Today our respiration rap from 2015's Year 12 Biology class clocked over 2,000 views on youtube!
It was also retweeted by Dr Rich Allen, a teacher-trainer whose 2-day course was the most inspiring PD I have ever been to.
His use of music and movement in teaching and learning is something that really resonated with me, as well as 'riding the wave' of engagement by 'changing state' near the peak of engagement.
I'm so stoked that he thought what the Bio kids did was a good example of learning through movement and music :)
Unfortunately this year I haven't had time to record and film another full music video in time for the Manaiakalani Film Festival, despite having 3 songs already written and ready to go about photosynthesis, genetic variation and hotspot volcanoes!
Time seems short this year :( Hopefully we'll get on to filming one of the songs in Term 4 - the challenge is out to the 2016 Year 12 Biology class!!
This year I've been involved in the Manaiakalani Google Class OnAir project with my year 13 biology class - it's taken up most of my free 'blogging' time which is why this blog has been so quiet this year!
I've just published lesson 12, which is the final lesson in a series of four consecutive lessons.
I thought it would be interesting to film, publish and reflect on a full week's teaching and learning.
The aim of this was both for me to reflect on my assumptions as a teacher and my view on the pedagogy of building understanding during one specific context (timing in plants and animals), as well as provide an honest view on how I incorporate technology into my average, daily teaching to anyone who chooses to view my Class OnAir project!
My latest reflection was on how, overall, I'm quite happy with the progression of learning I laid out about the content of timing, the multimodal and rewindable learning opportunities offered and how many times we returned to information over the week, hopefully building both knowledge and confidence from new vocabulary up to more complex ideas such as the mechanism of photoperiodism.
However, on reflecting on the last lesson I have noticed that I did not follow a similar scaffolding procedure to introduce answering exam questions, and instead expected students (by the end of the week, by the end of Term 3) to be able to straight away apply their new understandings to an exam question. This proved to be quite a jump in skills.
Next Term when we return to revise for the Plant and Animal Responses exam I will work to support students in answering exam questions, and I reflect on how to do this at the end of my Lesson 12 post, which can be found under the green butterfly at this link here.
Something else I tried for the first time OnAir was to include a full video of my explanation of the concept. I did this so students could return to it and help them study by watching it again at their own pace. You can watch it below:
Today Year 12 learned about pedigree charts. To start with they each picked a cat and colored in the nose either pink or brown, and gave their cats a name. As they finished I put them up in a pedigree chart, to show the relationships between each of their cats.
I thought this might be a good way to introduce pedigree charts. We did a 'mini whiteboard quiz' where I asked who the parents of Ziggy were, who the two grandparents of Nala and Mufasa were, etc.
On the side of the board I also drew the squares and circles used in pedigree charts to represent male and females. Then I colored in the symbols depending on whether the cats had a pink or red nose.
The questions in the whiteboard quiz became harder; which trait is most likely recessive? (Brown, because Churry and King have pink noses but their offspring Jerry has a brown nose. Meanwhile, Lilo and Junior both have brown noses, and only produced brown-nosed Ziggy and Simba). What are the genotypes of Brown and Cat? Etc.
Once we started to try and work out genotypes based off relationships and offspring/parents, students became a little more confused. We moved on to some activities on my genetics website and I moved around, trying to help.
I thought I would try to show my thought process while working out genotypes based on phenotypes in pedigree charts:
IF pink noses were recessive, Churry and King would both be homozygous recessive; nn. How, then, could they have produced brown-nosed Jerry, when neither of them has a dominant allele to pass on? They couldn't!
Therefore, brown noses must be recessive.
That means Jerry must be nn, because Jerry has a brown nose.
Where did Jerry get his two recessive nn alleles from? Both of his parents must carry at least one recessive allele. They must be ?n,
What is their other allele?
Jerry's parents Churry and King both have pink noses, the dominant colour. They must have at least one dominant allele, to have pink noses. That means their other allele must be N.
Therefore both Churry and King are heterozygous; Nn. Both parents are showing the dominant phenotype, but must also carry a recessive allele each to produce children with both pink and brown noses:
To produce both phenotypes, both parents must be heterozygous. If they were both NN, then 100% of their children would also have the dominant trait of pink noses.
As you can see, Churry and King produced offspring with both pink and brown noses. The offspring with pink noses (Bestfriend Stealer and Tom) could be NN or Nn - we will have to see what their genotypes are based on their own offspring!
Hopefully this blog post helped people learn how pedigree charts can reveal genotypes, as well as relationships between individuals. Maybe you can even work out Bestfriend Stealer's genotype, based off her offspring Nala and Mufasa's phenotypes!
Last week I played bingo with Year 11, for the first 20 elements of the periodic table. I sort of found bingo sheets online - the only one that included the first 20 elements was in the format of lines rather than the familiar table format, and the kids did query me; "don't you know what bingo is Miss?!"
