Rebecca Austin-Datta
Current: University of Florida; Former: Darnell-Cookman M/H School of the Medical Arts
FL

Career of the Month: An interview with bomb investigator Barney T. Villa

Fri, Mar 23, 2012 7:58 PM
Motivational Reading Material

This article has proved very popular among my 8th Grade Career Research students. Many of them aspire to a career in medicine (I teach in a Medical Magnet school) but they also enjoy the idea of using forensics and critical thinking skills – modeling the bomb investigators they see in TV shows. This article was especially suitable for students who would like to be more proficient readers because it was a manageable length (just one page); students were motivated to read to the end of the article because the material was so engaging. This Career of The Month series of interviews from the NSTA publication "The Science Teacher" is special because the articles they tell you not only what the ‘job’ is like on a day to day basis, but they also explain the college/career path which the person took – not every path is what you would expect! My students read and made notes on several of these articles, then wrote a compare/contrast essay about the style of interview questions. They are now busy compiling a portfolio of Career Interviews by interviewing adult relations and friends, and writing up their findings in a similar format to the Career of the Month interviews. To encourage students to use their own words I asked students to submit the written text of their interviews to turnitin.com; so far only job titles have appeared in the Similarity Match. The Career of the Month Interviews inspired my students to think outside the box about their own career dreams, and to explore the careers of those around them in depth.

The Importance of Everyday Assessment

Thu, Dec 01, 2011 9:57 PM
It makes sense, and is worth the time!

I have recently started following the advice in this book chapter, and I am starting to think that Everyday Assessment MAY just be the missing link from having the students explore/explain ... and be able to explain again a few days/weeks/months later! Our mile-wide, inch deep curriculum tries its best to cover every aspect of Chemistry in two semesters... last year I did not 'waste' time on everyday assessment, as I was trying to impart information at a dizzying rate. I worked hard, but reflecting on the year I realized I needed to work SMARTER. Having I read this book chapter, I resolved to try using short 'exit slips' INSIDE the lesson, EVERY DAY, getting students to self-grade in red pen immediately after the quiz so they had instant feedback and THEY could see what they did not understand, so they could take responsibility to ask the questions and get clarification..... Don't groan if you are doing this automatically, or it is old news for you - I am not College of Ed so this was a brand new Ah-Ha! moment for me! I am grateful to this book chapter for giving me Scientific reasons to try something I was reluctant to do; it nudged me to consider spending time on DAILY semi-formal assessments. I am seeing the results in the classroom :-)

Periodicity

Wed, Nov 02, 2011 9:25 PM
Good for non-scientists

I was looking for a sparkling way to introduce periodicity to my Chemistry Class. This is not the book chapter to help. The chapter title is misleading as it explains (very nicely) all about electron configurations and shells/orbitals (the reason FOR periodicity) but gives little information about 'what next', i.e the periodicity of the Periodic Trends (melting points etc). I have a chemistry background, and this book is designed for non-scientists, so perhaps I am being a bit unfair. The writing style is enjoyable, if I was new to the topic I would have been glued to the pages, but the content is too basic for my needs so I am glad I got to read a chapter free before I bought the series!