Life/Science 101: Mind the Gap - A Formative Assessment Success Story

“This is reallllly helpful.”

“This is an eye-opener.”

Just two comments from the tail end of this story.

Two weeks ago, on a Friday, I presented my students with what I thought was an awesome activity: a virtual fruit fly simulation that would allow them to explore a variety of inheritance modes. I had created a notes handout, complete with quick practice problems exploring dominant & recessive inheritance, codominance, and incomplete dominance. I had created a class account at the site to enable them to explore freely. I had also created a challenging task, with a greatly detailed rubric, describing how they could be successful. Yes, I had worked hard and they were going to learn a lot about inheritance through a fun and stimulating virtual lab ….

Sorted flies... no fuss, no muss

Or so I thought.

Somewhere between my master plan and Friday’s lunch (both of my sections are morning classes), the air came out of my balloon. The problem? There was a gap between where my students were and where I wanted them to be. Specifically, my students seemed absolutely incapable of gathering the right data for their results.

But how could that be? My rubric specifically mentioned “using statistics and probabilities” to identify the inheritance pattern. The simulation provided a sorting mechanism for the various fruit fly traits, a virtual count of each sorted group, a button which sent the data to a virtual notebook, another button for analyzing the percentages, and a third button for crossing members of the current generation to create a second generation. How could they miss? There were buttons!!??

Furthermore, I was an active presence in the classroom. As students accessed the site, explored its features and began crossing flies, I was right there. I was reminding them to limit their crosses to explore a single trait. I was pointing out the numerical data. I flicked the lights to interrupt their work and make a general statement about the value of that data. And, yet, they were not conscious of the numbers. How is that possible? I flicked the lights!!??

Teachers will recognize this crossroads moment: Do I wring my hands and complain about my students …. Or do I recognize my own data; for whatever reason, they were not where I wanted them to be.

I’ll admit to some hand-wringing, for sure. But then I made a critical choice: instead of trying to figure out why they were unprepared for that moment (blaming them, their parents, all of their previous teachers, the standards, etc.), I decide to bridge the gap. I knew where they were (they could interpret the probabilities of Punnett squares) and where they needed to be (they weren't seeing the statistics of the offspring as a reflection of those probabilities) and designed the next lesson to get them there.

Yes, they needed to go back to the simulation, but not before a disruptive event, one that challenged the way they thought about fruit fly broods. And, yes, some were closer than others to where they neeeded to be; the disruption needed to be self-paced. Furthermore, some had skipped the introductory work in the last class, rushing with enthusiasm to the glitz of the simulation. So, to ensure proper re-entry, this disruption needed to have an element of immediate accountability.  Finally, no matter how stymied I felt, the disruption needed to come across as “concerned” not “punitive.”

I needed a premise that was similar to fruit flies but distinct and I didn’t want (or need) to have it reflect reality. Could I make a fictional beastie that was prolific like fruit flies and had multiple traits that passed down via multiple mechanisms? My mind raced and I recalled “The Trouble with Tribbles!” Tribbles, as any Star Trek fan knows, were adorable, fuzzy little furballs that seemed to be harmless. But, as Dr. McCoy was to figure out, they seemed “to be born pregnant.” They soon overran the Starship Enterprise, filing up cabinets and crannies and bringing the ship to its knees. Prolific? Check!

Within minutes, I had drawn up my version of the tribles (single "b" as I couldn't remember the proper spelling), given them three traits, each inherited via a different mode, and began crafting questions for students to consider. The questions moved from simple Punnett square crosses with predictions about genotypes and phenotypes to more sophisticated and - more importantly - more targeted questions. By the end of the question set, students were faced with numerical outcomes of unknown crossings, being challenged to identify the parental genotypes from the actual data. THIS is where they needed to be and the tribles were going to get them there.

My Tribles... thank you, Gene Rodenberry!

