Kris Larsen: All right, go ahead Jeff.
Jeff Thomas: All right, well, so, as you can see, we have the slide right here just to to keep questions concise in on topic, there is a chat box, so I figured what we do is.
Jeff Thomas: Just have questions that are put into the chat box and then the presenter will answer those questions at the end of his or her presentation.
Jeff Thomas: So be considered by listening keep an open mind, probably everybody should be on mute that's probably important avoid or say doing anything that is likely to be perceived as harassment or bullying.
Jeff Thomas: demonstrate that you're welcome to a diversity of individuals and their identities.
Jeff Thomas: Like using.
Jeff Thomas: preferred pronouns show that you have value for differing perspectives and avoid exclusionary comments and behaviors and you have any questions there's an ethics.
Jeff Thomas: email there so that's that's the introductory slide so again what we'll do is each person will present.
Jeff Thomas: And they will share their screen there zoom screen with the audience, if you do have one screen your you'll just see the the presentation.
Jeff Thomas: Some of us have double screens, where we can see both at the end of the presentation will have five minutes for questions again, please use the chat box and just keep yourself on mute while during the presentation.
Jeff Thomas: So.
Jeff Thomas: Does anybody have any questions before Dr Chris Larson starts her presentation.
Jeff Thomas: Okay, all right here we go.
Kris Larsen: Alright, so let me.
Kris Larsen: let's see.
Kris Larsen: Can you see, you can see my PowerPoint I assume correct.
Jeff Thomas: yeah.
Kris Larsen: Okay, thank you alright so good morning everyone.
Kris Larsen: start off with something.
Kris Larsen: A little bit fun.
Kris Larsen: Those of us that have been teaching science and society have been using science fiction and fantasy for very long time, is a hook to get people interested in science and to know that science is all around us.
Kris Larsen: and increasingly there's another sub genre which is called climate fiction or clarify to those in the know.
Kris Larsen: Margaret atwood described this as books in which the altered climate plays a part in the plot can also be course movies and TV series, the term clarify was coined in 2007 2008 by Dan bloom it could be set in the past, present future can be utopian but it's usually dystopian.
Kris Larsen: And the climate change can either be due to heat flood or ice age and i'm going to be referring to the third one today and what's interesting is that often and clarify, there is a scientific explanation or an attempt, for a scientific explanation.
Kris Larsen: And if there's not a scientific explanation, presented by the author or Director.
Kris Larsen: Usually the audience fans are really good at coming up with one of their own, for example, winter is coming from game of thrones.
Kris Larsen: There have been a number of discussions online where fans with scientific backgrounds, have tried to come up with a scientific explanation for the crazy winters in West dros, for example, the scientist Dan lunt from the University of Bristol actually.
Kris Larsen: Had a pseudo paper on the climate of the world of game of thrones where he actually used a some of his computer models that he uses for real world climates.
Kris Larsen: Now, George rr Martin says it's all magic anyways but fans don't have to listen to what the author says, and of course there is the problem that, even though game of thrones was wildly popular.
Kris Larsen: The end of what they did it season eight HBO kind of killed the fandom slightly and also there's the problem that Martin still has not put out the last.
Kris Larsen: Second, to last book in his series so winter is still coming according to George rr Martin.
Kris Larsen: So the point is, we need something new to use as a hook something fresh something to use and climate fiction, that we can introduce with our.
Kris Larsen: gen ED classes, that we can get students interested in the pop culture of what they already know and i'm going to blame, a student, because it was a student who introduced me to this particular universe.
Kris Larsen: And that's the universe of anjney SAP kosky a Polish writer who is still alive.
Kris Larsen: The what's your saga is complete, on his end it began as a series of short stories he actually won an award for the first eponymous short story the witcher VI admin in 1986.
Kris Larsen: and subsequent to that he wrote a bunch of short stories that were collected in two volumes and then a series of six novels.
Kris Larsen: It is worldwide quite famous been translated into 19 languages English is one of the last language major languages actually when I first started reading this I had to read this and fan translations on the Internet.
Kris Larsen: there's also widely popular series of three computer games based in this universe.
Kris Larsen: And the smash netflix series which has been delayed due to code they're still filming season two will be out by the end of this year, along with to spin off projects, also, that are supposed to come out this year.
Kris Larsen: So the question is what is a witcher a witcher is a mutant monster hunter as children, they are taken, they are subjected to mute agenda compounds and of course magic they have super senses strength.
Kris Larsen: And they use their intelligence to solve problems and there really are a number of scientific themes in the witcher i've just finished a.
Kris Larsen: Book length project under contract about the science and the witcher so definitely is a lot there.
Kris Larsen: Some of the topics are listed here, but what i'd like to talk to you about today is climate change and climate change in the witcher is up and coming it's going to be happening it's predicted and it is as you'll see science based.
Kris Larsen: Most of it comes in what's called the prophecy of ethylene where it says, the world will die and midst frost and be reborn with a new sun.
Kris Larsen: That sounds like a whole bunch of hocus pocus but various characters then say hey you don't like the prophecy Let me give you two in scientific terms, for example, of a lock the elven made says that this is the result of a change in the angle of the sun's rays.
Kris Larsen: And in like three pages of exposition a character goes off and explains in gory detail exactly what's going to happen and i've tried to unpack it a bit for you here by using slightly different colors.
Kris Larsen: She talks about the orbit of their planet being any lips, then she talks about the fact that the angle of the axis of the planet will also determine how much sunlight their planet gets.
Kris Larsen: And then she says that both the shape of the orbit and the tilt of the axis change over time in a cyclical manner by now, you should be having a little bit of deja vu.
Kris Larsen: And then she talks about the fact that when these different factors align in a particular way you get a maximum effect which changes the amount of heating that you get, especially in the polar regions.
Kris Larsen: And then she says that the less light you get the more snow can accumulate since snow is very bright, it reflects a lot of sunlight and that.
Kris Larsen: augment further the cooling, so the question is how much of what she's saying is true in our world, and how much of it is based on Sep cows teeth misconceptions of what he actually read in the scientific literature.
Kris Larsen: Well, obviously, hopefully you've recognized that this is the MMA lenkiewicz cycles, this is what he is basing his scientific explanation in his universe on.
Kris Larsen: That in our world, the tilt of the earth orbit changes, the number of degrees, the East centricity of the earth's orbit changes over 100 by 100,000 years.
Kris Larsen: And precession the actual direction in space relative to the stars, that the earth access points in also changes, there are three different components, they each have different cycles.
Kris Larsen: Now one of this was proposed a very long time ago was actually proposed before my lenkiewicz but since 1976 this sort of seminal paper.
Kris Larsen: show that you can explain ice ages ice ages on the earth in relation to the lenkiewicz cycles and it turns out that these changes in the earth.
Kris Larsen: aren't they're not the only thing that causes ice ages, but they allow for changes and the amount of sunlight that we get, especially in the polar regions.
Kris Larsen: And with other feedback mechanisms can generate ice ages and what the seminal paper by Hayes embryo Shackleton showed is that it really is not.
Kris Larsen: it's not the centricity it's not the shape of the orbit it's the obliquity in the procession so Sep cassie got it half right in our world.
Kris Larsen: If you're talking about Mars, then the East centricity of the orbit is actually a factor.
Kris Larsen: i'm not giving him enough credit to say that he was actually trying to model his planet on Mars, I think he just got the science, a little bit wrong.
Kris Larsen: But even in his misconception that's actually instructional because many people in our own world think that the seasons are caused by the by the obliquity on the by the decent tricity of the earth's orbit.
Kris Larsen: If you've ever seen the video private universe, you can see that even people who are Harvard professors, think that the shape of the earth orbit causes our seasons so again.
Kris Larsen: You can use what is in this popular culture to talk about what people believe in our own world the places where the author gets the science right or just as instructional as the places where he gets it wrong.
Kris Larsen: Another good real world analogy is in our world, we know that there are many, many signs incontrovertibly science of climate change.
Kris Larsen: There are also incontrovertible science of climate changes in this world as well.
Kris Larsen: places that you send have be free advice all year round now we're having ice there's a change in the crops, due to a change in the climate.
Kris Larsen: There is a change in the snowfall and when the snow falls that there's a change in when the plants are blooming.
Kris Larsen: Now, again, since this is sliding and twin Ice Age it's sort of the opposite effect of what we see in our own world but, again, you can tie this in with changes that we see in our own world.
Kris Larsen: And these are changes that are seen in the course of justice century.
Kris Larsen: And that a third real world analogy is you have climate change deniers in this world, as well as we have climate change deniers in our world as well.
Kris Larsen: There are people who poo poo this prophecy calling it the prophecy of crazy Elf I don't believe in all those insane predictions, these are things that could be said by people in our world today about climate change.
Kris Larsen: Now, because this is SCI fi fantasy the elves have a plan to escape the coming ice age, they have actually under they've.
Kris Larsen: started a genetic engineering program to have a young girl who has the ability to actually transverse worlds and the multiverse For those of you that are into physics and pop culture.
Kris Larsen: And they're going to open a doorway and they're just going to leave this world and go into another world if you play the computer games, the.
Kris Larsen: The upcoming ice age is personified it's an entity, called the white frost.
Kris Larsen: Now we don't know what the netflix series is going to do this is why I think it's it's important for us to to learn about this pop culture phenomenon.
Kris Larsen: Because we can get it on the ground floor and as it unfolds, as the netflix series unfolds and starts talking about the climate change.
Kris Larsen: We can use it in our classes on science and society to get the students hooked and i'm going to end by telling you that the netflix tagline is the worst monsters, are the ones we create.
Kris Larsen: And I would say that climate change is one of the worst monsters that we've created, so thank you very much for your attention.
Jeff Thomas: Okay, thank you very much, Chris um I believe.
Jeff Thomas: Do we have a question here, oh no that's tech support.
Jeff Thomas: If we if we happen to have any questions regarding Dr Chris larson's presentation we can either include them in the chat right now, we do have a few minutes, as well as if you just even want to say it verbally, I think that would be fine as well.
Kris Larsen: I would just say that this series broke all records for netflix so a lot of people watched it.
Kris Larsen: And so I think that again if you're one of those people who likes to use pop culture as a hook in your classes, if you do a survey I think you'll find that a lot of your students have seen this.
Kris Larsen: And a lot of them have played the computer games and increasingly people are reading the novels the novels a bunch of them ended up on the New York Times bestseller list for the first time after the netflix series dropped.
Christopher Roemmele: hi Chris i'm Christopher only on one of the next presenters or not actually not the next one, you went after.
Christopher Roemmele: How do you cut when you get that hook what's your segue into an investigation or in terms of some sort of data driven activity in terms of temperature or you know actually plotting the cycles, with some sort.
Christopher Roemmele: I just cannot, it is, it is a difficult concept to teach period it without this without this wonderful hug of clarify I gotta have to make that part of my lingo so I you know with the cool kids.
Christopher Roemmele: But what what kind of.
Christopher Roemmele: activity, do you have following that i'm just curious well.
Kris Larsen: It turns out that NASA I found on NASA a really nice.
um.
Kris Larsen: They show you how the three different cycles work and so it's very, very visual thing, and if you go to that original paper.
Kris Larsen: That original well the original paper that in the hades and breeding Shackleton paper is actually very well written.
