KLEIN's
GUIDE TO
SCIENCE EDUCATION
PHOTO CREDIT: Nadene Klein at Tuolumne Meadows Yosemite National Park
In my last post, I shared by my plan to do a virtual shark dissection with my Zoology class as we moved from our hybrid learning model to synchronous online learning. Over the past two weeks, I implemented this lesson with my students (see November 2020 post). I bet you are wondering if it was successful. The short answer is YES! I have a few different metrics that I used to evaluate the success of this lesson. First was attendance. With the population of students that I work with, if they don't care about what is happening in class, they just don't show up. I had 100% attendance every day, even with the cohort that meets at 7:30 in the morning. The second metric was an unplanned measure of engagement. On the third day of the lesson, I went through our class routine (warm up, announcements, etc.). I had just instructed student to open their shark dissection docs and to continue working from wherever they had left off when MY COMPUTER CRASHED!!! "Holy disaster," I thought. It took about 5 full minutes for me to get back to class. Every student was still there. Every student was working on his/her dissection. I humbly announced my return half thinking that maybe they hadn't notice my departure. Actually they had. One students spoke on behalf of the group that she had a question, but I wasn't there, she figured I had a tech issue, so she worked on what she could until I came back. I feel like that speaks volumes to two important points. My students trust me and my students were enjoying what they were learning. The final metric was planned. The last "E" in the "5Es" is Evaluate. With a Google Form, I had students evaluate their experience. As you can see in the graph below, no one rated the experience unfavorably. 66.6% rated it favorably and 33.3% rated it as tolerable or favorable but would have preferred doing it hands-on in person. Additionally on the form, they had to state what they learned. This indicated to me that students met the learning targets of comparative anatomy in terms of physiology and morphology. Another point, as you may recall, was that the images and dissection guide I used was from a community college. My at-risk students were proud of themselves for doing college level work in high school. This proves again that if you set students up for success and raise the bar for them to achieve, great things happen.
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AuthorNadene Klein, M.Ed. has been an educator for over 25 years. She brings a passion and love for science to the classroom and through this blog to you. Archives
March 2024
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