On Friday, I was so pleased to be able to return to one of my favorite days of the year, High-Interest Day at Brookfield Elementary School. This is a day where I have been able to bring the concepts of physics to k-5 graders. You may be asking yourself, "Elementary students doing physics?" YES! Not just experimenting, but understanding the concepts behind the physics of electricity and sound. This is a very special day I have had the opportunity to be involved in since 2017. So, how are we able to bring the concepts of electricity and sound traditionally taught to high school 11th and 12th graders to the elementary level? There are a few keys 1) make it a hands-on experience 2) remove the mathematical calculations and make it practical. In the past, I had the luck of bringing a handful of my physics students with me to guide the elementary students through the concepts that they had learned over the course of the year. But in my new role as a Teaching and Learning Speciali
As teachers, we tend to be told to introduce the rubric on day one of an assignment. This allows students to know exactly how they will be graded. But today was the day that we shared the product rubric with the students. The rubric can be seen below:
I built this rubric using pieces from rubrics at bie.org.
In my opinion, it doesn't seem logical to hand something like this the first week of the term before students have decided what their area of focus will be. This seems like a specific document that will make more sense to students as they synthesize their data pieces to present.
This rubric is the group rubric and that how the final project is graded. Remember there have been individual summative pieces as the units have been completed to determine individual mastery of content. The data from these pieces will provide the evidence for the final product.
Today we had a bit of an issue during our class period. The access the to the internet got sketchy and it was down for a short while. It was impressive, though, to see the students respond. They have a realistic sense of the time frame and realize that time wasted today would result in not getting the work done. It was nice to see the students transition to writing out scripts on paper and then put together a list of shots they needed to collect.
Not all was fine and dandy, though. Some students were not self motivators and were still trying to figure out which topics they needed to cover. So again as a teacher, I need to bounce around and find a balance between answering questions while prodding those who don't seem to be making progress. But on days like this, I am much more likely to give my attention to students who ask for it rather than those who are not putting forth the effort. It's like Newton's 3rd Law; I'm going to react to those students who are taking action.
We are considering reorganizing this process next year. Perhaps students will actually work on building their text after each unit of instruction. I think this is perhaps what we initially envisioned so there would be more review and revision, but never having managed a project like this before the timing was difficult. I imagine this will be a part of the reflection process as a teacher to see what our vision was and how well we met it. I look forward to doing that next week.
Students in our class are using iMovie on iPads to put these videos together. Tomorrow, I'll focus a bit more on the tech aspect of the process.
I built this rubric using pieces from rubrics at bie.org.
In my opinion, it doesn't seem logical to hand something like this the first week of the term before students have decided what their area of focus will be. This seems like a specific document that will make more sense to students as they synthesize their data pieces to present.
This rubric is the group rubric and that how the final project is graded. Remember there have been individual summative pieces as the units have been completed to determine individual mastery of content. The data from these pieces will provide the evidence for the final product.
Today we had a bit of an issue during our class period. The access the to the internet got sketchy and it was down for a short while. It was impressive, though, to see the students respond. They have a realistic sense of the time frame and realize that time wasted today would result in not getting the work done. It was nice to see the students transition to writing out scripts on paper and then put together a list of shots they needed to collect.
Not all was fine and dandy, though. Some students were not self motivators and were still trying to figure out which topics they needed to cover. So again as a teacher, I need to bounce around and find a balance between answering questions while prodding those who don't seem to be making progress. But on days like this, I am much more likely to give my attention to students who ask for it rather than those who are not putting forth the effort. It's like Newton's 3rd Law; I'm going to react to those students who are taking action.
We are considering reorganizing this process next year. Perhaps students will actually work on building their text after each unit of instruction. I think this is perhaps what we initially envisioned so there would be more review and revision, but never having managed a project like this before the timing was difficult. I imagine this will be a part of the reflection process as a teacher to see what our vision was and how well we met it. I look forward to doing that next week.
Students in our class are using iMovie on iPads to put these videos together. Tomorrow, I'll focus a bit more on the tech aspect of the process.
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