Kris Larsen: And they actually have some really nice graphs in there, that you can have the students look at, and so I think that having students using pattern recognition.
Kris Larsen: And also what's interesting is they found that there was 100,000 year cycle in the data which sounds like it's the East centricity but it's not it's like every third or fourth of the.
Kris Larsen: obliquity cycles is ultra ramped up so you can talk about causality correlation how you interpret data so it's actually a lot, you can do just from looking at the scientific paper and teaching students, how to read scientific papers, is not a bad thing, in my book.
Christopher Roemmele: Thank you.
Kris Larsen: Alright, well, thank you, thank you, everybody.
Jeff Thomas: All right, certainly on my agenda to watch it's been.
On my agenda.
Jeff Thomas: Okay, so we'll continue with the next presenter I know we're a couple minutes a little bit early.
Jeff Thomas: But any last minute questions for for Dr Larson.
Jeff Thomas: Okay, so we'll move forward so Margaret I believe that you are here.
Jeff Thomas: And you're you're the next presenter and your presentation is visual processing disabilities stressed working stress working memory and accessing the science curriculum.
Jeff Thomas: So all you really need to do, Margaret is share your screen and that will pop up on our screens here.
Okay.
Margaret L.: Okay, all right fabulous.
Margaret L.: Okay, so our conversation today will be about visual visual processing disabilities and how they stressed in.
Margaret L.: Working memory and possibly negatively impact their accessing of the science curriculum, I am a.
Margaret L.: special education teacher in our New York state public high schools, and so the population of students, that I used for my source data.
Margaret L.: Our students who are classified as having learning disabilities, possibly autism emotional disabilities and this spectrum of disabilities also includes visual processing disabilities.
Margaret L.: And so my students typically are freshmen, but they can range, you know for sophomore junior senior years depending on individual circumstances.
Margaret L.: And in New York state in order to graduate with either a local or regions diploma students need to take three science courses and pass them and pass.
Margaret L.: With a 65 or higher on one of the end of the year cumulative science exams that test for competency in the content.
Margaret L.: If they do have a safety net were students with disabilities can earn a 55 or higher, they will not receive a region's diploma though they will receive a local of diploma from the board of education, so this is the population that has given me the inspiration for our conversation today.
Margaret L.: And so I wanted to just highlight again that when we speak about visual processing difficulties.
Margaret L.: These are not eyesight problems, these are difficulties with the human brain trying to identify organize and process visual information.
Margaret L.: So, on my slide here, I have two images from harvard's mental imaging lab and the first one on the left is just showing.
Margaret L.: The the visuals the vision system where are our eyes taken visual stimuli and move that information along the optic nerve into our brain where it is processed.
Margaret L.: And on the right hand side is just a simple schematic showing the human brain and the different areas in the brain.
Margaret L.: Where visual stimuli are processed and our brain separates visual stimuli into object processing where we're taking a look at color textures shapes and sizes.
Margaret L.: or spatial processing where our brain is processing location, how we move spatial relations and any kind of neural damage to the sections of the brain could have a variety of impacts on how human beings visually process information.
Margaret L.: And so, this leads to difficulties with academic success there are eight different types of processing skills that students need to succeed.
Margaret L.: And the the first four listed here we have visual discrimination where we notice differences and colors shapes and sizes.
Margaret L.: there's a memory component to vision, where we remember whether it's short term or long term what it is that we are seeing.
Margaret L.: Relations with the world around us, you know our position in the universe positions of objects around us with the universe constancy a form of the ability to identify shapes and symbols, even if they if we change their location or their angle, how we view them within the environment.
Margaret L.: memory for sequences if we, for example, need to memorize a telephone number, we see a poster or a street sign and we can memorize the sequences of numbers.
Margaret L.: figure ground, is where we have the ability to distinguish.
Margaret L.: Different objects from its background, and so this is particularly important in graphs and maps, where you know we might have certain locations within a background and our ability to distinguish that.
Margaret L.: visual closure allows us to recognize letters and numbers and objects without seeing the entire object and then of course visualization is the mental image that we generate inside of our minds when we are reading a story or reading a graph or a chart or.
Margaret L.: Having someone tell us a story So these are the different types of processing skills that our brain accommodates when we take in visual data.
Margaret L.: And so impediments to our visual processing system can impact any of these processing skills.
Margaret L.: And that places and extra load on are working memory and are working memory is critically important because it allows us to.
Margaret L.: for a short period of time understand questions or problems or.
Margaret L.: situations that we're trying to find explanations for, and if we increase the load on our working memory and students are trying to visually process information and it's taking them a long time to do so.
Margaret L.: Then they might actually not remember what the original problem is that they're trying to solve, and so this creates a negative impact on students ability to remember these visually loaded prompts.
Margaret L.: Remember the questions that they're expected to answer and it hampers their ability to scientifically reason.
Margaret L.: And, of course, this may be translated into lowered student success rates when they're trying to solve scientific problems consider different scientific hypotheses and theories and even do well on high stakes examinations that test their mastery of a subject at the end of the year.
Margaret L.: So, in order to give some examples of what this looks like and how we can mitigate these.
Margaret L.: In New York state our students are provided with the 16 page booklet that contains about 27 to 28 different charts and graphs that they are expected to be able to utilize.
Margaret L.: And this is one of those graphs and I picked this one, because it is exceedingly difficult, so this is the scheme for igneous rock identification.
Margaret L.: And it's a complicated graph remember these are 14 year old students they're being introduced to laboratory based science, either in freshman year if they haven't had it already in eighth grade.
Margaret L.: And so they're being exposed to these charts and graphs and it's overwhelming under normal circumstances, but when you are struggling with visual processing difficulties.
Margaret L.: It makes the complication much worse, and so we have a three part graph here, the first part on the top introduces the rock names and also allows them to track horizontally across the graph.
Margaret L.: Two environments of formation and then type environments information back across the graph again to textures and related crystal sizes.
Margaret L.: The second part of the graph is just a general characteristics section again students need to track horizontally to one side if they're looking for lighter color rocks lower density rocks that are fell sick.
Margaret L.: or track to the opposite side for may fit darker color higher density rocks and then they need to vertically tracked down again from the rocks to the minerals, the middle composition on the bottom of the chart.
Margaret L.: And here the different minerals that make up the different rocks are presented, and this may cause some difficulties for students, if they have figure ground prop of.
Margaret L.: Processing difficulties or spatial relation problems they may not be able to distinguish the different patterns within the graph that separate the different minerals.
Margaret L.: And even the shape of the mineral here for courts, for example, that i'm trying to highlight with my mouse.
Margaret L.: may become problematic because students may not recognize the shape and what the shape is trying to tell us.
Margaret L.: Namely the amount or percentages of courts within the fell sick rocks so I just decided to focus on this particular graph and then examine some of the.
Margaret L.: end of the year, questions that students would see on some of their regions exams and so here's one question that hails from the June 2017 regions.
Margaret L.: And so, this is a question that could stress students spatial relations visual memory and other processing areas like neglected to consider.
Margaret L.: And so, they have to read through this initial instruction, you know what to do with the question and.
Margaret L.: To highlight few i've underlined and read the critical part of the instructions that would help them to answer the question.
Margaret L.: And so it is buried within the instructions and if you have students who have difficulty horizontally tracking they need to get through the instructions.
Margaret L.: And then remember you know this piece of information to help them answer the question later.
Margaret L.: Next, in the question would be the paragraph that they need to read on logically spelled spars, and again I highlighted in red here the critical piece of information that they would need in order to successfully answer the question.
Margaret L.: And after that they would examine the chart and So here we have a you know, a data table showing the variety of logically spells bars and the percentages of sodium and calcium, and their densities.
Margaret L.: So after reading through this and analyzing this students that are finally introduced to the question.
Margaret L.: which basically says state the name of one variety of logically spelt Spar that is more likely to be found in the igneous rock peg imitate.
Margaret L.: And so the clue and the question is the igneous rock magnetite that would trigger the student to go into the reference tables and find the igneous rock identification scheme.
Margaret L.: And then remember to look for the rock peckman tight and then the students can examine the environment of formation check the textures track vertically to find the mineral composition and then realize.
Margaret L.: If they're able to you know just CERN the background patterns and the shapes of the swats that logically spelled Spar.
Margaret L.: is part of a peg type, but it does not elucidate you know the different species of fields far that the question is asking about.
Margaret L.: So the student would then need to go back to the question and reread the paragraph again in order to find the clue that what they're looking for are politically spells bars with a higher sodium content.
Margaret L.: That are found in fell sick rocks and then they can go into the table and see that all bite is their answer.
Margaret L.: So this is a tremendous amount of steps that students need to take even in a general education setting this is a very challenging question.
Margaret L.: Before our special education students on a number of different fronts there's many hurdles that they need to overcome, and so, when my students answer this question on the June 2017 regions it isn't a surprise and only 27% of the students actually got the question correct.
Margaret L.: Another example comes from the June 19 regions and here students may struggle with spatial relations figure ground form constancy discrimination.
Margaret L.: In terms of being able to pull out different pieces of a figure and again they have to read through.
Margaret L.: The instructions here, and then they have to unpack this block diagram.
Margaret L.: And so the instructions here I highlighted in red, they are pointed to locations X and y that identify locations that have boundary between the intrusion and the surrounding sedimentary rock layers.
Margaret L.: So students may, if they have visual discrimination difficulties have some difficulty finding X and y on this graph.
Margaret L.: They may have trouble seeing it i'm it's the background of the map patterns for the limestone and sedimentary rock.
Margaret L.: They may also have some trouble here with a key for contact metamorphic ISM so they may see this pattern and go to the key and recognize that if you have a line with hampshire's on the top, that means contact metamorphosis.
Margaret L.: So they may see where my mouse is pointing but because, on the underside of the intrusion the the the.
Margaret L.: The map pattern, if you will, is reversed, they may not recognize this as contact metamorphosis they may only see the contact metamorphosis along the top of the intrusion.
Margaret L.: Additional things to consider letters A and B represents specific rock units so here for a we see that this we have this magma intrusion here and students may not realize because of.
Margaret L.: form constancy that this panel of igneous material is the same as the side panel of igneous material and then letter C representing.
Margaret L.: The lava flow on the surface of the earth there's not a lot of visual contrast between the colors here that might represent a problem and students may not actually see this figure have a difficult time.
Margaret L.: You know, pulling it out and therefore not necessarily understand what the what the instructions are informing them about.
Margaret L.: And after they unpack this image they need to answer the question explain why the igneous rock form that location see.
Margaret L.: is composed of crystals less than one millimeter and size now for geology majors, this is a simple, you know you know just remember that if it's volcanic it's a fine grained igneous rock and therefore we expect to have small grain size.
Margaret L.: But for 14 year old students who were being introduced to earth sciences and identifying rocks and minerals.
Margaret L.: it's less likely that this would be something that they would remember, so they would be prompted to go into their tables and try to.
Margaret L.: You know, again look up textures and see you know grain sizes and then track back across the diagram.
Margaret L.: To find out what kind of an environment, this is especially if they couldn't discern this in the image here, to begin with.
Margaret L.: And, and then you know, try to go back to the question in the example flood and answer correctly and so again when my population of students answered this question in.
