Audra Brown Ward: Dobbs Fellowship

Over Christmas Break, an interesting link was posted to the AP Biology teachers’ listserve.  It was a blog entry written by a college student entitled “Why Learning from PowerPoint Lectures is Frustrating.” 

As I read the musings of this obviously exasperated student and the comments that followed, I began to think about a lot of things. The initial posts brings up some valid points, but the thing that stuck out for me was the comment, “In a good class, I have fun and learn a lot; in a bad class, I don’t have a good time and don’t learn very much.”  Does this mean that I am ready to throw all of my power point presentations out the window?  Absolutely not!  Sometimes lecture is important and I dare say, vital, to understanding.

On the other hand, I have to be honest and admit that I “get” what this student is saying about having a good time and learning a lot.  I was like that as a student.  Heck, I’m like that now.   

I just left Anatomy & Physiology, where my students are finishing up the case study they started before Christmas.  Some of them seemed really into it.  As I observed the various groups, a couple were having some really valuable discussions and going down paths that were leading them to learning.  I saw true collaboration, and I want to believe that I saw learning as it was occurring.  On the other hand, there were some other groups that were just too quiet.  I did not sense that there was true collaboration in progress or that they were really trying to understand what they were doing.  I got the feeling they were just trying to get the job done.  So then I started to wonder, “Is this a good case?  Was it too simple?  Are they enjoying what they’re doing?  Are they really learning something new?”

So, do I need to make it more fun?  And what exactly is “fun” anyway?  More hands on?  High levels of inquiry?  And if I make it more fun, what exactly will they learn?  Will they leave my class with a greater appreciation of the human body and how it works?  Will they leave with better problem solving skills and the ability to work in groups?  Or will they learn that if they don’t have fun then they won’t learn at all?

So now it’s Christmas Break, but I’ve just finished my first three weeks of Anatomy & Physiology, the class I wanted to convert into an inquiry/PBL class.  It was kind of rough the first week because I wasn’t sure how to teach the introductory material (vocabulary, etc.) in an  “inquiry way.”   So, I gave the students a packet of guided notes and some cheap Barbie-like dolls from Walgreen’s, then let them work through the notes with their textbooks for half of the class period, then we discussed everything as a class.  They seemed to take well to it, but deep down inside, I felt that I was cheating them because I didn’t teach.  I’d told the students on the first day that I had no intention of being the sole dispenser of information, but still, I felt really guilty.

When it came to review of cell structure and function, I didn’t feel quite so guilty, since that is something they all should know by now (11th/12th grade with a 10th grader or two sprinkled in).  So, I let the students pick their own partners, and I gave them 30-minutes, a big piece of blank paper, some markers and an organelle or transport process.  They had to make a poster and teach their organelle and/or process to the rest of the class- for a grade.  That worked really well. 

When it came to teaching tissue types, the guilt came back and I gave in to it.  Yes, I lectured, then followed it up with a lab. Then, I got mad at myself for giving in to the guilt. 

My rationale was that I couldn’t give them an inquiry activity to make them learn tissue types if they didn’t yet know how to ask the kind of questions that would lead them to the answers I needed them to find.  If this whole inquiry/PBL way of learning is going to work, I figured at some point, I needed to teach them how to ask questions so that they could learn how to seek their own knowledge. 

So, after they completed the traditional tissue identification lab, I gave them four clinical scenarios that would be relatively easy to figure out based on the knowledge I had just given them.   I explained to them what a learning issue is (a question you need to have answered in order to solve the scenario, that can be easily researched using the internet or their textbook), then I had them go through each scenario as a group and write down all of the learning issues they could come up with.  After about 20 minutes (5 min per scenario), we discussed the learning issues as a class.  The students were already divided into four groups, so I had one group record all of the learning issues per scenario.  At first the questions were simplistic, but as we worked through them as a class and discussed what issues were really important, they got better.  At the end of this exercise, each group had a long list of learning issues for one scenario.  Each group then had to research the answers to all of the learning issues and report them, along with the solution, back to the class.

I was a bit hesitant about it, but for the most part, it went pretty well.  All of the groups were able to come up with an answer, though I could tell that some were just repeating what they had looked up in the internet and not really trying to apply it to what we had learned.  I had to push them to make the connections about why the answer was what it was relative to what we had just learned about the various tissue types.  A couple of groups tried to skip over answering all of the learning issues, but I can fix that in the future by attaching a grade to it.  This whole process took a period and a half.  Not bad.

