Monday, January 30, 2017

Following Along with Lynn and Ashley

At this point, I am going to need to turn over this blog to following along with Lynn Okenwa and Ashley Dunbar from Orchard Hills School. This year has become a long list of to do's and this blog is one of the first things I need to take off my plate.

Lynn and Ashley will be adding their weekly agendas and resources to the Google Doc below. They label each weekly agenda by date, so your dates will not match. Just figure out where you are in the curriculum by topic to find your place.

A huge THANK YOU to Lynn and Ashley for providing this resource for us!

Weekly Agenda 7th Grade Integrated Science


Tuesday, December 27, 2016

Weeks 6,7,8,9 (Assessment 1.1)

The 6th grade assessment 1.1 seems to be the most difficult assessment written for NGSS MS science  yet. The evidence statements used to help build the assessment concentrate on the connections and interactions between organelles, cells and body systems to make up the living organism. This is much different than how we have ever taught these topics in the past. In our pre-NGSS instruction, we stressed more on the memorization of the functions of each organelle and how they contributed to the overall function of the cell. Now, students can look up these functions but must analyze and dive much deeper into how these organelles work together as subsystems in the overall system of the organism.

We will definitely be revising this assessment this summer now that we have all gone through it and found what worked and what did not work. Overall, it seems that teachers are impressed with student learning and the results of the assessment. However, we need to possibly shorten the assessment and decrease the rigor at the part 1 and part 2 levels.

This year we are going VERY slowly through the curriculum. This assessment has taken between 4 and 5 weeks to complete. It is OK that we are going slow since teachers are learning how to implement these types of tiered assessments and students are learning how to proceed through the tiered assessments. A trend that we are seeing is that some students lack the drive to move quickly since they have not yet felt any consequences. When the final grades are tallied, this may awaken some motivation in students to move more quickly through the next one. Remember, we are all in transition!

Next year, we will not give as much time to complete these assessments. Over the summer we can predict a pacing guide now that we have gone through them once. In the future, we will introduce the assessment with an estimated timeline of when the assessment will close. We should give enough time in class for the majority of students to get through Part 3. Students who wish to complete Part 4 will need to do some of this work outside of the classroom. This means students will actually need to put in some extra effort to get the A.

At this time, we predict assessment 1.1 to be done by the end of the first week after we return from Winter Break. It took over four weeks to get through this assessment as can be seen in the agendas below. The assessments get easier from this point forward!

Week 6 Agenda


Week 7 Agenda


Week 8 Agenda


Week 9 Agenda


Friday, November 11, 2016

Weeks 4 & 5

As most of you know all too well, the past few weeks have been crazy for both myself and Jen. Between being pulled out for conferences and Jen's sick baby, we have had to push the assessment off as we continued to work on the organization of life analogy.

Jen and her teaching partner, Danielle, were also observed this past week and were not ready to do this with the assessment. So, they included the Sports ball lab to reinforce the ideas of structure and function before moving on. This was one of the assignments created over summer with the curriculum team.

They said it really helped, especially the EL students, get a good grip on structure and function. This will hopefully show during the assessment.

I have also updated the 1.1 assessment to include 4-point mastery rubrics and peer review checklist rubrics. Jen and Danielle would like to explain this new shift in grading at the start of the assessment, so you will see in the Week 5 agenda the haiku page resources to help with explaining this and the assessment.

We almost made it to Thanksgiving Break!! You are all doing great:)

Click here for Week 4 Agenda


Click here for Week 5 Agenda

Saturday, October 29, 2016

Moving Students Through Assessment 1.1

In the video below, you can see how Lynn sets up her class for one of the last days students will be working on Part 1 of the NGSS 1.1 assessment for 6th grade. Prior to shooting this video, students had been working in groups of 4 to collaboratively complete a wiki project. Each student researched 3 organelles using articles provided on Haiku LMS. As a group, they decided on an analogy to represent the cell and the organelles and each student had to write three paragraphs explaining how their organelles related to the analogy.

Most students were finishing up the wiki project on this day in class. Lynn sets up her class for less than 5 minutes and then begins meeting with students to provide feedback and complete the rubrics. Although we want all kids to reach mastery before moving onto Part 2, it does take time to meet with all the groups. Sometimes, student may move forward as they wait for your feedback. In this instance, the IOS app game Cell Explorer allows students to continue their learning while waiting to meet with their teacher.



Friday, October 28, 2016

Week 3 Agenda

Here is a  look at Week 3. We will be finishing up the organization of life slide shows and Introducing our first NGSS Assessment 1.1 in 6th Grade. The first performance task is being implemented right now at Orchard Hills School and the teachers think that the rigor of Part 1 may be a bit too difficult to be considered a Part 1.

Here are the original performance tasks with students researching an organelle and creating a media product to explain the structure and function. After reflecting on part 1, we are going to revert to using the original versions of the assessment found below.

OLD version of the student directions of assessment 1.1. 
OLD version of the teacher directions for assessment 1.1

The reason we changed it in the first place to the analogy project was due to the fact that students are required to peer review and use student products to answer questions in Part 2. We were worried that we would not be able to check the accuracy of the videos before students were ready to move on to Part 2 and that students would not be able to peer review if they researched a different organelle. We also thought that having a more shallow understanding of each organelle would be better than a deep understanding of just one. However, we have changed our mind.

With the addition of the IOS App game Cell Explorer, it allows students to attain an overall understanding of all organelles and it helps with peer review. It also can be used to take notes to help with answering questions in part 2. It seems best to have students move onto the game Cell Explorer at the end of Part 1.

You might also want to make sure you have more than one student/group researching the same organelles to help with peer review. The game will also give you time to view student products, provide feedback and check for mastery before being shared with the class.





Week 2 Reflection

Due to the curriculum planning day and Femineer Program Training at Cal Poly Pomona this week, Jen and I have still not met to reflect on the lessons.More will be added once we meet.

Below you will find a video of Lynn setting up students to complete the Organization of Life analogy.


                                    

Thursday, October 20, 2016

Week 2 Agenda

Here is a look ahead to week 2. We will be finishing up the slide shows on the characteristics of living things and moving ahead into the Organization of Life.

Click here for Week 2 Agenda