Pre- vs. Post- test scores....

I have spent the last two weeks teaching relatively high-level cellular energetics (enzymes, cell respiration and photosynthesis) for 1.5 hours (M-Th) followed by a 1.5 hour lab on the same subjects to a group of Birmingham city and Jefferson county students. In my lessons I incorporated a variety of new methods that I picked up in my EESL 650 class - teaching math/science to English learners. I had my students keep interactive notebooks which they filled with notes, graphical organizers, and 3.8 paragraph answers to practice short essays and writing in science. Vocabulary exercises such as repeating back scientific terms as a group so that students would not be 'afraid' of stumbling over the pronunciation of words were included to help alleviate anxiety when speaking in public. Lots of new methods for both myself and my students!

So... the moment of truth arrives with the results of the post-test (a 15 item test encompassing the material we had been studying) - 50% of the class gets a 50% or less (range: 2-7) and 50% gets > 50% (range: 8-14). I was feeling pretty grim but then I had not been privy to the pre-test scores, hmmmm... So I talk with the Impact Alabama staff and find out that the highest pre-test score was a 6 and most were in the 0-2 range. So now I am feeling a bit better as I did not 'teach to the test' but rather emphasized general concepts. All-in-all feeling that I and my college-age mentors had a positive impact on these students. Now for the upcoming week where they will design and carry out their own experiments and present them in a mini-poster format (http://www.nabt.org/blog/2010/05/04/mini-posters-authentic-peer-review-in-the-classroom/). Results later!

Summer teaching and EESL 650

Wednesday morning... Finishing my unit on photosynthesis with my Impact Alabama students at UAB. These  are students from Birmingham city and Jefferson county schools are are going to be taking AP biology next year. My purpose? Give them a head start on some of the more difficult subjects and expose them to student-conducted research. Over the last two weeks we have covered cellular energetics - enzymes, cell respiration and photosynthesis and have conducted four labs each lasting 2+ hours. Next week the students will be working in groups to manipulate one of the labs that they have done in order to ask a new question.

I am happy to report that my EESL 650 class that I am currently enrolled in (teaching math/science to English learners) has drastically changed my teaching methodology compared to last summer. My students are keeping interactive notebooks and I have seen a dramatic increase in student participation and attention span with this simple addition. I have also incorporated a lot of the vocabulary exercises such as reading the vocab words aloud and having the students repeat them back. Graphic organizers have also been a popular addition along with colored pencils!

Starting the trip....

Hey all!
Glad that Ronald sent an e-mail about his blog - I have been waiting for Cynthia to send us something and then it dawned on me that maybe, just maybe the information that I needed regarding the class assignments are in the syllabus! Lo and behold they were....Got some catching up to do! I am going to use this blog as a dual purpose one: for talking about EESL 650 and for my independent study with Dr. Lee Meadows dealing with teacher leadership - I hope this is ok Cynthia! I actually have two other blogs - one for my science class and one for my apiary - Buzzin' Belles Apiary. Unfortunately I have not done much with those so I am hoping to jumpstart all three of my blogs with this assignment! Can't wait to see what everyone else is doing...