This left me with two days before Christmas break, so I decided to try a simple case study with them.  Thanks to Chanley sharing her resources, I found a relatively simple one to start with on the National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science website.  The case study I chose had three parts to it.  I figured the students could do the first two parts before the break, then do the last part- a group report- after the break.  The students seemed to really like it.  As they were reading and researching, they kept commenting, “This is interesting,” or “I really like this, Mrs. Ward.”  One student even thanked me for letting him transfer into the class; he said that he liked what we were doing and was starting to feel more confident about Biology now because he is beginning to understand how it related to the real world.  This was very meaningful to me, because this last student never talked to me when he took regular Biology with me three years ago (he’s a senior now).    So, I’m feeling better about the guilt thing now, since I’ve apparently made the right decision on introducing inquiry/PBL in a step-wise fashion.  Good for me!

There are some things that I definitely need to work on to make the process work more smoothly in the future.  First off, there were a couple of groups who got so into finding “the answer” that they skipped over the process of devising learning issues and revised their initial hypothesis before they were supposed to.  They felt like their hypothesis had to be “right” before they could write it down and turn it in.  Also, it was like pulling teeth to get them to complete their intermittent reports on Part I of the case study so they could get the next part with more information.  I told them that each thing they had to do was for a grade, but I didn’t have the rubrics prepared ahead of time so they would take each part of the process more seriously.  This will not happen again.  Going forward, I will give them rubrics when I give them assignments.  My fault for being unprepared on that…

So… three weeks down, nine more to go.  The anxiety I felt at the beginning of the term has subsided, mostly because I’ve realized if I’m patient with myself and with the process, I’ll figure it out and it will be okay.  Overall, I’m getting positive feedback from the students and they seem to be enjoying what they are doing, so I think that means I’m on the right track. 

I’ll keep running to see what’s around the next corner!

This comment was made by the same student who made the- “All this group work, Mrs. Ward!”- comment I shared with you earlier.  He did participate in his groups this term, I thought rather well; at times he seemed to take a leadership role within one of his groups.   As it turns out, after several group work assignments, he still hasn’t bought into the value of collaboration.

Which brings me to my point of the evening…the role of collaboration in an inquiry classroom.

By the way, I’m back from snowy, cold Denver.  Brrr!  The conference was great; and hey, you haven’t lived if you’ve never been to the zoo in the snow!

Several of the sessions I attended on inquiry and PBL also had some focus on the importance of collaboration.  It is vital that students are able to share their ideas and explore their own questions in the safety of small groups. In the session  that I attended by Dr. Peters (see the post below), he talked about the importance of having some individual accountability within the group by making the reporting out to the whole group random.  He shared several ideas, such as to  have everyone look into each other’s eyes (a powerful way to pull everyone into the group; you have no choice but to work together once you’ve shared that kind of, well…intimacy, if you will) and have the person with the darkest/lightest eyes report.   I’m sure you guys can think of several variations of this and many more ways to shake it up!

A lot of what I learned this week correlates with the article from Edutopia.org “Powerful Learning: Studies Show Deep Understanding Derives from Collaborative Methods.” 

In order for collaborative learning to be most effective, the groups must be small enough to allow all members to participate.  The group should be working on a problem that is interesting to them, not the teacher.  At the same time, the teacher should monitor the groups’ interactions, process and progress.  Better learning outcomes are achieved if there are external rewards for individual accountability within the group.  This can be achieved, particularly at the beginning of this process, by assigning tasks within the group that foster equal participation among its members.

These are all things that I am thinking about as I re-design my Anatomy & Physiology class that starts at the end of the month.  Wish me luck!

I’m writing again from NABT in chilly Denver.  Chanley, Jonathan and Lyndsay, y’all need to be here with me! 

This morning I went to a session entitled “Problem-Based Learning & Scientific Inquiry in Introductory Biology.”  It was geared toward HS and college teachers.  At any rate, the presenter, John S. Peters from the College of Charleston, started his presentation by repeating a statement from a colleague, “There is no right way to teach.”  His response is “But there are plenty of wrong ways to teach.”  I was struck by his comment that the one thing that all “right” ways of teaching have in common is that they all take the learner and how people learn into consideration. 

