I’ve decided to try the 30-day jump rope challenge (http://ashotofadrenaline.net/jump-rope-challenge/). I plan to track how things change over time, so I can show my students what five minutes a day can do. I hope it does something.
My current jump rope stats:
PR: 52 jumps without missing. I just started learning this last year, but haven’t been practicing regularly.
Most common: 18-22 jumps, with lots of 1’s and 2’s.
We’ll see what happens!
I found a recipe I liked http://smittenkitchen.com/blog/2014/07/easiest-fridge-dill-pickles/. I used less salt, and made only one quart. They came out nice. My first batch was too salty, but I think I mixed up two recipes. C’est la vie.
At some point, i’d like to try a sweeter recipe, which my family would like better. I’m thinking beets (I found out you can pickle them raw), Maybe with some ginger.
I used something close to this recipe: http://smittenkitchen.com/blog/2013/06/pickled-vegetable-sandwich-slaw/
That gave me enough liquid to fill one large Mason jar. The results are still out because this was only 15 minutes ago.
Have a small jar with more cabbage (I had to use the whole head, which I got from my CSA – www.farmerjoesgardens.com) So I made some brine, but I didn’t measure, so it seems too salty. We’ll see.
Clearly, I didn’t have enough time to write about everything (or even some things) I did last year.
So, it’s time to repurpose this thing. I am going to expand the things I write about. Things that I think about that are too long for FB.
I am going to do a bunch of things which I consider to be experiments this year. I’ll write about some of them here. I do a lot of experiments, which I define as things I’ve not tried before, or not tried a lot.
Some experiments are already in progress, I’ll write about those as the go on. Some are quickies, which I can write about sooner. I’ll try to post things about teaching too. For my loyal band of follower.
Hang on for the ride. The first dip is a small one 🙂
So, I’ve had an idea for a while now to somehow incorporate the current fascination with zombies into my chemistry class. I just couldn’t think how.
I had a little idea over the summer: Zombie Apocalypse Team, as in “I definitely want you on my zombie apocalypse team!” I thought about this a bit and thought I could use ranks (as in private, sergeant, general) to help motivate students to a higher level of mastery. I’m not into external motivation so much, but I thought I’d give it a whirl. I also did not like the military sense of it either, because I knew I’d immediately lose some students’ interest for the year. Later I translated that to “How well are you living after the apocalypse?” (barely surviving, getting by, life of ease, living large, etc.) , which I still might use.
Well, along comes EdCampCT, where I met up with Katy Reddick (link) my daughter’s erstwhile Latin teacher, who uses werewolves in her class. A brief discussion with her pointed me in a new direction – “You need a story arc. Something to use all year. Maybe the labs could be zombie related.” I publicly agreed and privately thought “How can possibly I do that?” So I let it sit in the right side of my brain for a while.
Why a zombie apocalypse theme? First, I secretly changed the theme. I didn’t want the year to be about how to kill zombies with chemistry. The real theme is “Rebuilding the post zombie apocalyptic society”. This allows me much wider latitude in re-framing what we do in lab.
We had a class discussion of the good, the bad, and the ugly in such a society. Power’s out, transportation is out, so our materials will need to be recycled. I’ll let some electricity in for the electronic balances, because the old triple beams are going to get tedious real fast. In my mind, I use 1830 as a reference year. If it didn’t exist then, we don’t have it after the apocalypse.
I’ve tried other ideas in the past: the environment, food, health and other standard fare. None really seemed to capture students imaginations. Zombies has. Not all students, but when you hear and audible “Yes!” on the first day of school, things are looking up.
The secret plot it to use this to incorporate more “E” in STEM. By going back to 1830, when chemistry was coming into its own, I have a plausible reason to recreate a bunch of stuff. I plan to incorporate much more engineering into labs this year.
My next post will describe the first lab where I used these ideas.
This week I invented the APPEAR method of problem solving, to help student organize their word problem solving efforts. It goes like this:
Analyze: what are the knowns, unknowns and reference information? Write the variables and units. In other words, what information do they give you, what are they looking for and what can you look up?
Plan: What equation do you need? What unit conversions do you need to do?
Predict: for upper level classes, I think an order of magnitude estimate would be appropriate. Possibly for mid level classes, too, but I haven’t tried that yet. We are doing Boyle’s Law calculations now in my mid level class, so I’m just asking for larger or smaller for now. I think I’ll add units, too.
This step is part of what I’m considering as value added for chemistry – skills that students can take away from chemistry even if they never think about chemistry again. Having prediction and checking skills are good in any career.
Execute: substitute in the information and solve. I don’t ask the students to solve for a variable algebraically, since many of them have forgotten that skill. They can usually substitute in all the numbers and solve for the missing one, though.
And Review: do the units work? Is the answer close to your estimate? If not, why not?
This is the other value added for chemistry, checking your work. I didn’t start doing that until graduate school, but I think it’s a great skill to have, because so few people do it. It can apply everywhere from complex engineering solutions to getting the right change back from a cashier to noticing when things are not rung up correctly at the store.
I’ve looked at other methods, but some had too many steps to remember, some had no acronym (like the ones in most chemistry text books) and some like GUESS don’t have a check your work step.
So this is what I’m going to try with my mid level students this year. I’ve made it into a graphic organizer I can paste into worksheets, etc. It is scaffolded, so some versions have extra questions to guide students.
Ok, so here goes the first one. My plan is to write about some of the things I try and what worked and what didn’t. I will be piloting some new (for me, and some new for everyone) technology in my class this year, and writing about how it goes and how to make it better.
The first bit of technology is teacher web pages, which I will be trained in tomorrow. I’d like to at least have lab due dates and date for tests, quizzes (now called “Check Your Abilities” or CYA) and other things like progress and report card dates.
I’ll also be getting a smart board soon. Won’t that be fun. 🙂
Those things are new to me, but not to every one. There are of couple other really cool things in the works, but I shan’t discuss them until I get clearance from the tower.
If I have time, I’ll post labs here, too, if they’re any good.
TTFN
Doc Och's Box 