Experimental Design

This week I tried a new activity with all my classes.  I called it Experimental Design.  I had my classes come in and grab a piece of paper, and make a paper airplane and write their name on the plane for retrieval purposes.  Simple enough ... or so it would seem.  About half of every class had never made a paper airplane.  What?

So once the students made their airplanes (accompanied by lots of complaining), they all stood along a line across the front of the room. and I asked:

• What could we measure with the airplanes?

The student brainstormed lots of answers and then I asked:

• Which of these would be the easiest for us to measure today?

 We decided that distance would be the easiest to measure (it was the first week of school after all).  And they threw their planes.  Then once the laughter subsided, they picked up the planes and returned to their desks.

Then I directed them to make a change to their plane.  They could make a new fold, or add tape, staples or a paper clip.  When they were finished they went back to the line at the front.  Then they had to make a hypothesis (next year they have to do this at their desk on paper, but I liked the class discussion feel, just not the recap after).  the hypothesis had to be an "if...then..." statement.  Then we threw them again, and returned to their desks.  There were several follow up questions:

• What did we change?
• What did we measure?
• What things stayed the same?
• What did we compare our results to? (just added this one now)

These questions allowed us to talk about independent variables, dependent variables, constants and controls.  Some students had different constants than one another depending on if they threw the airplane the same way or not.  

• What would be the best measure of success?  (farthest one time flight or average)
• What do we still need? (more trials)

And i let them throw for the remainder of the class, and even had some students conducting airplane tutorials.  It was not all fun and games, the students did have a writing assignment about experimental design due at the end of class.  Another teacher used this and had them record the distance of each flight trial, take averages and even graphing.  

I learned about this activity from Amy at my AP training, and I am loving it!  I plan on using it as long as I can.

Another question ...

This one was actually from a female high school senior on the first day of school. When asked what do you want to know? Her response: "what is a bot's thingy made of?". Most awkward aspect of this question ... She asked a math teacher.

Question of the day ...

First day of class ...

This class seems like it is going to be just like when I took it last year (and failed).  Is there anyway I can get out of this class?

Visualization for Learning

When I was tutoring in an AVID classroom (while still working on my thesis) I had the opportunity to sit in while a Navy recruiter (I think it was Navy...) was talking to the kids and the told this story, it was amazing and I just found it again.  Even  though I teach biology I may still use this story this year as an example of different ways to learn things.  Please disregard any grammatical errors, I are a scientist :)

Visualize:

You are standing across the street from a deli it has a large window (as big as this white board) with Deli written on it in large letters.  Can you picture it?  Then a 52-ft yellow #2 pencil comes out of the deli, it has #2 written on the side and a huge pink eraser.  Then you notice that standing on the pencil is a jersey cow which is purple and green.  On the right horn (your left) there is a juicy ripe peach, and on the left horn there is a can that is cut, not a cut can, say it with me, can that is cut.  Now, tied to the cows tail is a 50 ft steel mast (the large pole on a ship that the sails are tied to), at the top of the mast is a doctor, in a white coat, not just any doctor but a medical doctor, you know he is a medical doctor because it says “MD” after his name right on his white lab coat.  In his right arm, he is holding up a beautiful sunbather who is singing Christmas carols.  Under his left arm he is holding a huge juicy ham, with a price tag hanging off of it and a huge ham bone.  The juice from the ham is running out and turning into gin, very dry gin.  The gin is raining down onto the Empire State Building.  In front of the Empire State building stands a man in a trench coat who is shivering in the rain and singing Christmas carols, and in his right hand he is holding a road map. 

Now someone else come up and tell us the story to make sure we all have the same picture

Now tell the order that the original 13 colonies ratified the US constitution.

You are standing across the street from a deli it has a large window (as big as this white board) with Deli written on it in large letters.  Can you picture it?  Then a 52-ft yellow #2 pencil comes out of the deli, it has #2 written on the side and a huge pink eraser.  Then you notice that standing on the pencil is a jersey cow which is purple and green.  On the right horn (your left) there is a juicy ripe peach, and on the left horn there is a can that is cut, not a cut can, say it with me, can that is cut.  Now, tied to the cows tail is a 50 ft steel mast (the large pole on a ship that the sails are tied to), at the top of the mast is a doctor, in a white coat, not just any doctor but a medical doctor, you know he is a medical doctor because it says “MD” after his name right on his white lab coat.  In his right arm, he is holding up a beautiful sunbather who is singing Christmas carols.  Under his left arm he is holding a huge juicy ham, with a price tag hanging off of it and a huge ham bone.  The juice from the ham is running out and turning into gin, very dry gin.  The gin is raining down onto the Empire State Building.  In front of the Empire State building stands a man in a trench coat who is shivering in the rain and singing Christmas carols, and in his right hand he is holding a road map. 

1.       Delaware

2.       Pennsylvania

3.       New jersey

4.       Georgia

5.       Connecticut

6.       Massachusetts

7.       Maryland

8.       South Carolina

9.       New Hampshire

10.   Virginia

11.   New York

12.   South Carolina

13.   Rhode Island 

AP Biology Mitosis Lab

At AP training we were having issues with the mitosis lab because we could not get the onions to produce roots. A friend I met at training, Stephanie, suggested using garlic because she had success with it I the past. I decided to go ahead and test the garlic. I had plenty of roots within a couple of days. This picture is 4 days after I set it in the water.

Desk Booties

A few weeks ago I saw this on pinterest, and followed the link to Art with Mr. E's blog.  My classroom has lots of color in every direction, so I was able to use leftover material without trying to match a theme.  I had left over felt from making Christmas stockings for my family and fabric letter for my son and niece.  So I got out my mom's rotary cutter (that I really should return) and cut out a lot of squares that were 4 inches x 4 inches.

Today when I got started, I began wondering about my sanity before I finished the first desk.   But as soon as I turned the desk over and slid it to it's new home I knew I had to keep going.  This is not a difficult task, but I had a hard time centering the fabric for my liking on the first desk.  The next picture is my room.  I used grey,hot pink, bright blue and Christmas green.

Thanks again to Mr. E!  What a great idea!

Bulletin board border!

I am still loving my painted bulletin board from last year, but this year I am changing the borders and using ribbon! I found the cutest green & white paisley ribbon at Michael's for $4 or $5 per roll. I bought 4 rolls and needed two (with some left over, but not enough for a full length of the board.

I have not finished the corners because my school scissors are not great and need to take my fabric scissors up to school to have neat corners. I will try to add a close up of the ribbon soon!