comp day

my kids finished a test Thursday and were going to be introduced to a new chapter on Friday. I started with one class by having them do a bit of “guided reading” from the book to give them some knowledge about upcoming discussions in class on states of matter and phase changes. The kids for the most part did o.k. they plodded along and answered questions from the book.

with my second period class I showed them a video from IS that was 18 minutes long. during that time a chemistry professor was interviewed. during his interview he did probably a dozen simple (if you have access to the chemicals and equipment (I don’t)) experiments explaining and demonstrating phase changes. We had a difficult time completing the video in a 50+ minute class because of the discussions that went on due to the video.

c-scope called for running a fan and having the kids try and catch the air, showing a piece of ice melt, and leaving a container of water open overnight, and making a tri-fold about plasma.

all of my classes except for first period went the IS route.

I started my side study this week. I am posting teks objectives for classes after my conference period. This gives me the break to post them on the board and at the end of the day I erase so that my morning classes aren’t “contaminated.”

I think I have wrapped my mind about what I wish to study. As you may, or may not know, middle school science adopted new textbooks in 2002. Paris chose the Prentice Hall Science Explorer series. Prior to that Paris was running with a program from the University of Alabama called Integrated Science. Currently we are told that the next book adoption will be around 2010.

Our regional service center is pushing their curriculum developer (C-Scope) on us. Curiously enough, we have been given choices previously about what vendor we would use for our curriculum requirements.

All of this being said, we have taught basically the same thing over the last ten years. We have followed pretty close to the national science standards that Bill Clinton had a hand in having written. Since then Texas followed suit with their TEKS.

Since the three are simply different packages/products to present the same information I thought I would compare the three to each other as I go through the year. I’ll try to give my professional opinion on the quality, effectiveness, and ease of teaching similar topics from the three different sources. Of course my ratings and thoughts of each of these will be very subjective. But, someone at some point has or is currently saying that their program is superior to others.

I feel that since I am certified by the state of Texas to teach this course and our fair district has deemed me highly qualified to teach the course, who better to evaluate them?

I feel confident that I will be able to compare IS (Integrated Science) to Science Explorer on most any TEK/topic that I choose. I do NOT have that same confidence with having access to C-Scope’s curriculum through the year based on their past performance. That being said, I reserve the right to drop Region 8’s product in my comparison throughout the year if their product is not kept up to date and made available to me.

As I prepare to begin the year I have thought about a number of different ways to jump though the necessary hoops to take May 23 off. I think that I will probably do some sort of parallel study with Kirk. Some ideas might include: a lesson on recoding data and then illustrating data using technologically advanced tools vs. completing the same lesson using pencil and paper, we are being pushed to use the curriculum developer (c-scope) to cover teks. I might compare some of the lessons in the c-scope with lessons that I have previously taught and think about how the kids reacted/responded/performed, I also thought about the intra-personal dynamics that a student can bring to one specific class period. We typically have a myriad of schedule changes and one class that was quite pleasant before can become somewhat of a challenge after changes are made. I could also perhaps record pacing changes that I have to make with my morning and afternoon classes and with the bloated class periods.

As perhaps a side study (extra work for me?); administrators seem to really like to walk into a room and see a teks objective/number posted somewhere. I could study the performance of a class with said objectives/numbers posted and performance without that posted. Of course, if I see that the lack of the numbers and letters are hindering student performance I would immediately end this portion of my study. Anyone want to join in on this part and produce some scientifically researched based data?

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