Some of the later questions about tribles

But a handout is not a lesson. I needed a warmup that was related but distinct, to help give the class a sense of variety. I needed to plan some time to introduce the tribles and set expectations about our class process. I planned time for the tribles work itself and allowed any remaining time - once the tribles work was submitted for a simple class participation grade - for students to return to the simulation.

Tuesday morning came (we meet every other day for 80 minutes) and it all worked! The warmup produced a good conversation … smiles all around as I introduced the goofy tribles … high engagement with the inheritance questions, with a recognizable increase in peer-to-peer tutoring … and, just as designed, individualized movement to the simulation as students took advantage of the self-paced nature of the lesson. When students returned to the simulation, they recognized the value of the numerical data … and began using it to craft responses!

This entire series of posts is based on the premise that, despite my rookie status as a Biology teacher, my veteran status as a teacher would be more than enough to keep me afloat. Yes, there were moments where I had to inform my work with Biology content but .... Tuesday’s success was built by formative observations on Friday, an assessment of the exact nature of the gap, and a willingness to get past “blaming” and get on with the real challenge of moving students from where they were to where they needed to be.

And, other than the simple act of recording their participation, there were no grades involved.

Life/Science 101: Thirty Seconds of Content

We have 80-minute blocks of instructional time that meet every other day. Using 80 minutes wisely is one of the most important aspects of my job, requiring a fair amount of planning and the careful consideration of competing ideas. Each lesson is framed by many questions, including these:

- What's the right warm-up activity? Should I even have a warm-up for this lesson?
- How much time should I allow for discussion?
- How do I engage students in today's topic, building off of previous knowledge while inching toward new ideas?
- How do I manage the flow of students and materials?
- And, finally, how much time should I dedicate to "content download" (aka, "lecturing")?

Recently, my colleague and I crafted a lesson that featured essentially zero lecture time. Indeed, when I looked back at the day, I recognized only thirty seconds of downloaded content! Despite this - in fact, likely because of this -  the lesson was a huge success resulting in near total engagement throughout the day and leaving students confronting a significant gap in their knowledge base. If your vision of teaching looks like non-stop lecture, punctuated by the occasional Q&A, then this lesson might surprise you:

The Lesson: Connecting the Respiratory System to Cellular Respiration - Changing Scales for Deeper Understanding

The Plan:
1) Warm-up - Free write in response to the following prompt: Obviously, the respiratory system takes in oxygen from "out there" for delivery to the body. The phrase 'cellular respiration' implies a kind of breathing at the cell level. What connects these two 'respirations?' In other words, how does oxygen get from 'out there' to 'in here?' (Two minutes to respond privately, two minutes to share in pairs, five minutes to discuss as a class.)

2) Model it! In small groups, grab markers of a single color and some newsprint and draw your best response to the warm-up prompt. Label your drawing so that your thinking is apparent. (20-25 minutes)

The large- and small-scale respirations

3) Gallery Walk - Groups hang up their newsprint models in the classroom as students use post-its to leave comments about what they see ... this is done SILENTLY so that group-think can be minimized. (Five minutes of setting expectations, followed by seven minutes of actual commenting.)

Silently adding comments

4) Scientist Talk - I gather all in a large circle and facilitate a discussion of common features (the "consensus" view) in the models. In addition, students are pressed for details where models seem fuzzy; this highlights the limit of our current understanding. (Ten minutes or so)

5) Revise Your Model - In the final few minutes, students take a second color marker and amend their models based on the feedback from classmates. (Fifteen minutes or less).

As a teacher, you can see my role is front-loaded with planning and heavy on facilitation. Students, on the other hand, are actively engaged in sharing and communicating their understanding. They retrieve their prior knowledge, complete with partial ideas and misconceptions, and work to make their thinking visible for others to review. One of my biggest responsibilities is to make sure that the environment is a safe one - revealing one's partial understanding is risky business and not done in a hostile environment.

