The Nitty Gritty

I realize that most of my blog posts up until this point have been quite abstract; they are mostly reflections on my continually forming ideas on education and educational philosophy. However, on a day-to-day (okay, minute-to-minute, really) basis, I am much more grounded in the nitty gritty: what is happening in my classroom, with my students, and with other faculty. So here are some insights into the more concrete aspects of my life in Houston.

Every day I teach one section of alternative energy (it was supposed to be two, but small numbers forced my classes to combine) to rising ninth graders. As strange as it is to say it, I love teaching science. I wouldn't want to do it for life, but it is such a wonderful challenge to teach something completely new. Because alternative energy is a fairly new subject of study, there isn't really a set curriculum I have to teach. Therefore, I have adapted a lab-based approach to my class; nearly every day we are able to do something that involves building, designing, testing, and/or collecting data. Not only does this style of teaching keep the students engaged, it allows them to use the scientific method of thinking nearly every day---they are developing the skills they will have to have in high school and college science classes.

For the past week we were studying wind energy and the students built their own lab-sized windmills. They had to learn how to design effective blades (does number matter? Size? Shape? Pitch?), connect circuits, use a multimeter to record voltage, and so much more. We even had the students cut he PVC pipe and drill the necessary holes. Almost none of them had ever used a saw before. I don't think many of the students have had opportunities to do "real" labs before--labs that are not completely scripted out for them. It was really amazing to see them so excited about the simple things. And they learned a lot too :)

We have just started our next unit on solar energy. Although we don't have a really long and really fun windmill lab, we are still doing some fun things. To learn about passive solar heating, we made a simple solar water heater and then used a temperature reader ( I am sure there is a more scientific name..) to continually record data. I didn't think it would actually work, but it raised the water temp about 5 degrees Celsius. To learn about photovoltaic cells, we are going to be playing with solar cars! Okay, so maybe the right term is "experimenting," but it's the same thing, right? That was supposed to happen last week, but Hurricane Alex got in the way. We'll see how that goes.

For the first day of the solar energy unit, I used a strategy my mentor teacher really recommends: stations. At each of the three stations, the students answered challenging questions, analyzed data, and/or watched short videos to help them discover some basics about solar energy; I really support discovery based learning, and this lesson exemplified that style perfectly. I am really happy with the way this lesson turned out. Just about all of the students were actively engaged all of the time, and because each station was only ten minutes long, they did not get bored. Even though it took more time to prepare, I can definitely see myself using this type of lesson in the future.

Okay, so that is it for now. I know I wanted to write more when I began, but for the life of me I cannot remember what I really wanted to say. More later!