"Free" Water and Do-Overs

Wall Drug Founder Ted Hustead

The topic lately has been the movement of molecules across membranes.

Students struggle with the concepts of concentration gradient, the terms hypotonic and hypertonic and the movement of water in osmosis.

Kaitlyn had scored a 3 on the summative assessment and score 23 out of 27 points to earn the 3. She felt that didn't reflect on what learning had occurred.

She sat down during our FLEX period, which is a guided study hall at the end of the day. I asked  what she found interesting and confusing about the business of biological membrane transport. Kaitlyn then proceeded to rattle off ideas and concepts about ion channels and protein pumps and how they changed shape due to ATP being used.

Here was a clear example of what the assessment had not shown. This student had a clear and genuine mastery of the concepts. It was a cool conversation for me and I think she felt proud of what had been learned and demonstrated.

The fist bump between us was a celebration of moving her grade to 4.

(Some of the students get the reference when discussing the movement of "free water" in cells and the "free ice water" you get at Wall Drug, South Dakota)....some of the students, but it makes me laugh.

One Under the Belt, Not Below

Due to details to gory to mention, I've been away from this for a couple of weeks. That doesn't mean I've not thought about this push toward "two sigma", because I think about it daily, hourly, minutely....

The biology class has one trimester under it's belt. So what did that look like?

It was a lot of work. It was a lot of work. There was a lot of work involved, and then more.

What did I get out of all this work?

1. I know my students better than at any point in my career. I had close conversation with many on a daily basis about science and what they understood and more importantly what they didn't understand.
2. The learning curve was sharp and log based for both the students and myself. Post course survey gave me clear data that they understood what SBG was about. It didn't take them long to change their brains to figure out what they needed to do for learning. (That doesn't necessarily mean they did it, but they understood what it took).
3. Students are still reluctant learners by themselves. Many still want me to "tell" them what they need to know, instead of trusting the standards and rubrics to guide them to learning. I fear that will be the case with every class, every year, unless our school moves to SBG across the board.
4. Explaining SBG got better and easier for myself, students and parents as we dove in. I had vision, but needed the doing to figure out really what it was going to look like. One of the coolest moments happened at the start of Trimester 2, when new students arrived and the experienced explained how it all work. That was reward.
5. Students are working toward mastery and beyond. In the last weeks of the trimester, I met with students before school, during passing time, over lunch, during FLEX, and after school to get things done and get to proficiency. For some it was about the grade, for many it was about the learning: post course survey showed that.
6. I still have a long way to go to get to "Flipped Mastery Classroom".
7. The work was good.
8. Students generated a lot of evidence. I don't like our grading software, with the way it is set up and the way it looks to students and parents. Since almost everything was formative, there was a lot of evidence to show growth and change over time. I included almost all of the formative work in the gradebook. It was only there for practice, but demonstrated so much learning.
9. I've learned to love spreadsheets with conditional formatting. I can make the data jump out and help students get to mastery more quickly.
10. Moodle has become my enemy and my friend. The organization is quirky and bulky, but the information that I've grabbed from using Moodle quizzes has focused learning on the things that need to be learned.

The rewards of getting to know and understand my students' learning has far exceeded what I thought would happen this year.

Good work, it has been.

Nearing the End of the First Beginning

Figure 1. Time keeps on
ticking, ticking into the
future.

Time has been running out as the end of the trimester creeps closer.

How have students reacted?

Most recognize the deadline looming and have been working hard on getting to mastery on that last assessment. Those arriving at proficiency did it a variety of way: test and retest, conversations, demonstrations of what they know with diagrams and words on a chunk o' whiteboard.

The journey has been a good one for the students and myself. The 'two sigma solution' has increased learning. I've got numbers that show just that.

I've been surprised by a number of things on this path.

Students fear conversing with me about topics, when assessment is involved. Students would rather face a paper pencil quiz than have conversations being judged on their learning. I hope to keep working on removing this anxiety, because it keeps them from demonstrating what has been truly learned.

The mastery has been achieved at different paces, but then again, students are all unique.

Students are very different from one another. They all want to look, act, talk, share music, technology, language the same.....but differences in how learning has occurred could not be more apparent.

How students think about material has been revealed through the time spent, in my catcher's crouch, at their desk side talking, querying as work is happening. More conversations than I've had....ever and it has been good.