Margaret L.: Only about 38% of them have answered it correctly.
Margaret L.: And so, this leads us to what can we do what interventions are helpful and there's a you know really a couple of things that we can do, there are things we can do inside of the classroom.
Margaret L.: And there are considerations for high stakes exams as well, and things that the makers of high stakes examinations can consider when they're putting their.
Margaret L.: Products in front of students, one thing I want to make very, very clear is that you know when we talk about equitable mitigation of visual processing disabilities, we do not mean making the curriculum less rigorous.
Margaret L.: What we do mean is that we want to recognize the increased mental load for what it is and reduce that load.
Margaret L.: And that will increase the working memory for the student and increase their chances of successfully answering the problems.
Margaret L.: And so, some of the things that we can do in the classroom and I can give you some examples of with this in the next slides.
Margaret L.: There is pre teaching of the reference tables through direct instruction color coding repetitive exposure.
Margaret L.: chungking are breaking down the graphs visually isolating parts of graphs and diagrams increasing the size of graphs the fonts within within graphs and visual contrast, and then, for we ourselves are making examinations in the classroom where we have.
Margaret L.: The makers of high stakes examinations putting together their exams, you know consider carefully the intent of the assessment you know, are we testing knowledge of the content.
Margaret L.: Or how will students can process graphs and typically we're testing both we do want to show that our students know the call a content and.
Margaret L.: Part of Sciences reading graphs and charts and we do need to have some proficiency in doing that.
Margaret L.: But you don't need to have all of those components in one question, and if you separate them out you don't necessarily need to test, both in the same question if you separate them out, or would reduce the the mental load.
Margaret L.: And you can have a question with you know simpler instructions that just asks a question for the content and if your intent is to test whether or not students can actually read and interpret a graph.
Margaret L.: Have a question that deals just with that, without having to attach all other levels of knowledge and content of mastery along with it.
Margaret L.: reduce the length of the reading prompts oftentimes in these high stakes exams students will read these.
Margaret L.: Long instructions and long paragraphs about you know different varieties of pleasure, please felt Spar and then the question is.
Margaret L.: Is it igneous sedimentary of metamorphic rock and so sometimes the the the the prompts within that set up the question don't necessarily are not necessarily supportive of the question of what is being looked for, and so we can eliminate those kinds of.
Margaret L.: increases on visual load reducing the numbers of graphs needed to answer questions and my examples I was shown we had reading.
Margaret L.: passages we had blocked diagrams and they had to go to the reference tables and then go back to the exam we can reduce the numbers of graphs.
Margaret L.: And the complexity of the graphs that are needed, and then you know even on the tests, increase the size of the graphs the fonts and the visual contrast.
Margaret L.: And so just quickly some examples of what i've been able to do in the classroom so again using this specific diagram.
Margaret L.: Direct instruction for how to teach or to teach this to our students and what this graph means and the different component parts of it.
Margaret L.: visually breaking this graph down when I start teaching this I will actually block out parts of it and have the students focus just on the top part and teach them that in this part they need to track horizontally both ways in order to get the most out of the upper part of the chart.
Margaret L.: i've resorted to color coding the charts so and color coding is very helpful because I will have the students do it themselves, so I will give them a highlighter or color pencil.
Margaret L.: And oftentimes in special education, when you have a difficulty with one of the senses, you can try to compensate for it by utilizing the other senses.
Margaret L.: So if the students themselves take part in the process of coloring and the graph instead of providing them with a color coded graph then they could use their tactile sense to help support any.
Margaret L.: deficits in the visual senses so oftentimes i'll have students draw lines across the graph to illustrate the differences, the rocks above the line or exclusive the rocks below the line are intrusive.
Margaret L.: I will teach them to horizontally track in both directions, I will have the students color vertically, to show that these rocks that are colored in pink.
Margaret L.: Have these minerals in them and the pink is chosen purposefully because these are the filter products that contain potassium phil's bar and so oftentimes.
Margaret L.: They will see the pink color in the rock when they're trying to match it to a table.
Margaret L.: Green would be the color we use for may 5 rocks because of the olive being content and then a Gray color for intermediate rocks.
Margaret L.: And then repetition is critical, and so we could just continue to repeat it over and over again through the school year but sometimes I like to gameplay with the children.
Margaret L.: And so we have a game that we play with this particular chart called guess who and so it's a it's a household game where we need to think of a person or a thing.
Margaret L.: And the people who are opposing you have to guess what it is you're thinking and ask only yes or no questions to try to narrow down the choices and make the identification.
Margaret L.: So I will have groups of students who are competing against each other, and each group has in their mind, one of the rocks that they've picked, for example, i'll take basalt here right now.
Margaret L.: And so the opposing team will ask, yes or no question, so the team, I will teach the team of the students like sequential decision making, so I will prompt them to say, the first question, you want to ask is about the environment of formation.
Margaret L.: And so they'll ask is the rock intrusive and the students would answer no and then they can take this chart which I provided in a loose leaf.
Margaret L.: protector, and some dry erase markers and actually cross out the rocks that they've eliminated.
Margaret L.: And then they just continue the questioning if they've eliminated environment information they can move to texture well, is that a glassy rock the answer would be no, and so they could eliminate that option.
Margaret L.: And then i'll teach them to track down the graph so they could ask questions, especially with the characteristics sections is this rock fell sick no it's not eliminate it.
Margaret L.: Is the rock intermediate no it's not and then here.
Margaret L.: You have two choices left and the mineral composition isn't going to be particularly helpful here so they're prompted to go back to the texture and they can see that one rock has gas pockets and the other does not.
Margaret L.: And so they asked the question and eliminate the gas pockets and the final answer is assault.
Margaret L.: And so we do this, over and over and over again in class and it's fun and they have a good time with it.
Margaret L.: And then later on in the unit when we're doing laboratories and students are presented with trying to identify 15 different igneous rocks.
Margaret L.: And they look at me and they become anxious about it and say what do I do I just look at them and say play guess who.
Margaret L.: And then they know exactly what to do, and they just follow the sequential decision making and are able to complete the lab.
Margaret L.: And then, finally, like increasing the size of Greg of graphs excuse me so here's our earthquake chart, for example, this is a very difficult one for students with processing disabilities usually have to blow it up.
Margaret L.: And then you know, during a classroom experiences and even on the on the end of the region's exam i'll provide them with highlighters and i'll tell them, you know highlight your lines, so that they stand out for you.
Margaret L.: And then, when you need to use the information on the chart the epicenter distance they have 4000 kilometers.
Margaret L.: And a travel time of seven minutes you know use another highlighter to show where the two intersect, and this can help you know with their success rate with this.
Margaret L.: So, lastly, you know do these interventions help well I, I do have some records from at least three years of regions examinations I wasn't able to do this last year because of Cobra they canceled the region's examinations in New York state for 2020.
Margaret L.: But I do have years 2017 through 2019 presented here and in a year 2017 when I was new to high school teaching.
Margaret L.: I you know, had taught this particular igneous rock chart and we use direct instruction and game playing.
Margaret L.: And, on average, students, had a 34 and a half percent success rate with answering questions with respect to that individual chart in June of 2018.
Margaret L.: You know, after examining the results and understanding that we needed to have more intense interventions we continued with direct instruction and game playing.
Margaret L.: But started to color code things and just you know simply color code things and just that intervention improved student success rates and so for June 2018 we had a 51 and a half percent.
Margaret L.: Increase in correct responses for these types of questions and then in June of 19 we you know more intense direct instruction actually annotating the chart repeating it more and the.
Margaret L.: percentages went up again now, you know it, you know when we take a look at these numbers, you know for a general education population those don't look like particularly successful numbers only having half of your students do well on a question.
Margaret L.: Is is is not very heartening for for most teachers, but again, remember, these are special education students that are in a more restrictive setting.
Margaret L.: And, and so these types of numbers for that population of students are very encouraging also considered to that these are the results.
Margaret L.: From classroom implemented interventions and that's only.
Margaret L.: Half of the problem, and so, if we are able to take a look at our examinations and modify them so that we reduce the visual processing difficulties and loads than these numbers might come become higher and we'll see increased student success rate where these types of.
Margaret L.: Problems are concerned, thank you very much.
Jeff Thomas: Thank you very much, Margaret I actually did post a question in the chat box we don't have time for questions at this moment but.
Jeff Thomas: You know, we do have a little bit of time for discussion at the end of the session, and when you know I would love to hear your your your thoughts and maybe you know a little bit discussion on the comment that I that I included.
Jeff Thomas: So, thank you very much I enjoyed I enjoyed it alright Chris you are next.
Jeff Thomas: In your presentation is sense, making with geoscience phenomena.
Christopher Roemmele: Alright, good morning everyone, thank you for attending this session and Christopher wrongly and the professor at West Chester University in West Chester Pennsylvania I teach in the earth and space sciences department I teach.
Christopher Roemmele: intro jelena the intro geology classes there, but I also teach science methods to early in middle grades prep majors and I supervise students, teachers and prior to getting my PhD and teaching at the university level, I taught.
Christopher Roemmele: High School middle school science for 15 years in New Jersey and I always kind of took my hiatus from teaching just as ngs was becoming a thing.
Christopher Roemmele: In New Jersey so but it's very much stayed with me and a lot of the genesis of these.
Christopher Roemmele: Activities these three activities i'm going to share with you there's a glacier in your backyard kaboom and there's something on the water started when I was a classroom teacher in New Jersey, but just a little background on three dimensions.
Christopher Roemmele: What does it look like well it's We hope that using the standards that given that their evidence based and they're based on progressions and the.
Christopher Roemmele: Emphasis on performance expectations that the three strands, which is the content, the disciplinary core ideas.
Christopher Roemmele: With our state the facts that students should know the practices and getting the students doing with science to the skills that scientists engage with engage in and embedded in those eight.
Christopher Roemmele: science and engineering practices are those skills like observing and unfurling and comparing and contrasting and classifying and.
Christopher Roemmele: Measuring using models, making the prophecies working the variables and etc, etc, and then the whole idea of making your teaching of science phenomena based, and of course we have to define.
Christopher Roemmele: That phenomenon doesn't always mean phenomenal or colloquial definition of phenomenal and that it can be very subtle indiscreet and that we're.
Christopher Roemmele: going through a lesson or lessons to for students to try and figure out or make sense of that whole idea of sense me again.
Christopher Roemmele: With this phenomena is about whether it's the anchoring phenomena that gets everything started or a phenomena that happened to appear along the way, whether it's your intention, as the teacher to bring the bring them into that or the students.
Christopher Roemmele: go off on their own exploration of that and we like to see a lot of real world application and project and problem based learning and investigations.
Christopher Roemmele: That doesn't mean direct instruction goes away it's just that that these skills and practices are embedded in your lessons throughout.
Christopher Roemmele: And so I like to use the, whether you like a rope or that may be a strip of the three dimensions i'm a foodie and I like to cook and especially to bake.
Christopher Roemmele: i'm not as good as the barefoot contessa, but I think a cake analogy with my students, they use this and that that's the performance expectation.
Christopher Roemmele: To make a good cake and the three dimensions, the cake is or the crumb is your core idea that your factual information and that the.
Christopher Roemmele: sister and the bowls and the spoon is ring spoons and the beater and baking pans and whatever tools you use.
Christopher Roemmele: Or the practices and then the icing is a kind of overlays at all, or is embedded through this cake and that's what how we like to frame.
Christopher Roemmele: These investigations or an individual lesson using that cross cutting concept, and I think that.
Christopher Roemmele: really does help students and and I have to I don't know if we're supposed to say that I have a favorite dimension, I don't know if that's too nerdy for anybody, but I i'm kind of a long term.
Christopher Roemmele: destination big picture kind of guy so I I really favorite cross cutting concepts and try and make sure that.
Christopher Roemmele: Those are stressed, especially with my method students since they're the ones going out to the teachers science and our eight.
Christopher Roemmele: science and engineering practices than the so those, these are the the instruments and tools, you know to bake that cake, and then the icing are the seven cross cutting concepts, how we frame or left since how we frame our investigations, and so I want to take you.
Christopher Roemmele: In and share with you, these three investigations that again got their genesis when I was a classroom teacher in New Jersey and I still do aspects of them.
Christopher Roemmele: In my intro geology, so I do have adapted them for at the university level, but I also do them well these when we were in person with my methods classes to show.
Christopher Roemmele: What a three dimensional lesson or activity and types of activities that your students could be doing, especially in the earth sciences.
Christopher Roemmele: at different levels and so there's a glacier in your backyard.
Christopher Roemmele: there's an, these are all set up the same way in terms of the standards and the performance expectation, whether we're looking at a middle grades.
Christopher Roemmele: Performance expectation which is slightly different than a high school expectation that made when we might apply here.
Christopher Roemmele: And with glaciers, we might think of the cross cutting concept, the the theme or the frame of a lesson or a unit on glaciers being cause and effect or stability and change.
Christopher Roemmele: Although we are not necessarily committed to the cross cutting concept at the beginning, we may that may evolve over time so there's that pci is also there and It all starts with ice cubes.
Christopher Roemmele: Rather, a seemingly rather mundane ice cubes but how long has it taken an ice cube to melt and we actually melt ice cubes and they can go home and melt ice cubes at home.
Christopher Roemmele: And we come up with all this data about the length of ice cube melting on the size of the ice cube and then we start doing some extrapolation well what if we.
Christopher Roemmele: had an ice cube the size of a half gallon juice or milk container such as that.
Christopher Roemmele: orange juice container how long would that take to melt and what about one the size of this room, or the size of the school and what about a real glacier how to on today's those take them out and.
Christopher Roemmele: For we realized that suddenly we're starting to do all these calculations, but then the whole idea of temperature and while the ice ages were colder and they weren't melting or were they and so kind of hitting on those blink of its cycles earlier but thinking about ice ages and current.
Christopher Roemmele: Climate change on how this may impact glaciers around the world today and the melting time of glaciers now as or in a time of glacier and Vance well we move on to on.
Christopher Roemmele: cold going back to the ice cubes and ice birds and the difference between icebergs and glaciers and icebergs floating an ice cubes floating What about glaciers there.
Christopher Roemmele: You know these we've made we actually make baby glaciers in those juice containers and I make a homemade mixture of till has clay and silt and sand and gravel and some soil in it and we fill it with water, and they freeze and then we actually determine the density of these glaciers.
Christopher Roemmele: To kind of contrast with an ice cube and how that could impact, when a glacier actually does encounter a body of water, especially when it's calving off, we also simulate.
Christopher Roemmele: rebound, how does the crust behave during an ice age, what happens when the ice melts we and we simulate this with ice cubes or excuse me ice cubes the baby glacier and sponges and think about how the sponge reacts and the rate at which the sponge sponge is rebounding.
Christopher Roemmele: Compared to an actual glacier over longer longer periods of time, so we're.
Christopher Roemmele: Moving on, and we open these glaciers up and the nice thing about the juice containers that we can kind of use them as like little cradles.
Christopher Roemmele: So that students don't actually have to touch the baby glacier they can hold them on the bottom and then turn them upside down.
Christopher Roemmele: Which is really right side up and use the carton to actually move the glaciers along, we can move them out on the sidewalk or on the grassy soil and what's happening to the glacier as we move it on and students really like this part the best because the glacier starts to.
Christopher Roemmele: Start deposit things and some of the tills starts to fall out, and so we can presume that those are deposition features and then it starts to melt and this could be.
Christopher Roemmele: A glacially deflate fed river or a kettle lake perform with that, but I think that everybody's favorite part is the straight into the sidewalk because it's kind of a.
Christopher Roemmele: way of students getting to deface school property, with the permission of the teacher and the school because this is science investigation.
Christopher Roemmele: i'll be also get pebbles falling out, so we can have a robotics and where I was teaching in New Jersey, there were erotics and we were.
Christopher Roemmele: The school was literally right on the terminal moraine of the continent glaciers, so this kind of helpful to teach in that location for several years.
Christopher Roemmele: But they do use a lot of practices and there's a lot of other things in the storyline that students could do the before and after pictures or the pre then pictures of places.
Christopher Roemmele: Around the world, and the current picture of the same glacier and how climate changes, impacting over the past century or so the effect from Colorado of leisure simulations also give a good.
Christopher Roemmele: activity for students to do, and so they really do have a lot of different artifacts that.
Christopher Roemmele: That the teacher can see that there is some sense, making and learning and understanding of glacier dynamics and movement and.
Christopher Roemmele: The process of the deposition and their rosen that glaciers and cause and how climate may impact that, and so we moved to kaboom where we measurable kino exclusivity whether we're using as a an energy flow and earth system or process.
Christopher Roemmele: This is not your.
Christopher Roemmele: baking soda and vinegar volcano in a paper machine volcano we want to definitely.
Christopher Roemmele: ramp this up to actually and start incorporating some more concept or more complex ideas about volcanoes, but a lot of kids do ask that about you know they are.
Christopher Roemmele: fascinated with volcanoes and just showing volcanic eruptions or pictures of volcanoes can be enough, but pictures of vulcanology lists and different types of geologists up close and personal.
Christopher Roemmele: With lava is quite interesting and the and the question arises, well, how can we can count them volkmann these geologists can get up right up close and take their lives in their hands.
Christopher Roemmele: With all these different instruments and tools, but with like a mount St Helens type of eruption there's obviously a great more.
Christopher Roemmele: cataclysm and destruction and you can't you don't want to be a geologist too close to that well that gets us into experimenting and doing some investigations with viscosity of love and using different liquids to contrast molasses corn syrup water.
Christopher Roemmele: peanut butter and catch up and how those have different viscosity and how the different viscosity is with may fit and fell sick lovers and magma.
Christopher Roemmele: retain gas differently and can lead to different exclusivity and so using milk and milk steak trying to blow bubbles into both of those and, of course, the milkshake can get really messy so.
Christopher Roemmele: And that can get somewhat amusing, but does drive home the point about the influence on the fell sick lava being much more viscous and leading to more explosive eruptions.
Christopher Roemmele: But then we get into actually creating the volcanic eruptions, and again not baking soda and vinegar but warm water detergent and alka seltzer plenty of alka seltzer you have to invest in a lot of alka seltzer.
Christopher Roemmele: And then creating using the water bottles and a really a lot of teamwork going on here with the saran wrap and the rubber band to cover and create.
Christopher Roemmele: That chemical reaction to occur under pressure, but then immediately as soon as that's covered to give it some time for the reaction to occur and.
Christopher Roemmele: Using a toothpick to poke a hole and create event and the students are immediately moving with mood meter sticks and those big lists on your pan So if you needed to invest in some lasagna pans there you go, you have multiple uses for those in a science classroom.
Christopher Roemmele: And we get some pretty cool volcanic eruptions, and you know there's water streaming out and sometimes hitting the ceiling there's different variables, of course, we can change the number of tablets, we can change the temperature of the water.
Christopher Roemmele: And, but the whole aspect of teamwork and measuring the height of the eruption the lateral distance of these eruptions sometimes sometimes second vents open up on their own and getting the volume of effort that is created, and how long these eruptions can create so they're timed.
Christopher Roemmele: And that's also that the students can create their own volcano exclusivity index and rate.
Christopher Roemmele: they're both different volcanic eruptions based on all the different variables that were involved and which is what will vulcanology is to with both present day and historic eruptions rating them on the big scale.
Christopher Roemmele: And so we there's other activities along the storyline plotting the different volcanoes around the world and there's.
Christopher Roemmele: lava compositions and, of course, the impact that will cannock eruptions have on earth systems or spheres and that they're not just some isolated event.
Christopher Roemmele: on the opposite side of the world that we don't have to think about, but the vdi scale on the self made vdi scale based on their own investigation and eruptions.
Christopher Roemmele: Does turn out to be quite a good artifact for the teacher to have in terms of student learning and understanding and explaining that phenomena of the different types of volcanic eruptions, and the third and last one I want to share with you Is there something in the water.
Christopher Roemmele: Whether we're looking at it from a properties of water and earth materials or we're looking at human impact on the environment, we can.
Christopher Roemmele: modify this and we don't want to you know groundwater contamination and prior to my days as a classroom teacher, I was in environmental consulting so seeing not necessarily places as bad as valley of the drums but.
Christopher Roemmele: There were places in New Jersey that we're starting to head toward that path.
Christopher Roemmele: and popular Hollywood movies, like civil action and civil action and Erin Brockovich.
Christopher Roemmele: To kind of.
Christopher Roemmele: make these water contamination issues into a more and more Hollywood a storyline.
Christopher Roemmele: But nonetheless still about groundwater contamination and how that impacts, the public and that's what it starts off as we're building a new roadway.
Christopher Roemmele: We have an A bypass that's going to be a bypass all hazardous waste all toxic loads have to use that bypass But what if there's an accident and some hazardous cargo is spilled.
Christopher Roemmele: We need something in the buffer zone on the on the sides of the road that are going to contain this that's the spill well, what do we, we can use cause and effect.
Christopher Roemmele: Stability and change with this because we don't want to change our watershed and the nature of the water in the watershed we want to contain it.
Christopher Roemmele: And so, one of the first things we do is measure is explore the porosity of different sediments and different groups are measuring the prosperity of everything from for scramble to find gravel.
Christopher Roemmele: or sand find sand sand and gravel and all sorts of different combinations and using that porosity data sharing it with each other.
Christopher Roemmele: Because that's going to make it be an important factor when they start designing their buffer zone, this is going to this is an apparatus developed.
Christopher Roemmele: The initial one was on the left, but we scaled them down, because then we don't need as much sediment and and also made it easier to collect the water in order to measure specific yield and so we're getting infiltration rate and specific retention and yield.
Christopher Roemmele: Because the those data can inform our decision about the design of our buffer.
Christopher Roemmele: For our roadmap bypass, and then we simulate recharge by pouring water through that apparatus infiltration apparatus, first we have to contaminate it.
Christopher Roemmele: With some food dye and then start pouring water through until the water is sufficiently clear, so that it represents kind of the standard.
Christopher Roemmele: Of what was before the contamination was added, and it does take some time for depending on the sediment that is being tested to.
Christopher Roemmele: Make to ensure that all the contamination is removed from the ground where so we had a large array of these cups.
Christopher Roemmele: With all different shades of red or green or blue or whatever food dye we're using and we get until we.