Dr. Peters presented some really helpful information and how to execute PBL in the classroom.  He also shared some practical advice on pedagogy to make PBL more effective and prevent it from becoming a free-for-all.  Maybe on the plane ride back, I can type it all up and link it to this musing. 

What I really want to address right now, though, is my own issues with inquiry vs. time and coverage of material.

So Dr. Peters’ stated that the dictionary definition of cover is “to shield from view.”  I looked it up on dictionary.com, and sure enough, one of the definitions of the word is “to hide from view.” So, my epiphany for the day is that by worrying about covering all of the material, I may be hiding from my students the very thing I’m trying to foster in them- UNDERSTANDING.

Can you say “duh,” boys and girls?

I’m still feeling torn over the whole AP thing, and it will take me some time to work through that.  However, I’m determined now to use PBL for my entire Anatomy & Physiology course.  If it works, then I will spend some time over the summer pontificating on how I can do a bit in AP Bio.  I wonder if I can convince the other regular Biology teachers to do PBL in the 9th grade class?

Going to lunch now…be back later!

Yesterday, I arrived in Denver (brrrr!) for the annual conference of the National Association of Biology Teachers. 

In the afternoon, I went to a session on performing AP Biology Labs with Pasco SPARK Probeware.  For those of you who don’t know what it is, it is basically a way a collecting data electronically using probes that measure the output of the experiment.  With this system, you collect the data, and you can use this little (smaller thana netbook) portable machine to make data tables and even draw graphs.  If you mess up, you can easily start your data collection over again.

As I was sitting in this workshop being led through AP Biology Lab #5, I saw how many more possibilities I could have to do more inquiry with my students if I had this technology.  Muchof the time spent doing AP labs is spent on manually putting things together, leaving little time for real inquiry or truly meaningful discussion on how what we see in the lab applies to what we learned in lecture.  I feel like there’s such a disconnect there. 

BUT, if I could find a way to obtain this kind of technology, I could incorporate more inquiry, because it would be so much easier- and less time consuming-  for students to design their own experiments and collect good data.  THEN, I could spend more time with them on data analysis and discussing what the data means in the context of what was learned in lecture.  RESULTING in my students being able to make more connections and hopefully understand it all better.  My big focus in the class whenever we learn anything is “Why do we care? What does this mean in the big picture of how the world works?” 

With more technology, I can spend more time on these kinds of questions, and it would free up some space in their heads to be able to ask more of their own questions.

Now…if I could only find some money for it.  Too bad my budget for next year was due last month!

I am so sorry to be so late with my blog and this topic.  The end of September and most of October has been hellacious, to say the least.  I hate that I’ve let everyone down, but I am back on the ball now!

I did very well on the Content Knowledge aspect of the assessment, as well as on the Teacher/Student Communications and Relationships section.  So basically, I know my stuff, and I get along well with my students.

As if this should come as a surprise, I didn’t score very well in the areas regarding student exploration and Procedural Knowledge.   I really want to find a way to incoporate more learning led by student questioning into my classes.  In fact, last month, I revised a cookbook lab into an inquiry lab on surface tension, and it did go pretty well.    The students did a pretty good job designing their experiments, and the posters they made were decent for their first time out.  I’d really like to do more. 

 The problem? 

Time!

With only 4 days a week with each class, and only 12 weeks to reach our goals for the term, everything just can’t be done.  For instance, even though the surface tension project went well, we spent an entire week (yep, four days) on surface tension!  Really?  That’s a 20 minute discussion…on a slow day.  The was that it did engage all learners- the creative kids got a kick out of it- and they learned how to work with others to accomplish a goal.  But as we wind up to the end of the term, we’re only starting our third chapter, when we should be into our fourth by now. 

I know that it will all work itself out.  I am really looking forward to Anatomy & Physiology, though, so that I can incorporate some of the ideas that are floating around in my head waiting for me to get time to get them on paper.

On a side note, I told my husband the other day that I could be so much more productive if I didn’t have to drive everyday.  Having a driver would allow me to get papers graded, and really plan all the lessons in my head.  He said the same thing he always says, “All it takes is money…”

If only he knew!

