10 Science: investigation in to ocean chemistry to start with. Students drew conclusions from graphs of oxygen and carbon dioxide solubility as temperature increases and discussed the effects of the decreased solubility on life in the ocean. We then looked at the changes made in water by dissolved carbon dioxide. The students bubbled carbon dioxide through water with an acid base indicator to find it turned acidic. We tested the pH of sea water to find it was pretty neutral and discussed how the seas becoming more acidic might affect life in the oceans. We the. Used stereo microscopes to examine sea shells and the changes caused by acid on the shells. We concluded that acidification of the ocean might be bad news for them. That was only the first half. For the second half I started the class on their last assignment about oceans – they previously chose a life form and the first thing they had to do was answer some of the questions about that life form they had already identified. The progress was quite slow but they have a set timeline.

9 Science: final lesson on revision but first I demonstrated the effects of heating and cooling glowsticks so that we could revisit the idea of reaction rates and collisions between particles. Most of the class put a big effort into today’s practice questions and finished early. Test tomorrow. Zoe and I wrote this together and we’re placing it on edmodo for the students to answer in the electronic format. I’ve also finished the first of the videos that we’ll put on edmodo as home work, those who do the home work get the fun learning activity the next lesson – we’re going to make lava lamps, those who don’t can do the wath and response in class.

I was out with a year 9 home group excursion on Tuesday so my science classes were relief lessons. My Stage 1 Physics class introduced themselves to the concepts of relativity and got to experience a few interactive programs about motion. I’m waiting to see their posts on edmodo. My year ten science class finished watching the day after tomorrow with a menu activity around the learning involved, teamed up with Marcus’ class. They didn’t hand in their menus.

Stage 1 Physics: I had a Smaf meeting so the students were set the questions we would have been tackling anyway. They were provided with lots of worked examples and the homework video also showed how to go about solving those types of problems.

9 Science: Got back in time to take this class. We were revising chemical reactions. Got to talk to lots of the students one on one and brought together the ideas we’d covered in the last few weeks. I signed more on to edmodo but it is a slow, slow process with absences. Friday’s test, which I’m currently writing with Zoe, is going to be online on edmodo. One student asked if the class could have more time on their animations. At the moment I don’t know if I can find the time.

8 Science: started out on our new topic – does it Matter? First up I looked to identify what they already know about matter through groups organising words into matter, not matter and not sure. We looked to see the things we all considered matter and produced a definition based of this. We used the definition to classify those things we were unsure of. We then took on the Tony Abbot challenge to demonstrate to the Prime Minister that gasses, such as air, do indeed have mass. The groups were given a selection of materials – straws, blue tack, balloons etc to make a device that demonstrated that air had weight. A few gentle hints were needed on the way. Each group explained their device to the class and I took photos of each group with their device to put up in the classroom. Home work is on edmodo to watch and comment on a video – I resurrected this after the camp as I think the camp preparations got in the way of finishing it last time.

Not sure how much of this was due to me being slightly unwell but …

10 Science: I constructed a power point to work our way through the interconnectedness of living things in the ocean in the form of an old fashioned food web and while it was hard work getting the students to cut out the coloured pictures I’d provided eventually each group had a food chain that had been extended into a web. During the week end I was attempting to construct a learning task around the organisms they have chosen as their favourite ones in the ocean that could avoid the pitfalls of the last task. It’s much more scaffolded with check off points as we go through and deals with how they could save their favourite marine creature from the changes occurring in the ocean – the students have multiple methods they can choose to communicate their learning.  effect of ocean current on organismThe students have already completed a list of questions they would like to be able to answer about their organism. Well some do, some of the class just abandoned theirs at the end of last lesson and will have to start again from scratch. I also showed them a video about the problems caused by the ocean currents concentrating thrown away plastic rubbish in the mid-pacific and driving populations of animals to extinction.

So I looked to engage the interest – to give a reason to learn, I gave them choice about topic and method of communication is pretty much open ended.  Let’s see what we get.

9 Science: Okay one reason for my panic was I had put the wrong day on today’s practical request and I only found out five minutes before the lesson – I did get it all organised in that time.

The students were given a list of tasks to achieve – finish last weeks home work – because it gets them thinking about the causes of chemical reactions. Lots of I don’t understand how to do it but I haven’t read it yets. They were mostly willing to listen and engage in my “help” but it took a long time having to give the same message to every person in the class. (We’d actually already done this verbally in the class last week).  Some students completed this but got no further.

The next task was a practical to allow students to create word equations and think about conservation of mass. The students who engaged in this enjoyed doing the practical – the chemical reactions were pretty and interesting – and after a few reminders were willing to discuss a conclusion and discussion around the idea of conservation of matter and the particle theory word equations.   I made it an assessed piece because we’re having a bit of a struggle finishing things off and this, like the home work, was a good way of revising the major concepts we’d been pushing through – I am trying here.  During this time two girls decided that half an hour was an acceptable toilet break (they were chatting with friends from another class) and didn’t get further than completing the home work. I’m going to organise them to copy some notes but I’m out tomorrow so it’ll have to wait until Wednesday – there will be much complaining of unfairness.

