Previously, I wrote a blog post on how powerful guest speakers can be and where to find them. I wanted to do a follow up post on how to prep your students so the experience is meaningful. Nothing is worse than having a student make an inappropriate comment or putting
WHAT IS CITIZEN SCIENCE?Citizen science is when the public participates in scientific research. Every-day citizens share and contribute data with the goal of increasing scientific knowledge. You do not have to be a trained scientist in order to participate. WHY YOU SHOULD TRY ITCitizen science is great to do with
When I was in college taking education courses I had 2 professors who harped on rubrics. Their logic was that rubrics placed students into a box and didn’t allow for any flexibility and creative thinking. I left college thinking rubrics were a terrible way to assess students. Fast forward to
Group work. Love it? Or bane of your existence? Have you ever assigned a group assignment and had any of these problems? Students spend more time socializing than working. One or two students do the majority of the work. By the end of the project the quality of work turned
When we ask students to review each other’s work and give feedback, we often hear…“Why did you do that?” or“It’s just wrong.” or“It’s good” (even when it’s not). Teaching students to give effective feedback is hard and takes a lot of student practice. And then more practice. If you are
Want a fun way to change up how you assess your students? While there is value in giving multiple choice assessments (students need to have these test taking skills to pass the ACT and SAT), I also like to change it up. Not all students do well with multiple choice
Guest speakers can be such a powerful tool to your classroom and are hugely underutilized. I don’t think I truly understood their value until I started teaching project based learning. Part of PBL includes having a public audience (you can check out a blog post on this topic here). As
We all have those few students who slack during the semester, have a 57%, and come begging for extra credit before grades are due. For many teachers the answer is…. … and I totally get it. Grading late work is no fun and I’m not going to go out of
You made it to the last blog post in this 4 part series! If you missed any of the previous posts, you can click below to get caught up:#1: What is PBL?#2: Getting Started#3: The ProductThis last blog post will be about extending learning beyond the classroom with a public
You are on part 3 of a 4 part blog post on PBL in the science classroom. If you missed the previous posts, CLICK HERE to head back to blog post 1- “What is PBL?” or CLICK HERE to head back to blog post 2- “How to get started”. This
In this blog post we are going to cover the first 3 steps to project based learning: the entry event, the driving question, and student need-to-knows. In case you missed the first part of this blog series- “What is PBL?” you can click here to go back and read it.
The past few years I’ve had the opportunity to teach a course entirely through project based learning. Our local university approached a couple of schools in our district and asked us if we were interested in teaching a cross-curricular PBL program where our grade 12 students can earn college credits.
