Set The Hook........

5 Days!

The Sams challenged us with the 5-5-5-5.

What have you done since then?

I've been thinking about #PBL and the #Driving Question....and hooks.

Ramsey Musallam presented us with something at #Flipcon13. He spoke of hooks.

Ideas that can be morphed into full blown inquiry.

What do you when you want to generate ideas?

I like to perform meditative labor. For me that looks like shoveling snow or mowing lawns or cleaning toilets.

What about hooks for teaching biology? I've generated a few. These hooks are a model for students and specific to the area of the world I live in, that is the middle of rural Minnesota. My home, neighborhood, school and life are engulfed in corn fields, lakes and glacial moraines. The relevance makers we create here should be for here and of here, for these students and the meaning they make.

Some ideas:

• water: within 15km of my house there are wetlands, creeks, rivers and lakes and what we dump, flush and throw into the water remains in the water. How do these contaminants (biocides, pharmaceuticals, hormones) impact what uses the water....us included?
• monoculture agriculture: we're a blight away from economic collapse
• GMO: that is debate in itself
• invasive species: you gottem? we've gottem? How do influence the balance and biodiversity here?
• climate change and agriculture: can we keep growing the crops we do?
• biofuels: growing corn and soy for the purpose of replacing fossil fuels? Is that a good use of land?
• corn: what isn't it used for? high fructose corn syrup, plastics, fuel, livestock feed
• crops and photosynthesis: why have we chosen the crops we have
• genetic engineering: how have yields of agriculture changed?
• lead: from shotgun shells, sinkers and tire weights What happens to it in the environment?
• confinement livestock: chickens, hogs, eggs and manure
• biomagnification/bioaccumulation: we're sitting at the top of the food/energy web, What are we eating and what is in it?

I learn biology along with my students. Taking any of these hooks through the filter of biology finds application everywhere.....whether at the molecular, cellular or organismal level....even bigger to populations or evolutionary level. 

Making Meaning 

How do we make meaning that our students can find interest and the desire to ask questions? I think that through modeling early in their career and not allowing them to play the game. We don't get to play the game, we have "driving questions" and have to find the answers of our own accord. 

That ought be a focus of our classroom culture.

As they filter into Rm 103 a couple of months from now, I need to get to know them and their minds. Building relationships of trust and collaboration, the questions will at first be borrowed, then built from the ground up. 

I want students to make their own "hooks". That will be the ultimate meaning for them. Every hook will be different because the students are different, each with different questions and ways to frame their  life and wonders. How cool is that?

It has now been 5 days since Flipcon13. This is what one of a few things I've been working on....and no where near finished.