David
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Viewing 18 posts - 1 through 18 (of 18 total)
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I have to admit I struggle with this discussion point... I spent most of my years in Chemistry with a high stakes test at the end of the year and that does not allow for a lot of time and creativity and teaching practices on my part. Now in Environmental Science I need to do a lot more... reading everyone's input and moving through the course has inspired me. Later in the course seeing the experiments and rubrics section really got me thinking what our students are capable of. This discussion seems appropriate for the end of the year. I aspire to do more work for my students having them grow their curiosity mainly using plants. We now have a greenhouse and I have to get them in there and start dreaming.
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@Lauren No inquiry but I have students draw about biogeochemical cycles and I of course keep the excellent ones from year to year to use as examples... the quality has gone up over time. Also I keep ones that aren't just artistically stunning but dense with information and thorough as well.
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In the past relying on Rubrics has given me poor result on project type assignments (not inquiry experiments). At my grade (Hight School) students seems to want to check the boxes and not push past them. I started taking them away and not revealing the breakdowns to students. A tough love approach that "automatic zeros" are possible seemed to have improved the quality of the years. Students still get outlines of what I am expecting but the formal breakdown is a mystery. I think this allows for more creativity on the student's part because they are not checking boxes at the last minute and worried about hitting a certain point but instead can use their mental energy on the task at hand and being proud of their work. As I move more towards inquiry based projects I think time is the biggest part, but including check points. Giving students feedback about where they stand now and have them think about which parts they can improve.
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Not to sound like an echo chamber but time is one of the biggest challenges. New York starts a little later than some other states but we all have the same AP Exam date and not having an extra week or two is though (also our Spring Break is usually pretty close to exam time which is a challenge in and of itself). Another challenge is collecting and assessing original thought. Between sections being on different days, ABSENCES (ugh!), and "extenuating circumstances" that part of the experience has become a burden. I actually feel like the forced move to virtual learning helped solve this. As I have now leaned more into digital submission of assignments and labs using Google Classroom the ability to collect work on time has been much better, and the ability to type feedback to establish better communication with students has been worthwhile. After getting some of the kinks out, even as we go back to normal I expect to continue the online submission of assignments and work.
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I have a lot of previous experience with eBird (multiple years) and more recently experience with iNaturalist. Lately as I have been working on my plant identification skills I have been using iNaturalist a lot. I use it to find the location of a plant I am interested in seeing and then go out into the field to see if I can track it down. eBird hotspots is great to get primed with what one might see at that location and I tend to use that if I am traveling and going on vacation. Both of these are available to anyone and with a little bit of time I am sure someone who has not participated in the past would be able to figure out. I would recommend to someone new that they should use a desktop web-based site when starting out which is a little more user friendly than the app versions in both instances. One of my favorite things in both cases is the maps. With eBird students would be able to see when sighting are and where during different parts of the year. They can then start to make connections between types of biomes in different areas or perhaps in the case of migration start to think about which locations are most vulnerable or are most important for conservation purposes. With iNaturalist I plan on having students build the database by contributing data and I would like to build a long term log of what is on the High School campus overtime so that we can monitor improvements to biodiversity through our native plantings initiatives.
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@Martha Haha that would drive me nuts too. I think sometimes I am so caught up in keeping class moving I don't take time for multiple responses as much as I should.
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@Maria (Dede) @Kristen @Kate thank you for this idea and the website... as we develop on a new course about native ecology we want students to be able to draw from their other skill sets and drawing on their artistic minds in this way is a great idea thank you!
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I used iNaturalist (https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/88292535). I have been a long time eBirder and I have been using iNaturalist off and on for more than a year. I wanted to start documenting and learning more about pollinators, bees in particular. One challenge for sure is getting a perfect picture. Another challenge is not knowing which angles or field marks you really need while you are in the heat of the moment. I found myself agonizing about the exact species ID (I do not like to leave it to a taxon). It is still fun and I ended up doing a dragonfly submission for sure (the link above). A female Blue Dasher posed nicely for an extended period of time. I will need to sharpen my own ID skills for common bees before starting with students. I want my students to learn about the connections in nature and go down the rabbithole that is the diversity of life. Why so many species? What does each species need? Where do the bees go at night?
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@Sue During quarantine I started going down the moth ID rabbit hole using iNaturalist... there are THOUSANDS of species to learn about. It is a deep deep well to get interested in but I have started dipping my toe!
