Today I subbed in a high school science class. It's in my new district. But as it turns out, this class has a student teacher, and I'm only there for legal reasons. This happened to me even before the pandemic -- a student teacher can't be in the classroom without a credentialed teacher there. (Also, I was wondering how student teaching works during the pandemic -- well, now I know that it's occurring.)
So this means that once again, there is no "A Day in the Life" today. But even though this has been a light week of subbing for me with aides or student teachers taking over almost the entire week, I did learn more about technology that has become valuable during distance and hybrid learning.
Both Tuesday's and Thursday's classrooms had the computers hooked up to a large TV screen. This allows the teachers to log into Zoom, share the screen for the at-home students, and project that same screen to the in-person students simultaneously. And Wednesday's classroom had both a laptop and an Ipad. (The Math 8/Geometry teacher at my long-term school had a similar setup, but I've never seen such a setup in action until this week.) In that class, several online students needed to be pulled out for Speech -- and this was accomplished with breakout groups in Zoom for the student and Speech teacher.
Today's classes are all Honors Biology, consisting of all freshmen. The students are currently working in the genetics unit. Instead of a written assessment, the students have a group project where they must read about how DNA evidence is used to solve a murder mystery. They create a Google Slides file, and there are sections for analyzing the suspects' DNA and pedigrees, creating a video where they discuss the evidence, and writing a CER to make a claim about who the killer is.
Once again, we can't directly compare high school science to the science that I should have taught at the charter middle school. But there is a genetics unit in middle school science -- it would have been taught in seventh grade under the pre-NGSS standards and eighth grade under NGSS. As exciting as this project sounds, I would have limited myself to Illinois State projects only -- and besides, we weren't equipped to make videos anyway.
I also asked the student teacher whether science classes can do any traditional labs now. She informed me that no, labs aren't feasible during the pandemic. The closest this class can get to a lab is an assignment where students flip coins to represent dominant and recessive traits for a baby. (I performed this lab back when I was a young high school student, and I also subbed in a science class on a day that such a project was assigned.)
I do sing some songs during the last few minutes of class. One song is a no-brainer -- "Whodunnit," since the students are working on a murder mystery project. I also sing "Benchmark Tests," since it's also a short song, and I sang both "Whodunnit" and "Benchmark Tests" on the same day during the long-term assignment. (This is the school for which my middle school is a feeder -- I tell the students that I regularly sang these tunes during that long-term.) And finally, I sing "Count the Ways" from Square One TV during tutorial (same as first period) -- I was itching to sing a longer song after so many short songs this week. I first sang this at the old charter school during the two weeks leading up to Valentine's Day, and so I still associate it with this time of year.
It's also interesting to compare this teacher's student teaching assignment to my own student teaching, which as I explained on the blog, I completed in 2010. (In fact, my last day of student teaching that year was February 5th -- today's date.) As always, student teachers are expected to teach three classes for the entire semester. Since this school has always had a block schedule, she's able to cover all three odd classes and so she has even days off. My student teaching school didn't have a block schedule, and so I had five half-days of teaching every week.
It's also nice for her that all three of her classes are honors -- and so her students are expected to be much better behaved than mine were. As you already know, I struggled with classroom management that year (and my problems extended well past my student teaching year).
Today is Friday on both the Gregorian and Eleven Calendars. It is the first day of my week:
Resolution #1: We are good at math. We just need to improve at other things.
There is no opportunity to discuss this in the classroom since it's a science class, and it's mainly the student teacher is the one who motivates the students.
But it is the birthday of the late John Berray, a math teacher who was popular on Twitter. Today's first resolution was also key for Berray, who often said to his students, "You are a math person."
Lesson 10-4 of the U of Chicago text is called "Multiplication, Area, and Volume." In the modern Third Edition of the text, multiplication, area, and volume appear in Lesson 10-2.
This is what I wrote last year about today's lesson:
In many ways Lesson 10-4 is more algebraic than geometric. Indeed, this lesson introduces geometric models to justify the FOIL method of multiplying polynomials.
In today's Lesson 10-4, we ask questions such as, how is the volume of a box affected by tripling its length, width, and height? The answer is that it increases by a factor of 27.
Today is an activity day, and I said that I would provide a pandemic-friendly activity. No, today's activity won't have students creating a video or CER or anything like that.
Well, as usual, I search Desmos for an activity. Here's the first one I found:
https://teacher.desmos.com/activitybuilder/custom/5adcb99681d4cb0a4e40b34c
Volume of Rectangular Prisms (and other shapes with two bases) 2019 edition
By Nathan Kraft
This activity tries to build on student intuition to develop an understanding of the volume of prisms and cylinders.
Hmm, so this activity appears to fit between Lessons 10-4 and 10-5 of the U of Chicago text -- which is exactly where we are. It reviews volume of boxes, and the last part of the activity introduces how the idea of volume can be extended to prisms. Thanks for the activity, Mr. Nathan Kraft!
So once again, I'll keep last year's introduction worksheet, and this is followed by the Desmos activity.
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