By changing up some of the clues we were able to revise electron configuration, ion formation, and the periodic table:
Magnesium
Mg
2,8,2
The electron configuration for this element's’ ion is 2,8 and it has LOST 2 electrons
Hydrogen
1
Water molecules have two of these in them.
Lithium
2,1
The electron configuration for this element's’ ion is 2 and it has LOST 1 electrons
Calcium
2,8,8,2
The electron configuration for this element's’ ion is 2,8,8 and it has LOST 2 electrons
Phosphorus
P
2,8,5
The electron configuration for this element's’ ion is 2,8,8 and it has GAINED 3 electrons
Nitrogen
N
2,5
This atom has 7 protons
Argon
2,8,8
Has three full electron shells
Chlorine
Cl
2,8,7
This atom has 3 electrons shells, and gains 1 electron to become a negative ion.
Oxygen
2,6
Water molecules have one of these in them.
Helium
2
The first noble gas in group 18.
Berylium
2,2
Has four electrons
Fluorine
2,7
This atom has 9 protons.
Carbon
2,4
This atom makes up diamonds.
Boron
2,3
This atom has 2 electron shells, but loses 3 electrons to become a 3 plus ion.
Neon
Ne
2,8
Has two full electron shells
Sodium
Na
2,8,1
Has eleven electrons
Aluminium
2,8,3
The element now used to make tin cans.
Silicon
2,8,4
The element often used in breast implants.
Sulfur
2,8,6
This element is found lots in Rotorua, it is often yellow, it stinks like rotten eggs and it’s found around volcanoes and volcanic vents.
Potassium
K
2,8,8,1
This element has 4 electron shells but is not Calcium
They ended up enjoying it anyway, and it was so popular that I've decided to try this tactic again to help students become familiar with names of different ions, as they will be given an un-named Table of Ions in their NCEA Acids and Bases exam at the end of the year. Unfortunately I couldn't find a good game of Bingo online (again), so this time I painstakingly made 20 bingo cards and to save someone else the trouble in the future I thought I would share them here:
Today Year 13 learned about taxes, and practiced answering NCEA questions about imaginary, made up species by using just the cues in the question that they recognized.
To finish the lesson they each made an imaginary critter and made a question about it, to test their classmates understanding of chemo-, gravi-, hydro-, thigmo-, thermo-, photo- taxis.
Here is my critter:
Here is my question:
The colourfloo is an insect with six legs and two wings that flies around and lands on people to paint their nails while they are sleeping. After it paints their nails a fabulous pink colour, it also takes a bite out of the human's finger using it's sharp teeth, then quickly flies away.
What is the environmental stimulus it is responding to?
What is the orientation response it displays?
What is the adaptive advantage for the colourfloo?
Year 11 is starting their second assessment on Surface Features of New Zealand.
To gain the credits in this assessment students need to produce a report, create a Prezi or presentation, or make a tourism video or brochure about Auckland's volcanoes.
They need to explain processes happening UNDER the ground that cause Auckland volcanoes, as well as what occurs ON TOP of the ground during an eruption, and some process that happen over many years AFTER to form the familiar peaks or lakes around Auckland.
Why is there a Beyonce song at the start of this post?
I love learning through music!
One of my students was listening to Beyonce instead of me the other day (she IS fabulous, but can she teach about volcanoes? hmmm...)
Turns out that she can, if we use her song but change some lyrics. That same student and her friend will hopefully record this song for their class in coming days, to help them learn about the hotspot under Auckland:
[Girls]
These four layers deep have changed the Earth’s surface
The Earth’s surface,
It’s changing still.
The heat it starts deep first from the outer core,
Heats mantle up,
Mantle just above,
Starts heating up.
Where else can it go?
Where else can it go?
Convecting up,
To the crust.
Crust then starts to melt,
Magma building up,
Hot magma
Hot magma
Hotspot, hotspot, hotspot, hotspot,
Hotspot, hotspot, hotspot
No hotspots at the plate boundaries,
Just in the middle at Auckland,
It’s a hotspot, hotspot, hotspot, hotspot,
Hotspot, hotspot, hotspot,
A hundred kilometers below,
The melted rock is building up.
If the pressure builds we lose it all
[Boys]
If I feel the earth shake I won’t be standing still,
Today is my first proper lesson with my Year 13 Bio class, and this year we've decided to set up blogs for the learning that happens during class time.
I've given students some time to personalize their blogs, and then as a way to see what they remember from Year 11 write their first post.
I am aware that blogging in the senior school will be a tricky path to navigate, balancing learning, creating and sharing towards internals and externals with the need for students to work individually while completing assessments and demonstrating their individual understanding.
However, we are a collaborative and digital school, and giving Year 13's an opportunity to return to their Primary and Intermediate Manaiakalani roots where they share their understanding as it emerges and as they complete tasks to build knowledge will hopefully prove beneficial for them :)
I also took the opportunity to remind them about reliability of sources of information on the web, and perhaps to warn any potential readers that their post is purely what they can remember from 2 years ago, and may not be completely correct!
