back the school's start time, shortening classes from 57 minutes to 41 minutes.

The video went along without a hitch, and I found that the simple act of coloring not only met with a great deal of approval by the students, but also that the worksheet was a terrific assessment.  My goal was to have the students make the connection from the definition of a homologous structure to actually see and color the homologous structures of mammalian forelimbs.

The students took to the worksheet quickly and began coloring.  I quickly graded a completion assignment and made my rounds to take a look a the students' work.  I was surprised to see some of the students incorrectly coloring some of the bones.  After questioning the students, I realized that they could define the "homologous structures" but they couldn't quite apply the concepts to the diagrams of mammalian forelimbs on the worksheet.

I used students' own hands to connect the diagram of a whale's fin and bat's wings.  Oh, how the lights came on.  Like people who saw the magician's trick, the students made the connection between the definition from the textbook and the bones that they were coloring on the worksheet.

Next time I'll do a better job of including discussions and ask for examples for vocabulary before turning them loose on a worksheet, but I was glad that we did the coloring page.  It turned out to be more of an assessment piece than an enrichment piece.