Christopher Roemmele: sense that the water is back to pre existing conditions and then students in groups, develop a a buffer zone.
Christopher Roemmele: They have all the data from all the different groups of the different settlements and they decide on a different material that they're going to use in a particular design.
Christopher Roemmele: of their buffer zone and sometimes they're just using one type of sediment and they often ask if there's one or more if they can use one or more, which they absolutely can can it be a vertical design of horizontal design they make these.
Christopher Roemmele: buffer zones and then present them in class to each other and then have to defend their choice and.
Christopher Roemmele: of material and their design and why they feel it will work and others won't so a great kind of claim evidence reasoning argumentation aspect to this and in solving this problem of a potential contamination spill and not.
Christopher Roemmele: affecting the watershed and then the bid the winning bid for this design is kind of selected, because all the groups have to.
Christopher Roemmele: pick a quote unquote winner in terms of most effective designed for this buffer zone.
Christopher Roemmele: Until those are three different activities and again they can be scaled up or down and I get I do them in in some form in my intro geology class, but I also do parts of them with my.
Christopher Roemmele: Methods classes to kind of show them the investigative process and how it starts from a simple question and simple, perhaps even discrete phenomena to.
Christopher Roemmele: Investigation where all the three dimensions are being employed and highlighted throughout the length of the investigation and so there's lots of other things that students can be doing along the storyline and plenty of I think the presentations themselves are probably your.
Christopher Roemmele: Wonderful artifact for to have as a teacher with this, these are all published articles and I have the hard copies if you'd like them, please don't hesitate to.
Christopher Roemmele: shoot me an email if you'd like a copy of any of these be more than happy to share them with you and talk with you about them in more detail and how to deliver them when we hopefully get back to you in person instruction, thank you very much appreciate you being here.
Jeff Thomas: Thank you very much, Chris.
Jeff Thomas: So, again.
Jeff Thomas: we're actually at our 20 minutes we're a little bit over on time but that's Okay, and so next would be.
Jeff Thomas: josh josh Smith with volcanoes of the Connecticut Valley, a student centered phenomena focus exploration of existential tectonics so thank you, thank you, Chris.
Josh: Can you see this.
Jeff Thomas: Yes, we can see it, I can see it.
Josh: I could see multiple slack and actually.
Josh: I can actually get it working.
Josh: Okay.
Jeff Thomas: There we go.
Josh: yeah so um Chris very nicely set up all of the structure and the dimensions, so I don't have to do that, thank you, Chris that was very nice i'm.
Josh: What i'm going to talk about is.
Josh: almost always interested in in trying to think about ways that the classroom experience can respond kind of directly to the way that the assessments are being crafted.
Josh: And for the most part, people writing the assessments, the high stakes assessments are doing this kind of letter of the law, with respect to the standards themselves and so they're looking at the standards.
Josh: As a standing performance expectation and they're not doing a lot of the mix and match of the dimensions that goes on in the classroom quite a lot and so i've been exploring.
Josh: Is it possible to create classroom activities that sort of do this exact thing they look at the performance expectations as a unit and kind of look at them a letter of the law.
Josh: With those constraints and and try to respond to the to the assessments very directly on, if you look at any one of these performance expectations, it becomes pretty obvious very quickly that these are not your grandparents content standards and.
Josh: If you if you start to explore the standards and the way that they are written it becomes obvious that the individual dimensions.
Josh: Of the various peas are dovetailed together in an extremely particular and deliberate way to function as a unit.
Josh: And the writers, of the ngs staffs will tell you up and down and three ways to Sunday, but they don't like it when the performance expectations are pulled apart.
Josh: And and used as individual dimensions, they will then go on to say that it is perfectly fine to mix and match individual dimensions in the classroom.
Josh: Okay, but if we're looking at the standards themselves let's look at them as as entities and not tear them apart and using that as a constraint.
Josh: Think about how we can use them as as entities to base classroom instruction.
Josh: If you go a little further into the text of the individual standards any one of them, you can parse them according to the individual dimensions as i've done here.
Josh: If you go in a little bit further, you can um you can parse them according to the dimensions themselves and, of course, all of the dimensions are focused on whatever the individual scenario is that we're trying to explain the phenomenon.
Josh: But.
Josh: If you parse the individual dimensions in terms of a way that the standards are constructed the standards are statements of what students are supposed to know.
Josh: and be able to do with the end of the period of instruction So these are not just act based.
Josh: Standards the practice is is pretty much the driving focus long with cross cutting concept to elucidate the underlying science that underpins the phenomenon, they work together as a unit and.
Josh: Because the practice the eight individual science and engineering practices are all processes of science, what this does is it actually changes the whole nature of what proficiency is so if we look at this.
Josh: standard that have been throwing up your as an example which is my favorite example one because it's kind of a simple one to think about.
Josh: This is middle school or science one, one which is the modeling standard the deals of phases of the moon eclipses and so on and so forth.
Josh: What the students are supposed to do to demonstrate proficiency for this performance expectation is developing use models to get at the underlying causal mechanisms of the patterns expressed by the simplicity of lunar phases eclipses and seasons on earth.
Josh: That changes the game quite a bit from where we were a few years ago and we we get to a non measurement of student performance in a simple multiple choice.
Josh: act based question and we get into what it takes to actually measure student performance in these questions we're we're dealing with something along these lines, this is a on.
Josh: This is a prompt laid out for a student to assemble and then, subsequently modifier graphical model of the earth son system.
Josh: And so what the the answer that i'm showing you here is the second part.
Josh: Of the of the prompt the first one was them actually establishing the spatial relationships with the earth's moon system and in the second part, what they do is they go in and they draw arrows to reflect the path of sunlight that allows us to see the moon from the earth.
Josh: That sort of the lower end I think of what a three dimensional on assessment related to Ms CSS one one would be.
Josh: And then we get up into situations which would be on the upper end where we've got.
Josh: Students actually making physical models in the classroom and what is being scored is their performance in the manipulation of the components of those models.
Josh: To do things like explain what causes the new moon explain what causes the full moon or make predictions of what phase is going to occur, I given day of the of the sidereal month.
Josh: that's quite a bit different than the standard, you know one dimensional a one dimensional assessment pieces you basically takes multiple choice and a.
Josh: dimension of analysis one right off the table and you end up with these sorts of questions at the end of the period of instruction, which requires us to think very differently about how does the period of instruction itself respond to this.
Josh: The the fact that the point of these standards is supposed to be for the at the end of the period of instruction students can apply the practices and the Cross cutting concepts.
Josh: To the phenomena that they encounter in their daily lives as an interesting wrinkle I think it actually gives us um.
Josh: I think it gives us a little bit of a roadmap that we can use, rather than just kind of wandering about in the wilderness trying to figure out how we're actually going to assemble these things.
Josh: If we use the phenomenon as the focal point of the activity as its intended to be, then you can apply any given performance expectation.
Josh: or combination bundled together the performance expectations to that phenomenon in the students.
Josh: He can actually address the phenomenon, so at the end of the day, what they've done is they've explained or dress the scenario that has been presented from for them and they've done it through the lenses of the specific dimensions and.
Josh: We can take the idea of the proficiency map and look at the phenomenon that we're going to choose and then kind of determine what the specific actions, the students are going to take are going to be.
Josh: And this does two things one it helps sort of map out what the activity is going to be and keeps us honest with with sort of the intent of the performance expectation.
Josh: But it also, and more importantly, it allows you to take your candidate phenomenon, the thing that you're proposing to yourself hey This might be a scenario that students could address in this activity.
Josh: And it allows you to sort of check whether or not this thing is actually going to be aligned or not, if your candidate phenomenon doesn't match.
Josh: What the students are going to do, then it's not going to work and you should be thinking about another phenomenon so, for example, for our.
Josh: Our phases of the moon here the phenomenon can be described as over the course of a month the moon's appearance in the sky changes daily right.
Josh: That is an observation about the natural world that the students can explain with models, there is a there is a pattern in there there's a simplicity.
Josh: To the changing of the moon's appearance over the course of the month, and so the the Cross cutting concept for this performance expectation is that.
Josh: patterns can identify underlying causal mechanisms, and so what the students do is they address that pattern.
Josh: In their models and they get at the underlying DCI content of the fact that the earth sun moon system.
Josh: moves around with respect to itself, and that changes the amount of solar activity this mouse solar energy that is reflected onto the earth, and so we end up with a very nice three dimensional idea focused on this specific phenomenon.
Josh: Thankfully the the earth sciences actually do I would say that we are in a in a discipline or series of disciplines that are pretty phenomena rich, which is nice.
Josh: um some of them are more interesting and spectacular than others, but, as Chris said i'm glad that you pointed this out phenomena, do not have to be phenomenal.
Josh: That is not the point of a phenomena it's great if they are interesting and exciting and wonderful, but at the end of the day, I will take workable.
Josh: Something that can actually be explained can will do the job and trying to get it to do i'll take workable over spectacular any day of the week on.
Josh: Some of the phenomena of course are pretty spectacular.
Josh: And if you know if I were to grab devil's tower what would I probably want to do with it, I would probably do something original based right is that's really dramatic thing I suspect.
Josh: That we could make a model activity dealing with Columbia joining that's probably going to be above most grade level um but the the simple.
Josh: difference in a differential weathering distribution changes here between the rock that surrounding the thing versus the igneous material in the metal that aligns nicely to to middle school to to um and would set us up to a pretty Nice.
Josh: Pretty nice three dimensional activity, I think we could build around that on those lines.
Josh: So i've been spending a lot of time thinking about.
Josh: How to deal with tectonics at the middle school level, and specifically i'm going to i'm going to focus on extension tectonics.
Josh: As if this is going to be phenomenon focused it's very difficult to create phenomena that a deal with both things much like that phases of the moon on.
Josh: The phases of the moon performance expectation eclipses in phases have two very different causes, and so you can't use the same models.
Josh: To model both of them, and so you would need separate phenomenon focused activities that could be used in concert with each other, tied together with an anchor something to do with gravity.
Josh: To deal with the two, I think, why would approach tectonics in the same way, start, perhaps with extension on and then move into something else, after that, and probably.
Josh: I don't know we would end up looking at it through the lenses of these middle school performance expectations and we're probably going to activate some prior knowledge, along the lines.
Josh: And i'm only most of its can hang on on two, three, which is an analyzing and interpreting data performance expectation, the Cross cutting concept is patterns and so.
Josh: I would probably go through the same sort of parsing activity that I very quickly showed you the other performance expectation.
Josh: And we would end up with a proficiency map that would allow me to think about what the scenario might be so students are going to analyze data from maps and valid sources.
Josh: The patterns in those data are going to be important and should constitute the data sets that they're going to analyze.
Josh: And those the disciplinary core ideas are going to be elucidated through those two activities.
Josh: And you can sort of see that i'm tracking in a separate science and engineering practice bullet here, which is on the supporting an explanation it's not in this P literally but it's kind of implied the want to bundle it together, which is the way that I would approach it.
Josh: And so you're going to think about this and you're probably going to come to the idea of using a diagram like this is the basis for your activity.
Josh: problem is that's not phenomenon, this is a synthesis of a ton of different observations, this is kind of the end point hundreds of phenomena.
Josh: This is not nominal because, of course, a phenomenon is an observable object or event that we can explain with the tools of science.