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I constantly go down the rabbit hole on new interests or ideas I have and try to take time in class and share it with them. Sometimes its a new plant I am interested in or chasing down a new life bird or even planning an outdoorsy vacation for my family.
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Not having all the answers is important, so "wondering" along with students is important to and allows for a journey of discovery together or as a class. Getting students to relate material to their own lives if my way of making open ended questions. Whatever we might be covering asking students why should you care about this? or how does this apply to you or your family? I find students are now more open to realizing what is around them in their own homes and to bring it up in class at a later point. For my High School students I want them to observe the adults in their life and wonder about what type of person they aspire to be.
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I normally spend time listening, specially during migration (for new yard birds) but this was surprisingly quiet moment EXCEPT for the lawn equipment in the distance! There was thunder off in the distance as a strong approaches. I would love to do this activity with students but perhaps focus the area a bit more. As we plant out our courtyard it would be great for students to "feel" the sounds of nature. -
At the risk of becoming an echo chamber to the other responses so far, I also plan on utilizing the outdoor spaces on campus to their fullest potential. The plan as I have mentioned with our new course is for students to design, grow and plant their own beds on the school grounds. We hope this is a chance for students to also pull from their creativity and artistic point of views when thinking about textures and colors. Students will have to ask and answer their own questions about lighting, soil and water conditions. From their the hopes is that future generations can build off of these plants, replacing what didn't work and collecting data on the species that utilize space based off the plants and flowers available. An important piece is that not everything is going to work, that failure is a part of this, and with the correct data collection perhaps we can then learn from these mistakes together: not all of the seeds will germinate, not all the plants will take hold, perhaps the lighting conditions were wrong, etc.
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The teaching practice that I most wish to model is the "Frame the work globally and locally". This upcoming school year is the launch of brand new class for students where they will design, grow and plant native species into the school grounds. The hope is to grow this program and have it spread throughout the school district and the community at large. We want students to understand that their own backyards and the school itself can be an important piece of the natural world that benefits both wildlife and people. That wildlife does not have to be far off and away but could be outside a classroom window. That the school grounds can be living, breathing learning laboratories.
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I myself am an eBird user. The only citizen science program I ever tried to attempt with a class my first year of teaching AP Environmental Science was to have students document sightings of butterflies and moths using the Butterflies and Moths of North America website. Being a NY school we start later in the year September and once school gets rolling butterflies and moths become a little more difficult to find and photograph. Also verifying that students did the assignment was a little difficult. I stopped doing it after that year. After starting to be an iNaturalist user and the greater proliferation of smart phones I am interested in taking a stab at it once again. I am here to learn more about integrating it into classroom!
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I have one lesson that I love that is a "classic misdirection" for the students. This is done in my AP Environmental Science class. I receive albatross boluses from USFWS that are unfortunately heavily contaminated with plastic pollution. The misdirection is because I set the whole lesson up as if we are doing a similar lab investigation as the Owl Pellet lab, where students can calculate biomass and get an idea of how energy flows in a terrestrial system... so they think it is the same type of lesson (this time counting squid beaks instead of rodent skulls) just for a marine system. Once the groups go to the back and get started on their boluses one by one the questions start rolling in... what is this? Is this plastic? and so on. I then tell the class that this is not a lesson about marine energy transfers (so they diligent students can stop counting the squid beaks) and that it is indeed a lesson about plastic pollution. The questions become more pointed and thought out... where does the plastic come from? why would the birds each plastic? etc. This then leads to great discussions and to the most important question of all which is "What can I do about it?"
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Love your take with the Responsibility piece. I was focusing on the benefit of oneself and completely forgot about how inquiry can lead towards global change and movements.
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I actually struggled with this a bit considering inquiry to be part of the cyclical part of someone's nature, but also something any individual can be a part of regardless of their interests. That any part of the "cycle" can be an onboarding step for individuals to be a part of. Also that not all inquiry has results, that "failure" in a sense is a part of this cycle, you don't always get the result or get to see the observation you were hoping for.
I normally spend time listening, specially during migration (for new yard birds) but this was surprisingly quiet moment EXCEPT for the lawn equipment in the distance! There was thunder off in the distance as a strong approaches. I would love to do this activity with students but perhaps focus the area a bit more. As we plant out our courtyard it would be great for students to "feel" the sounds of nature. 
Viewing 18 posts - 1 through 18 (of 18 total)