Schedule for workshops.

PPS Science Workshops – Oct 11, 2013

Grant High School,  Room 223

8:00-8:20 – Welcome, Introductions and Opening Comments, including information about the PPS Science Fair

Break out workshops  (See below for complete descriptions)

Session 1  8:30 -10:00 

Rm 225 – Ocean Waves and Sound                     

Rm 239 – Online Evolution Inquiry

Rm S-5 – Chemistry Sharathon

Session 2  10:10 – 11:40

Rm 225 – Physics Analysis with Logger Pro

Rm 239 – Evolution with the district’s Hominid Skulls

Rm  S-5 -  Nuclear Chemistry and Technology

Lunch-  Provided

12:10 – 1:00 Proficiency Grading Discussion with breakout sessions by discipline.

Facilitated by Ethan Medley

Share your questions, insights and lessons learned about moving to a proficiency based classroom, or work with your colleagues to adapt classes and assignments to a proficiency model.

A note on the workshops:   The success of the workshops will depend on what you,  the participants, bring.  Typically the presenters will share lessons that fill the first part of the 90 minutes, but by the end it is our hope that everyone is sharing.  How do you target these goals in your classroom?  What else have you wanted to do with this topic?  Or what are some of the other great things that you do in your classroom?  Please bring handouts or links to share.

Session 1 Workshops  8:30 – 10:00

Online Evolution Inquiry: Using Protein Sequences to Answer Evolutionary Questions

Presented by Amy Lindahl – Grant High School

In this workshop you will see how students can perform an evolutionary inquiry experiment using molecular data. Participants will develop a question, perform amino acid alignments of different species, and create phylogenetic trees. Based on your tree you will discover how different organisms are related to each other. Past student questions have addressed topics such as:

1. Did flightlessness in birds evolve once or multiple times?
2. Which wild canine(s) are domesticated dogs most closely related to?
3. Which modern day sloth is most related to the extinct giant ground sloth?
4. How are lemurs related to African primates?
5. And many more…

The workshop will also cover how scaffolding and proficiency strategies can be used to aid the writing process. Please bring a laptop to this session.

Ocean Waves and Sound  -  Physics and FPC

Presented by Angie McVay – Lincoln High School

This workshop shares two activities:

Using the Deep Ocean Waves-- "Making Waves" Activity

The activity, "Making Waves" investigates deep-water ocean waves by generating a simulated wave with simple re-used household materials.  Students then observe it as it progresses across the water surface.  The goal is to investigate the characteristics of these ocean waves and the water motions associated with them. This activity is a good real-world example of how waves move in nature.  It also helps clearly illustrate how waves move through a substance.  

Ocean Sound--"Sound in the Slow Lane" Activity

Underwater sounds are used by scientists and many marine animals to sense the environment and to communicates.  Temperature, pressure and salinity affect the transmission of sound in the ocean. After completing this activity, students should be able to describe the effect of temperature, pressure and salinity on the speed of sound in seawater.  The "Sound in the Slow Lane" activity models the paths of sound waves in the Deep Sound Channel by the movement of playing pieces across a board divided into slow and fast lanes.   This is an excellent activity to do during a lesson on refraction.  

Participants in these activities will receive a teacher guide that includes all scientific "basic understandings" for the lesson, lesson plan, master template for the activity materials, and extensions.  

These lessons are part of a series produced by the Maury Project, an initiative of the American Meteorological Society and the United States Naval Academy.  This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. ESI-9353370.  Angie McVay is part of a national network of teachers selected and trained by the Maury Project.  

Chemistry Sharathon

Facilitated by Matt Staab – Cleveland High School

Chemistry Teachers – please bring some of your favorite demos, lab activities, web sites and units to share.  Bring 10 sets of handouts for sharing. Feel free to contact Ethan Medley at Grant in advance to see if Grant has the equipment that you need.  Additionally some teachers would like time to discuss adapting current activities and tests to a proficiency based system.  While there’s scheduled time to do this after lunch, you could start this now.

Session 2 Workshops  10:10 – 11:40

Evolution -Teaching strategies and connections for using the Kit-Skulls 

Presented by Nancy Lapotin – PPS Stem TOSA

This workshop will give you access to the Hominid Skull sets that are available from the Multimedia Library.  We just put together a new kit so now there are 2 available for checkout.  This is one of the most used kits for high school.  We hope you attend this training to get certified to check them out. The focus will be on the incorporation of the skulls and other resources and strategies for teaching Hominid evolution in your biology classroom.

Logger Pro in the Physics Classroom

Presented by Ethan Medley – Grant High School

I’ll share three labs (determining g, determining m by Newton’s 2^nd Law and Refraction) that display the analysis features of logger pro including manipulating axes, curve fitting, error bars, and using calculated columns.  These applications are adaptable to numerous science disciplines, not just physics.  Additionally we touch on logger pro’s video analysis functions and use with motion detectors.

Nuclear Chemistry and Technology for Chemistry and FPC

Presented by Kendall Jensen – Roosevelt H.S.

This workshop focuses on several activities from a unit developed by Roosevelt teachers on nuclear chemistry and technology for an FPC class.  Discussion will include time to consider how to adapt the activities to chemistry classes, and how these topics are covered in other H.S. programs.

Update on Oct. 11 Workshops

I'll use this blog to share information about the upcoming science workshop on Oct. 11.
Later we might use it for sharing ideas and equipment, or planning visits.

Sessions identified to far:
Nancy Lapotin will lead a workshop on using the skull models to understand evolution.
Amy Lindahl will lead a workshop on using online data bases to develop cladograms as an inquiry project.
Grant H.S. chemistry teachers will highlight some labs and techniques they're using that they're adapting from POGIL.
Ethan Medley will share several physics labs that use logger pro for data analysis.

Most people have requested labs and there was a specific request for Earth Science labs.  So if you have a good lab and would be willing to share it please let me know.  Don't worry if you think others might already do it, we've all added our own twists and even a simple lab can serve as a starting point for rich discussions.

It now seems very likely that lunch will be provided, and that you should be able to get a graduate credit through PSU if you adapt something you've learned to your classroom.  I will have more details about this at a later point.

While people are offering to run workshops, I hope that everyone will bring ideas to share, and that parts of each workshop can be dedicated to simply sharing ideas.

Start and ending times are still to be determined as we decide if there are enough workshops to justify afternoon sessions too.  We're up to nearly 20 people signed up including the workshop facilitators.  Please share this information with your colleagues and encourage them to sign up at the link.
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1J50s5bldXSAlrLCr4OKmTbpGq59uqEOihEOR6R9ppIc/viewform