Where did we land? Our consensus was at the system level - the transportation of oxygen via the circulatory system and the (fuzzy) interface between the respiratory and circulatory systems. This makes complete sense as we have just finished a unit on body systems and students could demonstrate some solid background at this level. What they were unsure of were the transitions: how, exactly, does oxygen transfer from the lungs to the bloodstream and, on the other end, from the blood stream to the cells. Here, students vaguely drew arrows with little understanding of the mechanism of the transport. At the end, we are positioned well to re-introduce a concept from our homeostasis studies (diffusion, driven by concentration differences) as an answer to this question - the topic of our next lesson!

So, where was the content? While there were ample opportunities to chime in with all sorts of content ideas, I chose just one moment to do so. As we discussed the warm-up problem, it became apparent to me that students had the pieces of cellular respiration - at times mentioning water, energy, carbon dioxide, glucose, and oxygen - but not a complete picture of the chemical process. Before transitioning to making models, I urged them to "write this down:"

Glucose + Oxygen -------> Carbon Dioxide + Water + Energy

That's it! One clear statement of a process on which we will spend much more time in the future. I thought having that common statement would help keep the focus on the transfer of oxygen from 'out there' to 'in here.' In fact, some groups decided to incorporate the movement of glucose to the cells, as well. While not a requirement, it added some welcome variety to the student models.

A modeling exercise like this shifts the teacher's role from 'provider' to 'facilitator.'  Surely, it would be impossible for students to construct all of life science in this way. But looking for ways to have students make meaning of their knowledge - in a variety of ways - is good practice.

What are your favorite ways to have students make meaning?

Life/Science 101: Transferring Teaching Skills

I've said before that I was pretty confident that I could be successful as a Biology teacher despite my inexperience teaching life science. And by "inexperience" I mean "never taught it before." In ways I couldn't articulate at first, though, I felt as though my understanding of what students need to be successful in science would serve me well. In the parlance of education, one might say that I had confidence that my "skills were transferable." Well, I'm two weeks in and I have a good example of what that looks like . . .

We've begun our study of Biology in an unusual place: the brain!

This is your brain on Crayolas (courtesy of Wikipedia)

Let's leave aside "why?" for a moment and look at the pros and cons of this choice.

On the positive side:
- the brain is fascinating,
- it leads to great questions,
- it is connected to other body systems in a myriad of ways,
- and it represents a significant sample organ though which one can view the evolution of the animal kingdom.

That's a lot of pluses! Each of those has incredible value, either as an atmospheric impact (the fascination part), as an instructional target (body systems and organization, evolution), or as a way to promote science skills (developing questions).

On the negative side:
- um, I have no idea how it "works" (beyond the basic electro-chemical stimulation idea)
- the brain has special vocabulary words that are awkward and plentiful and (often) Latin. It's the Great Biology Problem* scaled down to three pounds of squishy, fatty, folded tissue.

*How do you keep the most fascinating set of ideas from becoming an endless list of things that have parts that have smaller parts which, in turn have smaller parts, etc.?

So, two negatives. The first is easily overcome - for our purposes - with a little reading and some absorption time. The second is where a "transferable skill" can come into play! The problem at its core is one where a teacher needs to generate intrigue and interest in an area (vocab acquisition) that can be deadly dull. How do we promote the use of the correct scientific terms without the course grinding to a halt while we memorize a list of 20+ definitions?

My response - and, let's be clear, there are dozens of better ones, I'm sure - was to create a table where students would work together to fill in nicknames for brain parts, then create a mnemonic device to cement function and/or location of those parts. As input, I provided a handy list of the parts and their functions along with a couple of clear diagrams where we collectively identified lobes and such. The handout, for this activity, looked a bit like this:

Working together, students discuss the functions and location of major and minor parts of the brain, "boil down" their major functions, then have some fun creating nicknames and memory devices. I don't need to "know biology" to anticipate that this lesson would need some form of light touch that would tap into student creativity. 

Finally, this kind of activity need not be a one-time effort. We can re-visit this as our understanding of the brain develops - perhaps a quick warm-up in the near future will be to have students generate three better nicknames for any of the parts they feel they understand better.