In this chapter of Integrating Inquiry Across the Curriculum, Linda Jordan uses an example of how she stumbled upon inquiry in her own classroom.  I appreciated that she was not afraid to ask her students their opinions and then change in response to their feedback.  This has been something that’s always been important to me, because I feel that responding to student needs- as they express it, not an adult- makes my teaching more effective.  I also appreciated how she gave the students the opportunity to take ownership of their learning but involving them in the decision-making processes, not only throughout the inquiry process, but also at the beginning of the wetlands project.  The inquiry process for these students took on a life of its own as they learned more about the ecosystem in their own backyard.  What fun!

I appreciated her honesty about the challenges of inquiry teaching, not just for teachers, but for students also.  The challenges are scary, to say the least, and I wish that she had discussed some ways of working through the challenges, as opposed to the “yes, there are challenges, but the rewards are worth it if you stick to it” approach.  That didn’t really help me much.  Then again, I’m very concrete, so I guess it makes sense that an open-ended discussion would frustrate me. 

Now I know how my students feel when I try to leave things open with them when all they want is the answer!

Today I read the article by Clifford and Marinucci entitled “Testing the Waters: Three Elements of Classroom Inquiry” from the Harvard Educational Review. First of all, I really appreciated how the article began with and centered around a story.  I was immediately engaged, and it kept me reading because I wanted to know how the story turned out.  Bigger than that, however, I found this article to be thought-provoking, and it made me reflect on my own teaching practice.

The first thing that made me stop and think was the following statement from page 676:

“Changing classrooms to inquiry-based environments demands that teachers develop the attitudes of a scholar: They introduce changes systematically and develop criteria for evaluating their worth, they observe the effects of changed practices on children and they make their work public. Without such a disposition, teachers often introduce change that is haphazard, poorly constructed, and idiosyncratic.”

How many times have I tried to implement change and found it to be just that… haphazard and idiosyncratic?  I get an idea, I like it, and if I have time to put it together, I do it.  If it works, great, I keep it; if not, I let it go.  How crazy is that?  The problem is that I need to implement change in a systematic way, which I’ve kind of already try to do, but reading this made it hit me like a ton of bricks.  What I need to work on is having criteria for evaluating the worth of the changes I’m implementing. 

Take the “Design Your Own Experiment” project in AP Bio, for instance.  I designed it to be a long term project, but now 2-weeks into it, some students have said that their plants are growing so well and so fast that they are starting to fall over; others are saying that their plants haven’t really started growing at all.  So, I’ve checked the data of the students with the rapidly growing plants and it seems legit, so I told them to stop their experiment.  It wasn’t quite the goal I had in mind, as it didn’t occur to me that the plants of different students would grow at such drastically different rates.  So now, what is this exercise worth for those students who have only done it for two weeks vs. those who have to keep going?  Sigh…

What the authors had to say about explorative questioning vs. evaluative questioning and the difference between the two was also meaningful to me.  The way that Sue was able to incorporate inquiry into her classroom using the recent tsunami as the jumping off point was brilliant!  She was able to meet the goals of her curriculum, but still go along with where her students’ interests led in order to facilitate their learning.  I wanna be able to do that!

I tried it in AP Bio this year as a means to try to get the students interested in the course by showing them how the material we would be learning about this year is relevant to real life.  I did it on the first day of school, and used the case of Cater Semenya as the topic, giving them an article from the New York Times from August 21 to read.  Then, I had them discuss the ways biology was relevant to the situation at hand.  That part didn’t go so well, as they didn’t really want to talk to each other.  Then I had them go to the HHMI biointeractive website to do the “Gender Testing of Athletes” activity.  That part went very well as the students liked the activity and were not expecting the outcome.  For homework that night, they had to reflect on what they had learned about the relevance of Biology to their everyday lives.  Overall, I think this was a good hook, but what will really make the difference for my students- and the incorporation of inquiry into my classroom-  is how well I’m able to facilitate the follow-up as the story develops.  If you’re keeping up with the story, you know that the behavior of the officials involved isn’t really helping me!  I am open to any ideas anyone has, while we wait out the results…

Clifford and Marinucci’s discussion of what a curriculum really is, and curriculum vs. the textbook had me nodding in agreement.  I have to desire to be more flexible with where things go in my class, but wish I had the time to be able to do it all differently every year, depending on the students. 