The final task and only one group got to this, was to finish the animation, which we’ve ran for a lesson longer than the other classes and not got there yet – I feel quite bad about this and am trying to work out how that happened.  The two girls who finished theirs turned out to be doing it on an iPad that won’t talk to the computers and, for some reason beyond my ken, like all the other iPads there is no other way to get anything off them. So after school I’m still banging my head on the desk.

project based learning
I’m working through the various tutorial around project based learning on the ble site. I’m also starting off small with one class to see what head way I can make. The main focus is to give the students a reason to learn (obviously not just it’s going to be in the test. Create an environment that values questioning and inquiry and provide an authentic outcome).
I’m flipping my Stage 1 Physics classroom by making small videos ( I say small but the last one was 24 minutes and too big fox edmodo so thank goodness for google docs) to convey the knowledge and understanding parts of the course. Theoretically this should provide more time for me to work with students on analysis, application and beyond. First I have to get all of them watching the videos and responding to them.

8 Science – on camp this week

9 Science – I showed two of the so far completed videos, chosen randomly, to the class and asked them to use the rubric to assess them, decide how to improve them and think about applying that advice on their own animation. Most of the class there today got on with the job of creating their animation and working as part of a team. A few members struggled with both ideas. I tried to emphasis that the animation was to communicate the ideas behind a chemical equation and the conservation of mass. Some will get there, some will have to wait for another task to show this as they have become so wrapped up in the artistic side of their production that the message has become superfluous to the task in their minds. I’m allowing a little more time on Monday and so we’ll have had four lessons in total. It would have been better to keep the lessons mo consecutive but on this particular line we only have one double which we need to use for the practicals to gather evidence and data to support the concepts we are developing.

Stage 1 Physics: Split the class in two write from the start, those who had done the home work of watching the video and stating what they learned went straight on to the investigation which included some self driving toy cars, very attractive. Those who hadn’t engaged in the home work watched and documented their learning first before getting hands on. They were all able to tell about their learning and had understood the concepts I’d wanted them to understand. So data was collected about the constant motion of the cars and graphs drawn to support the constant aspect of the speeds. We didn’t quite finish the analysis today – I’ve asked them to find instantaneous speeds and compare to average speeds. Plus the conclusion and evaluations need to be written – that’s going to happen on Tuesday.

Stage 2 Chemistry tute: Zoe and I made up two sets of cards for the elements – Zoe’s idea – to use for a variety of games. I ran one with the year twelves to look at the new learnt they had been doing around trends in the periodic table. I quickly reviewed the trends for them and went through the mathematical aspects of pH calculations for use in acid rain. For the last part of the lesson students worked on their posters using me to support.

10 Science: Oh no! My guest speaker phoned in sick! I had things the class were to do before the speaker arrived but lots of running around to prepare something interesting to do afterwards. The upshot was that the class spent so much of the lesson time doing the tasks – developing a learning plan for life in the oceans, discussing feedback about the lack of effort put into the poster task they wanted to do, watching a video about life on rock platforms at the edges of the ocean and preparing a response (we didn’t get that bit finished – I’m going to have to do a wall chart post session to confirm any learning that took place) that I didn’t need all the stuff I’d rushed around organising! Anyway I forgot to post the poster effort yesterday so …

Edublogs is not letting me edit the poster, so it’s upside down. 

9 Science:  Straight into the animations today – I’m saving my comments about some of the slack practical reports until we’ve finished this exercise. Anyhow I’ll just post a few of the videos – they are not finished and I have to do a lot of reminding that the videos are supposed to explain the chemical processes (mentioning conservation of mass etc) and so I’ll start next lesson by showing some of the videos and asking the students what they would give them if assessed against the rubric so they can see how to improve.

IMG_0007 IMG_0031 IMG_0026 Those three were inserted at random. I’ll also post the finished products.

The homework is due next week and those who haven’t done it will do it while the rest do a practical.

I found some good ideas for lava lamps – will be part of the next topic. Rewriting a lot of Physics practicals to incorporate the use of iPads – I tested them with a class last year and have carried out a lot of refining. Easier to understand than a ticker tape as everything is represented on the video and lacks the tapes abstract nature. I’m using the first one tomorrow so we’ll see how it goes.

Stage 1 Physics: we looked at speed, time and distance through the perspective of travelling to the planets and beyond. The power point I put together to guide us through is on edmodo for the students to access as needed. It was a bit of a fun lesson. The time it would take to the nearest star was pretty depressing (over one hundred thousand years) but it was only at space shuttle speed. On the down side there are still lots in the class not accessing edmodo and looking at the videos. I have a few plans in mind to change this. I recently read a blog post about making students accountable in flipped classrooms. I liked the ideas but with the way technology is distributed around our school some would be difficult to implement.