Students care about grades (still, more than learning, even though the two are linked in this classroom). A student was concerned about her grade on a portion of a recent assessment. I responded with a comment, "I don't care about your grade". She was alarmed and pretty much shocked. My response to her response was, "I care about you learning the material". She got it.

Figure 2. Truth

You will notice that I've used the word most when referring to these people. The majority of the students have embraced the mastery idea. Many students have pushed themselves hard to get to a 3 and even harder to get to a 4....which has been inspiring to watch. There are a few students who have not moved to mastery by their choice, even with my prodding find school an uninhabitable place. With that thought, there is so much work to be done with these students.

The final assessment of the trimester will happen on the last day of the trimester. Students are already asking about retakes.

We'll see how that portion of the story unfolds.

Late for a Friday

The line in the sand had a few students pause on the way to "two sigma". They recognized that it was time to step up and learn some more.

Friday afternoon, in the media center, it was crowded with students working on science.

Friday afternoon.....cool.

Lines and Redos

The summative assessment on carbon chemistry was last week Wednesday. Students were informed they would be able to schedule retakes/redos/do-overs starting Monday. 

Many did.

How did most of the students prepare?

Well, I started the day on Wednesday by holding my hand on a hotplate....then screaming. Then again, I held my hand on the hotplate and screamed.

For most of the students who retook the assessment or portions of it, it was a lot like putting their hands back on the hotplate, BUT, expecting a different outcome. By their scores, it was obvious that students had 

spent too little time preparing for the redo.

I'm not sure what they thought would happen with the retake, if they didn't change their strategy....or better yet, prepare at all.

Many students on this assessment are yet to be proficient, in any of the benchmarks, let alone the whole standard.

Of course, some students have made attempts to improve their scores and have...which is good. Students at the B+ range that wanted to get to the A, you gotta love a push to excellence.

I drew a line in the sand today. Students had to speak with me or schedule the retake by Friday OR they were stuck with the original score. Their attention peaked at that statement on the board.

BTW, the hotplate was not armed, so no science teachers were harmed in the motivational speech.

Data and data.....

I used Moodle to give a summative assessment last week, then I disaggregated.

Who doesn't love to disaggregate data? I pulled the assessment apart and looked at each benchmark and how students performed. Then to sort and highlight numbers on the spreadsheet, that data was too much!

The scores seen above are a portion of that. Pink and red were proficient for that section about macromolecules. Those not highlighted have some work to do.

A student asked if it took a long time to get those numbers into the spreadsheet on the iPad.....I just laughed. Cut, copy and insert rows.

I took the iPad around the room and sat with every student, showing them the scores and where they were strong and where work was yet to be done to hit mastery.

Moodle gave them instant feedback of not only their percentage scores, but individual answers, as well as the overall score of 4, 3, 2, or 1. Students then have to figure out what needs to be done differently if not at a 3 for the test, but at least a 3 in the individual targets.

On to the retakes. Those will start in the next day or so.

Will they have studied at all, or differently? Will they utilize the resources available?

.....a student comment from a formative assessment last week

I Know It Is Hard to Learn

The formative assessment was all about carbon based molecules, the stuff that living things are composed of: carbohydrates, lipids, proteins and nucleic acids.

So, I framed the learning activities around a number of self-produced screencasts, their textbook and a 'worksheet' that gave them practice in identifying, classifying, organizing, molecularizing and a whole bunch of other -izings.

I ran around the room answering questions and asking questions and questioning the questioners, for a few days.

Then I handed them the formative assessment. So, the formative assessment is just practice. It doesn't effect their grade. Hopefully, it gives them some information....about what they know or what they don't know.

This was one of the comments.

I think it is telling for a number of reasons. They were responsible for the learning: they had the MN Science Standard in front of them daily, they had resources, I wasn't lecturing.

....and this student reports it was difficult. I think that is kind of cool. The student realized that learning can be hard. Not that he was bored, not that she was incapable, not that they were unable to learn. Read the comment again, "trying to learn this by myself was difficult". 

I addressed this comment in front of the whole class.  Heck, I took the picture and threw it out on Twitter.

"....by myself...." Yes, all learning has to come to us with our own efforts. This student jammed that home to me, but also it is apparent that he or she felt isolated. In the time students were working, they were not working alone, they formed groups to share info about the macromolecules packet, they discussed the screencasts and occasionally called on me for help to clarify thoughts.

I think that comment is the good news.

