Blog post 2/6/12

Good morning NTSC'ers

I hope everyone is well.

REMINDER
Please take the physics pre-test before class on Tuesday.  This pre-test will not count towards you grade but will give all of us an idea about where we are with respect to our physics knowledge and where we need to go.  It is very helpful to me, for sure.

OBSERVATIONS
To review - the goal of the "stick" exercise was to illustrate how thinking "outside the box" is sometimes required to solve or approach problems.  Paradigm shifts in all fields usually start with looking at questions and observations from a different perspective and creatively.  It requires mindfulness of the possibilities that lie outside our normal habits and patterns.  This might be a stretch; I mean it was only a stick, right?  But the general idea still holds.  As we move through our learning experiences we should try to be aware (through metacognition - thinking about your thinking) how the new information fits into our model of the world, our previous learning experiences and our potential for use in the future (either through our teaching or other avenues).

THIS WEEK
We will be presenting our Candle Inquiry first thing on Tuesday and then moving onto physics.  Real science!  We will be taking two approaches during this and other science learning adventures: 1- we will learn content using a range of instructional strategies and 2- we will be learning, reviewing, re-learning a variety of skills that are required to better understand our natural world.  So, content and skills.  It will be fun.   One of the issues with the content part is attending to the different levels of current knowledge and ability.  Some of you might have extensive knowledge and aptitude with some of the content and skills.  Others will not.   In classrooms, this is approached through differentiated teaching - a fancy term for attending to as many levels of ability as possible in your/my teaching.  It is a challenge, for sure.  So, please be mindful that we all bring different knowledge and skills to our learning adventure and we need to take advantage of that.

Also this week we will be doing some reading and listening to issues related to creativity.  This will require some writing on you part that will be part of your Science Education and Learning grade.

GRADES
I have finished grading the Changing Education Paradigm writing.  I will be posting those grades by the end of the week.

AMI REFLECTION
Please remember that you have a reflection to post related to the Standards Based Grading sheet on Process of Science.  This needs to be done by Thursday.  Here is a copy of part of the email I sent to you on 2/3 regarding this assignment:

1. Look over the specific benchmarks for the SBG Sheet- Process of Science.  I have shared this document with you.
2. For each item write a short description of how this benchmark was met during our inquiry
3. Some of these might be - "well, we have not addressed this yet".  That is ok for some of them, but not many.  So, for these just indicate that we have not worked on this yet.
4. Other parts may require some research to learn definitions of specific terms; you need to do that.
   
5. Submit this as a blog - send me the URL of your blog.
6. I will grade this using the blog assessment matrix
7. This is due by Thursday 2/9

Thanks for reading this.  I look forward to seeing y'all tomorrow!

Be well

Matt