As I move forward, I'll keep an eye out for how often pure content knowledge turns out to be the critical path in a lesson. For now, I remain confident that I'll be tapping in to my transferable skills very frequently!

Life/Science 101: Fast Track to Credibility!

How fast can you go from "rookie" to "established veteran" in the eyes of students? Well, in one of my sections it took less than ten minutes! Here's how it played out . . .

I started my first class with a free-write in response to the following claim, projected on the board:

Claim: Biology is the most critical science for citizens to be fluent in.

Why do you think I would say that? What are the arguments that support that statement? What are the arguments against it? (take 2 minutes to write your responses down on paper).

Students dutifully responded on paper, shared some thoughts in small pairs and trios, then volunteered responses for me to record at the board. Here are a few:

- If everyone understands basic biology they can understand how organisms function and hopefully take after the positive attributes. 

- We should understand how we impact organisms and our environment (to minimize damage or maximize positive impact)

- Biology is always around us, so we should have a good basis of understanding

- Biology is one of the sciences that impacts our well-being directly (germs)

Some excellent thoughts about design inspiration, environmental impact, and human health and well-being. "Great," I'm thinking . . .  these folks are big-picture people. Then, from "Artie" (not his real name), I get this:

"Well, you're a Biology teacher . . .  of course YOU would say that!"

Ten minutes in and I've got cred. With Artie, anyway. 

I'll take it.

Life/Science 101: So, You Think You Can Teach Biology!

What, indeed, makes me think I can teach Biology? After all, I've never taught it before. My college background is in electrical engineering without a single Biology course disturbing my transcript. Oh, wait, two years ago, I did participate in a MOOC from MIT that was focused on the biochemistry of DNA, RNA, and proteins. But, is that enough? Surely, one must have more that that!!!

Well, maybe . . .  but I remain absolutely confident that this will be a great year for my students and me. One way to evaluate the likelihood of success in a venture is to do a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) matrix. One lists as many of these factors as possible, then tries to build off the positives and address the negatives. I think I had internally sensed that there were a lot of positives but, until now, I had never quite formally expressed them.

So, here's my SWOT analysis of the venture:

STRENGTHS 20+ years of teaching experience at the secondary level personally fully “NGSS-ready” was deeply involved in the overhaul of the curriculum (making it align with NGSS) supportive department chair supportive administrators creative and committed colleagues common planning time with other Bio teacher summer time available for Professional Development life-long interest and reading in the area of evolutions and natural selection comfort with “deep time” from Astronomy instruction comfort with “controversial” topics from Astronomy instruction

WEAKNESSES relatively shallow depth of knowledge in the content area still working on the “Big Picture,” especially in the first unit

OPPORTUNITIES possible influence on analysis of life science investigations - more computational?? significant personal development as I learn Bio concepts at deeper levels, that can impact my instruction to the benefit of students - I’ll identify their struggle with content

THREATS school year “busy-ness” may constrain collaboration time with Bio colleague lots of chances to mangle the endless Bio vocabulary - will students lose faith?

Quick analysis:

1) There are, indeed, a lot of strengths and some cool opportunities.

2) The weaknesses are not hard to address . . .  I'm getting to be best buddies with ol' Sal Khan this summer, getting some great instruction in the areas of cell regulation, cell respiration, photosynthesis, specialized cell functions, etc. In terms of the "Big Picture," some time with my colleagues can address that quite easily.

3) At the risk of sounding like Yogi Berra ("They have deep depth"), those strengths are really strong! Time, support, interest, and experience are tremendous factors and quite possibly the ones I had internally accounted for!

Now, as a science teacher and long-time reader and fan of Skeptic and the Skeptical Inquirer, I know how capable we all are of self-delusion. But I'm hoping that this matrix demonstrates why I've got a good chance to be successful. At the very least, it should be an interesting matrix to return to throughout the year: What threats did I not anticipate? What weaknesses lurked hidden from view until too late? What strengths were over-stated?