Josh: It for our purposes, it can be investigated and explained, using a combination of applying the individual dimensions to it.
Josh: that's not what this is, if I were going to use this as a phenomenon, what I would want to do is.
Josh: break the continents back apart, have the students take the data and tell us what the assemblages would be using the data of fossils occurrence.
Josh: plus the shapes of the coastlines, this is large, and I don't think it is, it is particularly relevant as sort of an entrance point phenomenon.
Josh: So let's think about stuff that might be a little more small scale is a start and small scale also gets us away from the problems of misconceptions right statements like this for often things that we like to hang.
Josh: Things on this isn't even true and a lot of places, certainly for talking over millions of years.
Josh: And I like discrete phenomena, wherever possible, because this isn't actually what students see they don't see bricks.
Josh: angling at the basis of Chicago what they see our individual trees and what has happening to the bricks at their basis, and from that they can infer this collective observation.
Josh: So i'm always looking for very discreet kind of singular narrow phenomena that are locally relevant if we're talking about a start point.
Josh: And we've been looking to try and find those in the mesozoic rift basins of the East coast and specifically we've been looking at the volcanoes of the Connecticut river Valley, because everybody likes a volcano and we think we've come up with one that might work.
Josh: And so, this is the French King bridge the picture of the French King bridge.
Josh: In North central Massachusetts and it's located within their red.is just below the tri state border it's a confluence of the millers river and the Connecticut river.
Josh: i'm standing here looking down the millers river at the bridge at the confluence of the to the actual phenomenon.
Josh: rocks on the east side of the bridge are totally different than the rocks on the West side rocks on the east side our upper ordovician nice's.
Josh: rocks on the east and the west side or upper or lower Jurassic conglomerates.
Josh: And the depths of the conglomerates go into the river in the fully ation of the nicest that's above grade level but it's an interesting point affiliations, of the nicest go into the River so.
Josh: There is a nice on channel explanation for this here's the bridge right here there's a normal fault here's your conglomerates.
Josh: here's the four mile mix, so this is a nice simple explanation, it is related to extension tectonics.
Josh: These bases are related to the initial opening of the Atlantic, so it seems like a nice entrance point to get in there, so we can come up with a nice proper description of this phenomenon.
Josh: And we can face a nice investigative performance on it, in which case we anchor it largely on two, three or going to drag in the Sep bullet have to to.
Josh: Go back to the idea of an alignment map and what does that give us where the students are going to analyze and interpret data from maps and other valid sources.
Josh: they're going to develop a pattern of those data dragging in the cross cutting concept and the data do occur in in stuff that that is that is pattern based.
Josh: And what they're going to do is going to use the analysis of those patterns to implicate a normal fault, as the best explanation for the map pattern of the Nice in the conglomerate and.
Josh: there's a couple of different data sets they would use the map pattern of embracing the conglomerate up and down north, south.
Josh: And the fact that there are a number of things let's say the bedding of the sedimentary igneous rocks for one thing.
Josh: To the to the east toward the actual fault, they won't know it's a fault right this point there's a number of different data sets that they can use what we would have them do is actually use the geologic maps and use primary sources.
Josh: dumb not dumb down, but we interpreted at grade level that they will go in and examine to develop the data sets that they will then use.
Josh: As their analysis to support their explanation for the best explanation of what that map pattern is here right between the conglomerate and the Nice, which is a normal fault, and so this is kind of an overview of what would happen in that performance and.
Josh: We need to introduce a little bit of rock type here rock type is large rock identifications largely been orphaned in the ngs S, but I maintain that you can shove, it into a couple of lower level on.
Josh: lower level performance expectations for those folks who are required to make sure that everything that they're teaching is properly aligned and so basically what they do here is they look at the maps and the other sources, develop the patterns of data.
Josh: implicate the normal fall and then use the normal fault is the explanation of that phenomenon.
Josh: From there we go back to them that bedrock map remind them that there is an assault this weird rock type called of assault, in the section.
Josh: And then we introduced the phenomenon related to that assault and students are going to use 3121 they're going to make a model dealing about the rock cycle.
Josh: Talking about the fact that what how assault is different from a nice and conglomerate and we're going to guide them in and tie that to a.
Josh: tie that back to the extension and the fault now of course there is going to have to be some direct instruction in all of this they're not going to do this without supervision.
Josh: we're not going to hand hold them but they're the students are going to drive this investigation, for the most part, so we'll get done with this.
Josh: They figured out what the basalt is how extension tectonics tends to relate in this kind of volcanism we tell them with the age of the salt is hundred 99 million.
Josh: And then we go into the third part of the activity, the third act of our little play.
Josh: And this is where we bring in the age distribution of the rocks on the Atlantic sea floor and have them say.
Josh: And correlate the fact that this particular basalt that we're working with is actually the same age as the oldest rocks that we've got.
Josh: Dealing with the rocks in the Atlantic sea floor and from there, we can tie that, together, to the opening Atlantic and then the general break of the pangea.
Josh: And that gives us the third act of our nice little on three act play.
Josh: These are.
Josh: These are complex little place they require a careful choreography and so we've been creating very detailed instructional guides.
Josh: bit on care with these I didn't really talk about it but we've imbedded formative assessments into these activities and we're tying in on.
Josh: there's a student guide and there's a PowerPoint presentation that goes along with the whole thing.
Josh: And I think at the end of this little three act play, we have a nice start point dealing with extension tectonics that we can then pair.
Josh: With a compression tectonics piece that probably is anchored around something like mount St Helens and then move on, so on and so forth, I think that brings me to about the end of my time and sorry if I talked at mach one.
Jeff Thomas: Okay Thank you so much josh and yeah we're at the end of the timeframe, but if anybody has any questions i'm doing the last presentation, which is related to actually the previous ones.
Jeff Thomas: And we can answer any questions among all the presentations at the end, so all right Thank you again josh Thank you so much josh Would you mind sharing your screen yep.
Jeff Thomas: Okay, so I am the last presentation, for today and again we can hold off questions till until the end.
Jeff Thomas: And i'll start sharing my screen.
Jeff Thomas: Okay, so I just want to confirm, like everybody else has that you can see my screen fine.
Jeff Thomas: On the start the presentation, right here, so I don't have that green ring around is everybody can everybody see my presentation.
Josh: I can see it great.
Jeff Thomas: Thank you okay so whoops i'm actually one slide already too far Okay, so my my presentation is basically a.
Jeff Thomas: Just a description of a unit that was just published in science scope, so this particular unit, right here is called moving continents, it is based on the you know again like what we just discussed plate tectonics.
Jeff Thomas: as it relates to Connecticut, although the phenomena, at the very beginning, is what really relates to Connecticut and some of the other activities that i'm going to be sharing with you.
Jeff Thomas: can also be adapted to different contexts, whether it's New York or California, so this was just this article.
Jeff Thomas: right here, which is called moving continents, right to the right where i'm pointing to was just published early i'm sorry late last fall, I think, was the last issue.
Jeff Thomas: of science scope 2020 and all the activities, you know not only that the article, but all the activities student handouts, and everything like that.
Jeff Thomas: are also published on the NS ta website any other teaching resources as such now this this original unit was developed with some grant.
Jeff Thomas: teacher quality grant that ran between 2015 and 18 but we actually.
Jeff Thomas: Work with teachers on doing this unit, but over the past several years we did work with a teacher who was implementing this in central Connecticut.
Jeff Thomas: Her name is kelsey and she teacher teaches at portland public schools, and you know she really helped us refine this unit really for middle school students and she particularly worked with sixth graders.
Jeff Thomas: So this unit has been modified so essential piece, obviously with a next generation science standards is to really do this, three dimensional learning.
Jeff Thomas: To really focus on, you know student practices cross cutting concepts on how students think in terms of particularly in this unit looking at patterns was was a major cross cutting concept.
Jeff Thomas: To get into kids how to think about the data that they are looking at and obviously the content, which is what students know just a you know quick introduction regarding.
Jeff Thomas: The the standards, so what we really focused on was the first three standards are these are the performance expectations.
Jeff Thomas: For spss to earth systems and i'm not going to read all of them to you, I mean you can kind of take a look at it, but all of them are really essentially focused on plate tectonics.
Jeff Thomas: The on the the three dimensions, with the ngs s standards below the performance expectations.
Jeff Thomas: We do have the science and engineering practices we did cover all of those in fact I mean like I tell even my my pre service teachers.
Jeff Thomas: you're always doing all the science practices, the ones that are listed here are the ones that we generally did focus on.
Jeff Thomas: more prominently throughout the unit and focused on three DC eyes, but only the second part of SS to a which is earth materials and then the Cross cutting concepts that we typically focused on was patterns scale proportion.
Jeff Thomas: In quantity in systems and system models, but again, in terms of patterns that was really probably the one.
Jeff Thomas: Cross cutting concept that we've we focused the the most time so really the goal for this unit is really for learners.
Jeff Thomas: At the middle school level to really develop a gap plus science explanation of dynamic geoscience processes, particularly as it relates to Connecticut.
Jeff Thomas: And how connecticut's position on earth as well it's topography has really changed and evolved over the past 500 million years.
Jeff Thomas: And we're going to go through each one of these particular investigations, there was a total of eight of them, we did use the five E learning cycle, not only in terms of.
Jeff Thomas: Long term planning, but, as well as short term planning at the at the lesson level so right here what i'm depicting is the you know the long term planning, where I have the five the stage on the left hand side and each investigation on on to the right.
Jeff Thomas: So one of the things we really started off with coming up with the unit level anchoring phenomena, particularly as it relates to play tectonics is quite a challenge.
Jeff Thomas: Like, how do you really make things with such large temporal scales and spatial scales accessible for for kids.
Jeff Thomas: And that that really is a challenge, so this particular phenomena is Connecticut specific but, again, can be modified to other context, so how we did it was.
Jeff Thomas: dinosaur state park is a popular Museum in Connecticut in dinosaur state park has one of the best fossil fossil footprint collections on the east coast and students often go there, no, no, of course, not every student in Connecticut goes here, but it is, it is fairly common.
Jeff Thomas: So that was we use that particular footprint, not necessarily to engage kids with plate tectonics but hey you know when dinosaurs lived.
Jeff Thomas: Here in Connecticut you know what was the kind of environment and they they live in, obviously we don't have pictures for that so that makes it a little bit less accessible.
Jeff Thomas: So what we had kids do was read two articles one about the fossil discovery, in particular, just to provide a little bit more context for them.
Jeff Thomas: And then supplemented that with another academic article which we that was published by actually some trinity professors.
Jeff Thomas: But we kind of modified that article, and that gave a description of the environment in which these dinosaurs live, so what what the anchoring phenomena was really focusing on was hey you know what.
Jeff Thomas: Connecticut had this tropical environment, and that was the puzzling aspect of this.
Jeff Thomas: So this picture, right here that I have in the upper left hand corner, which is from dinosaur state park.
Jeff Thomas: You know, shows you could clearly see some of the images have these tropical plants what they've read in these in the articles certainly indicated that, to again these articles are published on the.
Jeff Thomas: On the nsp a website so it does get into a lot more detail so students begin to hypothesize and develop an initial model of how Connecticut could have had a tropical environment.