.....another take on the assessment

What tale does this comment have for the assessment or class in general? I assured little Ignatius that dumb was perhaps the wrong choice of words.

More like, you haven't yet learned enough about carbon chemistry to get a 3 on a SBG assessment. 

I've moved a lot of mountains this fall, away from grades and the A-F mentality. They rejoice if they move from a 3 to a 4 and pretty much yahoo if a score of 4 is awarded for the first effort. 

But, Ignats sat there feeling 'dumb'. He was still measuring himself against the A-F world....not the world of learning and making progress. In the note....."I'll ace the retake", there is hope. I know that little Ignatius feels that way and has made improvement of his learning against the standard of macromolecules knowledge.

Toobers and Tacks

The conversations today centered around foam coated wire and colored push pins as the students created short amino acid sequences.

Students built and rebuilt the sequences using a loaned kit from the Milwaukee School of Engineering.

As I walked around the room, bending and twisting of the toobers created a variety of shapes of polypeptides. It was a great visualization of amino acid impact on protein folding.

Cool stuff.

A folded protein

Walk Off 4

I've been interviewing students as a means of formative assessment.

The topic has been water: polar covalent bonds, unequal sharing of electrons, hydrogen bonds.....all good stuff. Maybe...

Yesterday, during the questions I was asking, a student (Mason) walked away with a 2.5. He was not at proficiency yet. That would have been a 3.

Today, he sat down and without my prompting or asking a question. He unloaded the bomb. He drove one over the fence on a line. He thoroughly and completely explained the polar covalent nature of water.

BOOM....walk off 4.

Joel had been waiting his turn. He scored a 3.5 in the interview from yesterday. I watched as he studied his notes, watched the screencast again and then approached the chair to talk about water. He sat down and I asked about explaining water's polar nature. Immediately, he knew that he didn't have the answer.

He got up and went back to the screencast (again). In a few students, Joel bounced up and nailed the explanation without trouble.

Joel didn't need to turn the 3.5 into a 4, but he did.

That was cool.

In both cases, students moved themselves and the class toward the two sigma result. That was very cool.

Although it is not the beginning, it really is.....

I wrote this back in June 2012....

I've been watching, listening and following #flipcon12 and feeling overwhelmed. Oh, yeah, and I got the book by Bergmann and Sams, just to push me over the deep end or into the deep end or deeper into the deep end.

There was a time when I was kid and we went to the old pool in Mason City. It sat on the flood plain of the Winnebago River, east of "the high school, across the bridge on US Highway 18. I'm sure you all know what I'm talking about. I don't know when the last time it had been used, but there it sat in all it's green-ness. Full of rainwater or  whatever it was full of....it was not a safe place to be for a bunch of 8 to 12 year old boys.

I got to close, fell in, got pushed....I don't remember, but I was in the deep end of a slime hole. I was in over my head and in a panic. Thrashing about and probably close to death (or not) one of the guys pulled me out with a stick.

So, that is how I feel right now. Panic stricken and waiting for someone to hold a stick out to me.

I've followed the tweets and been thinking that would be really cool to be there in Chicago, but at the same time, I don't know if I'm ready for this.

Can you be ready? It seems like you need to get pushed or slip or whatever and away you go.

Guess I gotta take that first step to the deepend of the pool.

Informative Assessments of Water

I've spent the past couple of days doing some informative assessments about the properties of water. This is the first real look into standards based grading that deals with content in science. So far the year has been about the process and getting good at the business of science: investigative questioning, hypothesizing, analyzing, concludzing. I know that the last word is spelled poorly, but it just seemed to fit with the other prior....to a certain degree.

Here's what I've started to find out:

1. Students are nervous in the service when I ask them to come and sit to talk.
2. They are genuinely confused about a lot of science topics like atoms.
3. We think we've taught those concepts.
4. I really like talking to students about what they know and don't know.
5. They are suspicious of my motives and not very trusting....I don't think.
6. There are major holes in background knowledge that I need to fill

It has taken a long time to interview the students. The rest of the class has been watching screencasts that I've put together about macromolecules and also doing so background research into their structure and function. The students are well behaved and for the most part don'd need me to hound them about staying with the job at hand.

The big issue is getting them to demonstrate what they know in a non-threatening environment. When we talk science, they get feed back and increase their understanding. I'm seeing that.

Moving to the Two Sigma Solution is going to be hard work for all involved.