9 Science: I know this class could write practical reports at the end of last year and it is really frustrating to have to go through the process of pushing them to prepare reasonable reports. On the other end nearly everyone in the class did have a go at designing the investigation – however informally – and we’re able to verbalise a conclusion to me – but not record it in many cases. They also told me how well they understood the role of collisions in chemical reactions but struggled to prepare a written explanation. So what I have to do now is work out how much of this is seeing how little they can get away with – I’m really tempted to get them to complete the communication pieces before they get to work on their animations – but I prefer working with positives and the animation is a positive experience. They have a written home work task – I still haven’t got them on edmodo – which will allow them to show some of their learning.

Stage 1 Physics – we missed this due to a Road Safety Awareness session. Lots of Physics to use but most of it won’t become relevant until second semester.

Stage 2 Physics Tute – We looked at some of the test type questions (the group were at different stages due to last weeks changes. Then we did a problem around a dual level projectile motion situation – not examinable anymore but they got confused at SMAF about it so we went through one. This also covered a lot of the projectile motion ideas, equations and problem solving including finding velocity and displacement part way through the flight. So even though it took them a while (I started it and they did most of the latter parts independently and successfully). One of the Chemistry students also attended for some support on the Environmental Chemistry poster and seemed to get a better understanding of the task and her response.

10 Science: A disappointing poster response from the class – we had enough to only make one display . I’m not giving grades but I am giving feed back. I will get to chat with them before the presentation on Thursday and I’m going to base it around learning – mostly a lack of any demonstrated. I’ll use it to once again discuss with them how they would like to communicate their learning and go about their learning as they didn’t engage with the methods they chose for this task. I’ve also identified that I have to scaffold much more closely for them (I did a lot of this verbally). In the end though it was distraction and lack of effort so I have to try and reconnect them to the topic.

Collaborations I’m involved with

Zoe (and Shane) around 9 Science; Marcus for 10 Science; Sally tying some parts of 10 Science and Maths together; the SMAF team for the year 12s.

10 Science: Dedicated this lesson to working on the Ocean Currents poster. People had to show me they had achieved something before they could leave at the end of the lesson. This is a starting point, we’re going to work up to quality in the future.

9 Science: Reactions – what speeds ’em up, what slows ’em down. The class investigated practically the effects that temperature and concentration had on chemical reactions. The class was a bit fractured in its approach and there was a twenty minute time difference between groups starting. I had to do far more hounding and chivvying this lesson than I would like. However lots of students remembered the little incidentals about keeping their work areas tidy, what a rice grain was, holding the test tube in the rack when adding anything to it and so on. The written reports on this part were on the whole pretty poor and are something we’ll have to slog through. Some were good and I’ll post some examples of both here when we finish. I demonstrated how catalysts change reaction rate using the peroxide whoosh/ elephant’s toothpaste demo. I had another lined up but the time had already been eaten away. Finally I started the class designing their part of the investigation into surface area (or do broken up bits react faster than whole bits?). We will now complete this on Wednesday so I’ll have to put my exploding methane can demonstration away for a while. Sigh.

8 Science: I asked the class to think about what boats and ships had in common that allowed them to float. The we carried out an investigation with the students having equal amounts of plasticine to make float and hold the maximum mass – competition. The winner held two and a half times the mass of plasticine used to make the boat. Next we reviewed the Cartesian divers from last time and I explained their function in terms of density. The students then had to explain how a submarine worked and finished off with their ideas about how diving whales managed to get to great depths. The winners got a small prize and I collected books to see if the students were able to use their findings to explain something new. “/>

Home work is a response to a video on edmodo.

9 Science: Working on the animation for real today. One group almost completed the animation except for the explanation at the end, other groups made progress on their titles. The plan is to finish the videos during two lessons next week. I hope to post the videos then

Stage 1 Physics: looked at the practicals from last week – I’d marked them against the rubrics and given written feedback about improvements needed. Also I needed to go through the theory of latent heat because only a few had watched the video – I reminded them that part of their study commitment was home work and gave them lots of options about how to do this. Latent Heat of Fusion investigation – the students took on board some of my feedback and were far more organised about collecting, testing and setting up apparatus, they drew tables for results, included units with all measurements and explained their calculations. Because of the explanation didn’t quite get to the end point and we’ll need to do that before we look at travelling in space next week as the start of our 1D motion unit – A video to make tomorrow.

Stage 2 Chemistry tute: quick quiz on trends across the periodic table. We worked through some of the tutorial questions on Environmental Chemistry and the continued on with the posters on their environmental issue – I think we’re getting there on this.