Jeff Thomas: Honestly, most kids do usually say climate change as as Chris was bringing up earlier at the at the beginning of the session
Jeff Thomas: But you know, obviously, that that isn't exactly the idea that's that's behind here so during the first investigation students were really led led to because we had to kind of lead them to.
Jeff Thomas: The question, which is why was Connecticut tropical when dinosaurs really roamed the earth and again we have a little diorama right here from this actually this image is also from dinosaur state park.
Jeff Thomas: So after after they begin to hypothesize students actually develop an initial model which I didn't didn't actually show here.
Jeff Thomas: You know they're usually pretty crude in that is totally okay.
Jeff Thomas: Students, you know are really just exploring their ideas, based on what what they really know and try and figure out Okay, you know Connecticut is not really in a tropical environment now.
Jeff Thomas: That is clear, they experienced that it's it's certainly a temporary environment and, again, that is, that is really the more puzzling piece.
Jeff Thomas: Now the second investigation, you know after students engage in that initial phenomena, what we have them do is something that's been around for quite some time.
Jeff Thomas: Although we did modify it quite substantially to make it a little bit more inquiry based and a little bit more student driven it was a modified version of the usgs activity called beginners puzzle activity.
Jeff Thomas: We did make some modifications again to make it more inquiry based like we had kids actually plot.
Jeff Thomas: Where these fossils are located, we also developed a little bit better of a context with like hey you're here to help Alfred vegan or figure out all the data that he collected and try to figure out how this all kind of fits together.
Jeff Thomas: So we kind of played on that role where we're kids could begin to figure out, you know that these continents we're we're together, and this is one of their final products, right here.
Jeff Thomas: So the goal of the activity was really just to begin to introduce some evidence fossil evidence that the continents may have been one supercontinent.
Jeff Thomas: not necessary, I mean they may not know that it was necessarily millions of years ago, but they did have some fossils here that we're we're from the Jurassic period and that was that was clear.
Jeff Thomas: So this provides the first clue the first piece of evidence to explain that Connecticut may have been in tropical locations because.
Jeff Thomas: If if the continents were once together, then there is now a possibility that you know, we could have moved the content is could have moved.
Jeff Thomas: So, at the end, this is when we introduce what's called a unit summary table, this is not something that was originally our idea, this does come from ambitious science teaching.
Jeff Thomas: Which is you know they have lots of good resources there, of course, we made the summary table a little bit more.
Jeff Thomas: relevant to our particular context in this particular unit, so you know in this, I really do think the students summary tables are critical in students tracking.
Jeff Thomas: What they've learned within the unit to really make the storyline more cohesive.
Jeff Thomas: That way, they can identify all the different parts of the activities that they learn about in order to kind of come up with that final explanation and final model at the end of the unit.
Jeff Thomas: So you know, the first one is really looking at data patterns, you know what was the evidence that they that they learned about an investigation to.
Jeff Thomas: What factors or mechanisms might cause these patterns and then, how does it help us figure out the phenomenon which is.
Jeff Thomas: Why Connecticut was located maybe in a tropical environment at some point, at least when the dinosaurs roamed the earth.
Jeff Thomas: So they begin to I you know summarize their ideas for each one of these activities and i'm not going to they actually did this after each obviously not the first investigation, but the remaining ones they begin to do that.
Jeff Thomas: The second activity i'm sorry the third activity.
Jeff Thomas: Which is also something that's been out there for quite some time that some of you may have already used is discovering plate boundaries again, this was something that was modified.
Jeff Thomas: substantially from the original version and kids really struggled one strategy that we typically used was only having kids do one or two actually individual place because they were looking at.
Jeff Thomas: Earthquake data volcanic data to topographic data in ocean floor data, the age of the ocean floor and they they looked at these patterns of this data to actually come up with the classification scheme.
Jeff Thomas: On one plate boundaries, we did have to introduce a couple terms right the very beginning plate boundaries.
Jeff Thomas: And what plates really were in order for them to access and complete this particular activity, it took like five or six days to actually have them do this just by, by the way, this is a fairly long.
Jeff Thomas: unit, even though there's only eight investigations so in the next investigation, so the first two were really more data heavy, particularly the.
Jeff Thomas: You know investigation three with investigation for what we want to do is relate what they did with a plate boundary map.
Jeff Thomas: and have have them begin to do a little bit of reading which we did encourage a lot of reading strategies within this unit.
Jeff Thomas: would like, for example, paragraph shrinking was one of the strategies, where they read usgs.
Jeff Thomas: website and figure out like okay here's some plate boundaries just this image is from that usgs website where they they learn about the different types of plate boundaries, they relate that to what they did in the previous investigation.
Jeff Thomas: But this doesn't really get into the dynamics of it, yet, but again they include this in their summary table of how Connecticut could have been in a tropical environment.
Jeff Thomas: Another piece of evidence, something more quantitative so they read something we want to provide them with another inquiry based activity, so what we use was GEO map APP.
Jeff Thomas: Which is a free application that's out there is mostly used for scientists, but it can certainly be adapted for classroom use.
Jeff Thomas: And what we did was look at the MID Atlantic Ridge, and we did some calculations on spreading rates.
Jeff Thomas: In this right here is the final product so basically they took some places along the MID Atlantic Ridge measure the age figured out the distance and calculate the spreading rate per year.
Jeff Thomas: It was it was highly focused in it, it did require a lot of substantial scaffolding, because you know what we're really doing is, this is a pretty sophisticated tool so students really did need a lot of guidance here on.
Jeff Thomas: Once they figured out like hey you know what now we actually have some quantitative evidence that the the Earth is actually moving.
Jeff Thomas: At a slow rate, but that gets into scale proportion and quantity.
Jeff Thomas: So students still really don't know a possible mechanism so again we go back to the usgs website they actually read.
Jeff Thomas: Again we use some reading strategies to kind of help kids better understand this right here this example is from the usgs website.
Jeff Thomas: which I have the links, right here from the dynamic planet and to supplement that we also had kids, and this was something that.
Jeff Thomas: kelsey actually introduced which really, really worked well was having kids really do these little convection current labs.
Jeff Thomas: which were fairly simple they weren't they weren't challenging at all, but provided at least a hands on visual of how convection currents really work and how that might relate to plates actually moving and finally.
Jeff Thomas: With the lap the second to the last investigation investigation seven how did Connecticut actually move what we we did was we began to have kids actually develop.
Jeff Thomas: A final model, and this is an example of one right here of what is happening that's based on.
Jeff Thomas: All the summary table data that they've been collecting, but this this particular activity adds a little bit more, because what they go what they use and some of you may have seen this before.
Jeff Thomas: Is that dinosaur database, which is like depict it right here below and what we have kids do is actually measure the distance right here and they begin to look at how.
Jeff Thomas: In this particular simulation which I think is great, it provides a really great visual for kids about how North America and South America has split off from Africa and and.
Jeff Thomas: The rest of Europe over time and they do these kind of calculations again this does require some substantial scaffolding, here again, which is all in the student handouts that are accessible online.
Jeff Thomas: And then eventually we provide them with a gotta have a checklist, by the way, this is all done in group work.
Jeff Thomas: Because it's relatively challenging we actually constructed a model, together with them on how the plates actually collided.
Jeff Thomas: When PNG actually formed and then that provided some sort of structure for them to create a different model where PNG actually broke up and we included a got what we call a gotta have a checklist of criteria, the biggest thing was, including a mechanism.
Jeff Thomas: To to cause the the resting to occur, so they did that groups, and then the final assessment is individually, they actually had to write a car explanation.
Jeff Thomas: Where we again we have another guy to have a checklist of things that need to be included in their explanation, and this is where they they really use their summary table that I introduced a little bit earlier so like right here is just like a brief sample of an evidence based explanation.
Jeff Thomas: You know it, you know our history can be summed up in two words.
Jeff Thomas: crunching crack at one time connect it was somewhere between 503,000 miles across but today connect is only about 100 miles across this is due to the formation of a giant supercontinent called pangea.
Jeff Thomas: Prior the formation of pangea the Atlantic Ocean did not exist instead another body of water, called the I often associate existed between Liam masses and proto North American apollonian.
Jeff Thomas: From 450 54 and 50 to 250 million years ago during the pels okay are several plates collided forming a giant super call and call page and then they that continues with the explanation.
Jeff Thomas: A little bit later, so they you know students obviously there's a there's a wide variety of them, but basically the unit of variety of science explanations and i'm actually.
Jeff Thomas: At the end of my presentation here, so this unit is pretty time consuming obviously it's very complex, especially for middle schoolers.
Jeff Thomas: It takes about four weeks to complete all eight activities.
Jeff Thomas: You know students really felt the plate tectonic unit was difficult yet engaging and you know I actually physically saw these students, the sixth graders engaging in this unit quite often and.
Jeff Thomas: You know I don't have any necessarily evidence, other than me being present in the classroom as kelsey was teaching.
Jeff Thomas: But all these all these activities can be even modified so the ones that we have currently published can be model modified, especially for struggling learners and again it's all in the article in all the handouts, are there, so I think that is it so thank you for your time.
Jeff Thomas: All right, so um I think.
Jeff Thomas: Now is we we actually have till 10 o'clock for which is only about eight minutes.
Jeff Thomas: To to really get into any questions that any of us might have.
Jeff Thomas: So I want first of all I want to thank everybody for all the presenters I really appreciate, I really enjoyed everybody's talks today.
Jeff Thomas: i'm.
Jeff Thomas: Margaret I actually did have one question, I still really would love to follow up with with your presentation um.
Jeff Thomas: You know I I really found a very interesting, especially because one of my colleagues, I work with is in special education and we were just actually presented at the special ED conference that just happened last week.
Jeff Thomas: You know, and you know really getting kids to think about these complex visuals I know as a challenge, and you know.
Jeff Thomas: Have you investigated, or like even like anecdotally like how kids are really thinking about these visuals like what they really struggle with, and you know to what extent do you think the language itself.
Jeff Thomas: plays a role at some roadblocks for kids really get it, I mean you know, obviously, those test questions are very, very low.
Jeff Thomas: And I was kind of curious on your thoughts on those two kind of components.
Margaret L.: Absolutely, the language is a barrier it's a very complicated language we spend a tremendous amount of time in class.
Margaret L.: going over vocabulary repeating it over and over again and reading skills.
Margaret L.: You know, it is especially classroom, but I still have English English language learners in the classroom and I have students who, because of disabilities are struggling with reading and being able.
Margaret L.: for whatever reason, to really comprehend what is going on.
Margaret L.: And, and so you know it is it's overwhelming I mean not only do we have you know reading issues there's you know the visual processing issues and other considerations, based on the disability.
Margaret L.: In the literature, I have not seen any literature, where there's a reporting on what students are thinking when they are looking at these.
Margaret L.: graphs and diagrams I do check in with my students and I asked them for their feedback and their opinions and stuff and like that and.
Margaret L.: You know, again they're very young, and you know they don't know what they don't know, and so you know someone I asked them usually the responses are it's very difficult it's hard it's confusing I can't find things and so it's.
Margaret L.: comments of that nature, I do ask them if they find our interventions helpful, you know, so if you know I you know we would color in.
Margaret L.: The the chart and initially they don't understand exactly what i'm doing or what the intent is But then when we start to go over.