If you think of generic or specific factors that I may have overlooked, please comment!

Life/Science 101: Summer Thoughts on a New Adventure

The calendar has flipped to August 1. My summer reverie breaks as I come to the realization that, before we flip another page, I will be in front of students. For the 23rd year, I'll face a new roster of names and a sea of bright, shiny faces waiting for me to set a tone, one conducive to a year filled with challenge and joy . . .  really! I truly believe that most students actually want this from their teachers. I also believe that those who don't benefit from the creation of such a classroom environment, even if they don't seek it. I'm happy to say I'm surrounded by colleagues and administrators who believe the same thing.

This year, I've got a new challenge. After 22 years of teaching Physics, I'll be teaching Biology instead! After years of advocating, within my department, that we should all be more flexible in our teaching assignments, my bluff was called!! I'm happy to report that, when asked to take this assignment on, I didn't flinch. Though these two disciplines are vastly different, I'm looking forward to this brave new world. As a teaching veteran, I see two big themes that I'll draw upon throughout this year:

1. It's all Science, whether Physics, Biology, Geology, etc.

2. They're just kids looking for a good experience.

Theme #1 manifests itself in a variety of ways but perhaps most frequently in the idea of the Conservation of Energy. Whether we're talking about respiration or photosynthesis, regulation at the body or cellular level, or the form and function of cheetahs or chrysanthemums, the idea that energy is conserved and is transmuted into scores of different guises will lie at the heart of learning. It's all Science . . .

Theme #2 is even more important. Though my choices as a teacher are essential, their progress, their understanding, their total experience are the ultimate metrics by which success will be measured. Can I keep the mood upbeat and hopeful, even in the face of academic challenge? Can I be transparent about my expectations, both within the classroom and on assignments? Can I help students develop both the science skills (asking questions, planning investigations, basing claims on evidence, etc.) and the life skills (clear and effective communication, reliable collaboration, self-direction, etc.) to be successful not just in this course but elsewhere in school and in life? I believe I can answer those questions in the affirmative and will use those to self-assess throughout the year. They're just kids . . . 

And content? Well, sure, the content is different and I've got a few ideas about that as well. But I'll share those in another post. For now, I just wanted to share my excitement about my new direction and invite you to check in with me occasionally to see how this Life/Science experiment is going!

All in a Day's Work

So . ..  here's how my day went:

Helped some students (and their substitute) across the hall & got them oriented to the right task and off to the races. Re-designed my last block Astro class lesson so that it would feature more student-centered activities than I had first planned for. Introduced three students in my first block class to the wonders of spreadsheets and learned, from a fourth, a simple way to add a trendline in Google sheets. Facilitated two presentations in my engineering classes where students pitched their novel ideas to their classmates. Got three students moving on a small-scale wind project while counseling another to head off in a new direction with her project. Taught one student how to use a photogate while asking another to help a third master the care & feeding of our 3D printer. Provided a safe haven for three students in an advisory session while they shared some hard feelings about changing friendships.

Lunch.

Got my Astro students to really understand how to use stellar magnitudes - apparent and absolute - to rank order stellar distances. Had three students make some of their first contributions of the year during that mini-lesson. Demonstrated the use of a virtual experiment, then facilitated its use around the room in groups of two and three. EVERY student working MOST of the time. MOST students working ALL of the time. Some flop, then rebound. One calls me over to share an Astro event - the discovery of an Earth-like planet by Kepler - that she found on social media. By the end of class, she sends me the link: my opener for next class! Virtual lab success: students "discover," like William Herschel in 1800, that the Sun produces energy outside of the visible part of the spectrum. Today, they find "infrared."

Bell rings at 2:45. I taught three 80-minute classes today and spent about 50 of those minutes in the archetypal teacher spot - at the front of the class. The rest of the time? Moving. Listening. Probing. Supporting. It looks like this a lot. And I like it . . .

So . . .  how was your day?