Last week, Jonathan’s comment to me was that “there is security in lecture.”  That statement has been on my mind all week.  Reading this part of the article made me realize that not only is there security in lecture, there is also security in a yearly routine. 

As I am on this journey, I’m trying to figure out where and how I can fit inquiry into my established routine.  I’m okay with that for now, remember I’m on “slowly, slowly, easy, easy.”  But what happens once I get it?  Does my routine go completely out the window?  If so, then where’s my security?

A few years ago, I learned a bit about brain-based learning, and read a fantastic book by Sharon Bowman called Preventing Death by Lecture.  As a result of reading this book, I learned to talk for short periods of time and allow students time to process the information they’re learning  before moving on to the next topic.  Part of this processing frequently involves discussion within a group of students sitting at the same table. 

The other day, I was walking around the room as students were supposed to be in discussion on a question I had given them to ponder with the folks at their table when I noticed a student off task.  When I pointed out to him that he was supposed to be working with his group, he looked at me with an expression that was somewhere between frustration and bewilderment and with all the exasperation he could muster up said, “All this group work, Mrs. Ward!”  He ended it with a deep sigh.

For a second, I almost felt bad, but then remembered that last week this same student told me that he wanted to make video games for a living.  I then told him that if he’s going to be successful in making video games, he’d need to learn to work in a group that probably will contain a graphic designer, a computer programmer, and a marketing executive (at a minimum I guess; I know nothing about how to make a video game) to help bring his visions to fruition.  I’m not sure I convinced him about the value of group work in Biology class  for the long term, but he did turn to his group and begin to participate…this time.

This is part of my challenge in incorporating inquiry into my classes, seeing as I teach high school- mostly juniors and seniors who are not used to collaboration in the true sense of the word.  How do I bring in the students who would prefer to work alone, or who are shy and don’t feel comfortable reaching out or being reached out to?

This is what I will be contemplating this week as I try inquiry in regular Biology this week.  Wish me luck!

Um, yeah…

So I told you how I was starting to slowly incorporate inquiry into my classroom, starting with AP Biology.  I did this hoping I’d get used to it, and that by December, I’d be ready to make my Anatomy & Physiology class almost fully inquiry.  I could still get there for Anat & Phys, but can I talk about AP Bio for a minute?

I told you about the Design Your Own Experiment project.  Having the students come talk to me about their design plans went well (though next time I will have them sign up for appointments).  Most students did a good job coming up with an experiment, though I could tell that some of them were clearly trying to do the easiest experiment possible.  Honestly, I probably would have done the same thing if I had received such an assignment in high school.

Okay, fine…so when I started the next chapter, I decided to do a True/False activity that I got from one of my colleagues in Frontiers in Physiology.  I got some supersize post it notes and wrote some statements on them that covered most of the essential concepts we were going to cover. Some of the statements were true, others were false.  Before we started, I passed out the post-its and had the students put them on the board in the column they thought was best: True or False.  I appointed another student as a record keeper (the statements were numbered), then I taught the chapter.  I used lots of hands on activities, and this year, I had the students do the activities before I taught a concept instead of after.  That in itself messed with my mind, but hey, I’m trying to grow, so I went with it.  At the end of the chapter, I put the post-its back up on the board the way the students arranged them on the first day and had them re-arrange them as necessary now that they had learned the material.  There were some good things that happened.  First of all, the students seemed to be more engaged, and there was a bit of debate between them at the end when they had to re-arrange the post its.  They looked to me for the final word, but that was okay, because it was their first time through it.  They’ll get more confident as time goes on. 

The bad?

I’m about 2.5 days behind where I should be in the curriculum. 

And this, my friends, is what scares me about inquiry.  Continuing down this road- particularly in a AP class- means that I will not cover as much material.  And if I don’t cover as much material, my students may not perform as well on the exam.  And if my students don’t perform well on the exam…

…then it’s my fault, right?

ARGH!

I think I can do inquiry in Anat & Phys, and even in regular Biology as well.  But I have a formula for AP Bio, and it works. I’ve got the scores that prove it.  If I change the formula, will the outcome change in response?  To tell the truth, I am scared to find out.