Margaret L.: exercises in class or practice for the end of the year exams they start to see oh now I see why.
Margaret L.: You know, we did this, and yes, actually it is helpful it helps me break it down it helps me isolate things that helps me think what through the steps of what I need to do, and so that's some of the feedback that i'm getting.
Margaret L.: Once they've had a chance to actually use the the implementations that we've given them.
Margaret L.: In the classroom I will you know, like I said I will have them physically color in their own reference tables and.
Margaret L.: To try to prompt them to use them because oftentimes they're lost, you know I say these you can help us with your in classroom exams and quizzes and tests, you can use them as cheat sheets.
Margaret L.: And you know remind them of course that when they take their regions exam at the end of the year, they have to do have to have a brand new regions booklet.
Margaret L.: But you know it does prompt them to study those tables a little more not take them for granted, you know spend some time actually studying them and.
Margaret L.: And then, in terms of the language we have implemented annotation, so we will put reminders you know when the students are copying down some notes for some of the.
Margaret L.: high water higher order vocabulary So what does composition actually mean.
Margaret L.: What does fine grained actually refer to versus coarse grained what is, you know where does the word fell sick come from.
Margaret L.: So you know, so we do these things with them in class and then prompt them throughout the year to just consider it consider studying the reference tables as another set of notes, so that they're more familiar with them at the end of it.
So.
that's what we've been doing.
Jeff Thomas: Thank you, thank you very much um I just got a message from.
Jeff Thomas: That we only have like I think I don't know if it's going to cut off at 10 o'clock exactly, but we have like two minutes left.
Jeff Thomas: I just want to say one last thing where i've seen those tables forever i've been using them, I mean I became a teacher in 1997.
Jeff Thomas: I use those tables it's funny they have not changed, I still use them, though, even in my undergraduate class I teach or science to to my pre service teachers so that's that's still an interesting chart that that's still around after decades and it hasn't changed one bit.
Margaret L.: i've used.
Margaret L.: college classes as well, and you know even the students undergraduate students at pace will look at me and say, this is a very complicated chart.
Margaret L.: And I said I understand that I said also keep in mind if you've been to school in New York state you've seen this, since you were 14 years old.
Margaret L.: Possibly so it's been around for a long time.
Jeff Thomas: Right, thank you.
Christopher Roemmele: um I was wondering if um if you so you teach like a science methods classes like I do at westchester and you're teaching that the similar class where you're.
Margaret L.: At pace university I teach i'm not teaching teacher preparation i'm teaching science classes.
Christopher Roemmele: Okay well.
Margaret L.: teaching of a variety of earth science classes to undergraduate majors whether that's Planet Earth historical geology meteorology on me so i'm not in the science department.
Christopher Roemmele: Okay ation department and Jeff you're teaching but you're teaching science methods.
Jeff Thomas: Yes, I do teach science methods that's my primary.
Christopher Roemmele: response to the client and it seems like.
Christopher Roemmele: I hope we don't get cut off, but if we to we can figure out how to continue, but in teaching science methods, it seems like.
Christopher Roemmele: Either earlier middle grades, it seems like there's like a resistance to.
Christopher Roemmele: With the whole idea of phenomena based and three dimensions and cross cutting concepts and backward design and it's violent I feel like there's a they they.
Christopher Roemmele: Can you can you give me a package and just tell me, this is what you have to give to the kids rather than actually understanding Well, this is why we do this i'm going to do you see.
Christopher Roemmele: Some similar attitudes from your pre service teachers with that.
Are.
Jeff Thomas: Like resistance to like phenomena based.
Christopher Roemmele: Learning for that certainly existence but almost like.
Christopher Roemmele: Kim can we make this easier for standard like I don't think I think teachings I don't think teaching period is easy, but it's.
Christopher Roemmele: Usually, in terms of Trent figuring out how we teach science, rather than it being here's an activity do this here's an activity, this is an activity, you know find an activity off, of whatever and then do it, but without the whole idea of.
Christopher Roemmele: The design process of of using.
Christopher Roemmele: spss and and the strategies there.
Christopher Roemmele: In our in our teaching and our lesson and unit designs and if you see.
Christopher Roemmele: Either or not I don't want to say it's a resistance, but confusion or.
Christopher Roemmele: i'm not sure what it is, if you're seeing similar attitudes from pre service teachers.
Jeff Thomas: Well, I definitely don't think they completely understand that there should be like a storyline.
Jeff Thomas: In yeah no attached like you're not just doing some random.
Jeff Thomas: You know, set of activities that you know each one needs to build on each other and provide a piece of the puzzle with that phenomena so honestly I spend a significant amount of time trying to do that, but even.
Jeff Thomas: Especially going over like the phenomena how important that is right, how it needs to trace all the way through, so it doesn't have to always be related to that time.
Christopher Roemmele: Great right.
Jeff Thomas: You know I they certainly struggle through it.
Jeff Thomas: And marcia teaches elementary in you know and i'm worried, the secondary and I think marcia has similar issues with with the elementary folks to.
Really.
bednarskim: yeah it's really hard for them to see from the phenomena entity and how the it how everything connects.
Christopher Roemmele: yeah I just was wondering if people are teaching methods classes are seeing.
Christopher Roemmele: That.
Christopher Roemmele: That i'm not sure what it is it's just.
Christopher Roemmele: I don't want to.
Josh: Be.
Josh: with actual like in service teachers, but.
Josh: i've been doing this for a long time way predating the.
Josh: CSS and so right actual resistance, I would describe it as actual resistance, but I don't know how much of its just inertia.
Christopher Roemmele: yeah I can imagine there's that I mean I do see teachers, especially some who are you know who are the mentor teachers of you know, our student teachers who are in science placement.
Christopher Roemmele: And I see some really great things being done, but I, but I do know that you know, there is a.
Christopher Roemmele: I mean when ngs s was just kind of becoming a thing, as I was, like leaving K 12 in New Jersey, I mean I you know I remember hearing like this will never happen i'm not changing a thing, like, I wonder if they still have that attitude.
Christopher Roemmele: And they're still you know everything is.
Christopher Roemmele: You know kind of an old style.
Christopher Roemmele: or not even sure that's that's a nice thing because I mean I had some great science teachers, when I was in high school and middle school in New Jersey so i'm not sure yeah yeah but you know if resistance and inertia can be combined with I don't know if there's a term for that.
Margaret L.: Part of it, if I may, you know, is the current group of pre service, teachers and even teachers who've been teaching for a long time part of is just familiarity I mean you know when you were in school ngs s wasn't an existence common core was it.
Christopher Roemmele: exists right.
Margaret L.: would be introduced to concepts and had what I would call like verification labs the.
Margaret L.: laboratory verification of what the teacher was explaining in the classroom and so, if this is all that you've seen, and this is what you know of science, then it becomes difficult to perceive another way of doing it.
Christopher Roemmele: And I.
Margaret L.: Think, as we educate our students in elementary and middle school and high school to actually think of science.
Margaret L.: In this new way, then when they are the up and coming teachers for our future generations, I think we might see less resistance, because they've seen this in play they've seen this in practice.
Christopher Roemmele: And so they.
Margaret L.: Around and mimic what they've seen.
Margaret L.: You know where's those of us who have been in service longer we come from a different way in a different method of teaching science and so it's it's a different way of looking at it for us.
bednarskim: yeah and one of the problems I have elementary is if they did not have favorable science experiences coming through school and they're placed with cooperating teachers who are not.
bednarskim: excited about teaching science it's a particularly difficult to have those pre service teachers get interested in science as well.
bednarskim: As they don't have examples of what good science might look like in the classroom and some don't have any experience at all when they student teacher do their field work teaching science at that level either and it's a problem.
Christopher Roemmele: yeah our science methods classes for the out for the early grades do not have a does not have a field placement, even for like three hours, it would be nice if it did, but I think that would be a neat.
Christopher Roemmele: To borrow things a tectonic shift and.
Christopher Roemmele: What was interesting to learn after I got the West Chester was that, even for early grades, there is not even a math placement.
Christopher Roemmele: During their experience as a pre service early grades.
Christopher Roemmele: teacher candidates, they don't get a math even five hours of math teaching placement for their math methods classes and I was just like.
bednarskim: I start just in a in an elementary classroom with a cooperating teacher and they get exposed to whatever that cooperating teacher knows.
Christopher Roemmele: yeah.
bednarskim: I mean there's their skills.
Christopher Roemmele: there's fields for different courses, but it's just besides in before they get the student teaching, but they never get.
Christopher Roemmele: they'll never see a science they don't and in any of their earlier courses, because the science methods happens late and they're there.
Christopher Roemmele: And i'm almost like can I get moved to like a early version, you know, like a first or second year course rather than a fourth year course, and you know cut some things off the past.
Christopher Roemmele: not sure what that would take again I don't know i'm not 10 years yet so I have to kind of like.
bednarskim: I get your.
Christopher Roemmele: battles, I can think I can be you know fight.
Christopher Roemmele: So, but I was alarmed that they don't set in their math methods classes, they don't have a person on a field placement, even for five hours.
Christopher Roemmele: wow that's yeah.
Jeff Thomas: um I just didn't want to say, like Lindsay mentioned about lack of NGOs s exemplars and one of the things that I do.
Jeff Thomas: it's actually not my methods course it's like a pre methods course is we actually do a ngs s unit.
Jeff Thomas: And you know where they actually do a unit, as if they were students and I do find that that helps and actually that grant that I was talking that was related to this particular unit, right here.
Jeff Thomas: over three years, those teachers were exposed to six different units and by the end of the unit i'm sorry, by the end of the three years they I feel like they really developed a pretty solid on adding of NGOs storylines.
Jeff Thomas: So I do think that helps but yet there's still resistance to you know changing.
Jeff Thomas: You know I think the big thing is just really making a coherent, in that it, you know the have some sense, making that's embedded within it within the units to give them that experience.
Jeff Thomas: That they may not have and for elementary Chris and I actually teaching a science course for elementary teachers and both of us really focus on these practices.
Jeff Thomas: You know.
Using phenomena.
Jeff Thomas: Things like that, so you know, by the time they get to marcia and her methods course that they've had at least something you know.
bednarskim: yeah they've been introduced and exposed to it, so they have no excuse to say I don't know what you're talking about.
Christopher Roemmele: The science content classes, that you teach to the early your elementary majors um you you kind of focus on an n G SS centered approach okay.
Jeff Thomas: Okay, but we're the only with only one course that does that.
Christopher Roemmele: Right and how many how many science classes are they required to take.
Christopher Roemmele: like an elementary or middle middle grades to okay and they're both up by you and.
Christopher Roemmele: Chris Chris okay.
Jeff Thomas: Well, we teach one of the two.
Jeff Thomas: Okay, like we do like an earth and physical science and the other one is a as a bio focused and.
Jeff Thomas: i'm not only can I don't I don't know about what exactly happens in it, other course.
Jeff Thomas: Like methods wise like how.
Christopher Roemmele: I think they're going to throw us out of here.
bednarskim: yeah I might reach out to you in an email and Chris.
Christopher Roemmele: Thank you so much for sharing and appreciate your you're having a session, I really do think it's really, really critical, so thank you.
Jeff Thomas: Thank you, everybody and have a great rest of your time.
Christopher Roemmele: bye bye.