Layers of the Earth Cake

Year 9 has just started their Third Rock From the Sun unit, which begins inside the Earth as students learn about the layers beneath their feet. 

I know that this topic is both popular and successful because the year-group it was first taught to in Year 9 is now in Year 11, and when I surveyed my Year 11's about which topics they remembered best and felt most confident in, "volcanoes" and "layers of Earth" came up again and again. Because of that my Year 11's will be doing the Surface Features of NZ internal assessment later this year, to play to those strengths. 

Anyway, back to the current Year 9's. I thought a good way to welcome them in to science this year and introduce the idea of modelling in science would be with a cake!

If anyone wants the recipe for sponge layers then here it is:

Pre-heat oven to 175 degrees C.

Beat 7 small eggs (or 6 large ones) on high for 1 minute. 

Slowly add in 1 cup of sugar and beat on high for 8 minutes.

Measure and mix 1 cup of flour with 1/4 teaspoon baking powder.

Sieve and fold in the flour mixture to the eggs 1/3 at a time, making sure to get the flour off the bottom of the bowl (where it likes to sink to).

Pour half the mixture into a baking-paper-lined cake tin.

Add some food colouring to the rest of the mixture and then pour that into another cake tin.

Bake for 25 minutes.

Make sure students can name the layers of the Earth before they get to take a piece on the way out the door!

Class Korowai on Mr Bones

Every year I get my students to decorate two feathers for their class korowai - one with images or words that represent who they are, and one with a specific goal for their time in science. 

This year I decided to merge all the feathers from my four classes to make one large korowai rather than four smaller one, and actually have it worn as a cloak by Mr Bones rather than displayed flat on the classroom walls. 

Here is the finished product:

New Tool - EdPuzzle!

Hello! I'm back after my year-long hiatus, refreshed, engaged, calm and ready to roll.

I've just been checking through the first Year 9 unit called "Third Rock From the Sun" and found that one of my favourite tools (Zaption) doesn't exist any more.

A quick Google search later and I've discovered a replacement with even more features and useful tools.

Meet EdPuzzle :) It's a tool to help you to help student engage with information on videos by including questions, notes or voice-overs throughout.

First you import any video from youtube.

You can trim the clip down.

You can set due dates.

You can add questions throughout the video, as well as voice-overs and notes.

You can block and prevent 'skipping' through the video or skipping questions.

When presented with a question, students can submit their answers or choose to 'rewatch' the segment it relates to.

You can share it to your class when you're done, or embed it with an iframe.

You can see how many/which students have engaged with your activity and what they've scored (I am guessing the score only applies to multi-choice questions, though you can read their answers on open-ended ones).

You can see how individual questions were answered. 

And if you are interested in seeing the one that I made as a model, you can click here to engage with it (and maybe learn a few things about the Layers of the Earth as well!)

Professional Learning Update

I may be on holiday but I've still been Twittering and Tweeting and Twerking - wait, ok I'm lying, not actually the last one! 

Hop on over to my professional learning blog for a summary of some research I engaged in before teaching at a boys school in England for 10 weeks!

http://misswellsplb.blogspot.co.uk/

Goodbye for a Year (or Two)

Kia ora visitors! 

This is just a short notice to let you know that I've been granted a year's (or twos) leave to go and travel the world! 

How exciting for me :) 

There won't be many blog posts from me during my time off.

To keep yourselves entertained during that time you can check out my teaching from 2016 at https://sites.google.com/a/tamaki.ac.nz/wellsonair/

or if you'd rather be kept up to date with current Class OnAir teachers then visit https://sites.google.com/a/manaiakalani.org/manaiakalani---google-class-onair/ where I'm sure the glorious and golden Matt Goodwin will continue dazzling his students and watchers from around the globe for the second year in a row.

In the meantime, I have two New Zealand-based digital Science Curriculum projects up my sleeve that will hopefully be ready to roll by the time I return in 201*cough*9.

See you all then!

Respiration Rap

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!! 

+Caroline Akau'ola-Laula +Jacob Fifita +Maria Mahoni +Kayde Inia 

Instead, I'll just repost the Respiration Rap to enjoy :) 

Filming Year 13 Biology

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: