By Carmela Jones, MNS
“Don’t let the fear of striking out hold you back.” -Babe Ruth
During the second quarter and until the end of the year once we got a hang of how to change things more seamlessly, my classroom was even more quickly changing from silent & sterile to vibrant & multi-voiced. I overheard one chemistry student coming into the class asking another animatedly: “What did you do today in chemistry?” At first, the students were shy about speaking especially during the whiteboard times.
As they learned they could trust that no one would be laughed at or judged, they rapidly became energetic and engaged. It was like witnessing fireworks as students busied themselves experimenting and tediously collecting data. Then analyzing it together after graphing, finally coming to collaborative conclusions. We did worksheets for homework and corrected them whiteboard style. Everyone came away feeling more educated than before the exercises.
The “good” students took a lot longer to find their place and voice in this new setting. They were used to answering all the questions the teacher asked. They were accustomed to reading and lectures and having their work checked solely by the teacher. Their learning curve for this pedagogy probably took twice as long as the “average” student. However, eventually, it was nice to see all students viewing one another as equals rather than in some caste system based on grades or achievement.
MI equalized the playing field for all students. It gave the students who had difficulty learning in the traditional ways, other modes of learning. It gave the average student a vehicle to push themselves up. It even gave the typically “achieving” students competition now.
In an Advanced Placement Chemistry class, we studied thermodynamics and drew particle diagrams for each part of the heating curve of ice to water to steam. At the melting point, the temperature was 0 degrees Celsius and both solid and liquid particles were present. I asked students to imagine if they shrunk down to the size of atoms and compounds: “What would you see at the melting point? Draw that image.”
One group emphasized the phases present, assigning different shapes to represent solid and liquid particles. A different group focused on the connections between particles, where solid particles were strongly connected represented by solid lines between circles and liquid particles were less connected represented by dotted lines between circles. Another group emphasized the particle motion more, where solid particles had a series of parentheses around them representing vibrations; liquid particles had wavy solid lines between them representing how the particles were connected and could still able to move around one another.
In the debrief, whiteboard, summary time, students consolidated all of their ideas and formulated a clearer picture of particles at the melting point in their own minds. The best part was they completely owned all of that knowledge.
What happened with the concerned, skeptical mom? Find out, stay tuned for Friday's installment...
Add your name to those who support Modeling Instruction (MI) by liking & subscribing to The STEM Secret blog (there's a subscribe button at the top and the bottom of the page: https://www.thestemsecret.com) and by liking & following The STEM Secret FaceBook page (https://www.facebook.com/theSTEMSecret/…).
If you are a Modeling teacher, share your story by sending it to the email listed. If you know a great Modeling teacher, encourage them to send their story to the email listed. cjones.stemprofessionals@gmail.com.
If you are Modeling teacher and want to interact with other Modeling teachers with a question, an issue, a classroom experience, an announcement, or anything other MI teachers might be interested in, post it on the M2M (Modeler to Modeler) blog on the AMTA site. https://modelinginstruction.org/submit-a-blog-entry-to-m2m/
Comments