Lara's+space

Welcome to Lara's Page!!!!!!!!!!! 

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This is a video that some students at my TE1 school found on YouTube. It actually works and the students LOVED it. Tell me if you can't see it. I can't on my computer but that could just be because my computer is exceptionally slow.

23 July 2009

I have attatch my reflection on effective pedagogy as a word document as well. I was hoping to be able to cut and paste but it makes things go all crazy!!

19 June 2009

Here's an update on my Chemistry teaching on TE2. I took part in a 28 hour Chemistry teach-a-thon to raise money for World Vision. There was roughly 40 year 13 kids and the main teacher was the school Principal. I was there the whole time and mainly just helped out with worksheets and things. During that time the kids revised what they had already learnt this year and they started on Organic Chemistry. I made up one of those organic chemistry sudukos that I talked to you about on the block course. Which I will attatch here. The kids really enjoyed it and found it useful and not too difficult. Last week I started going over the Organic chemistry topic again and I used a concept map to see what they remembered from the teach-a-thon. It was realy useful as it highlighted some real misconceptions. ie, that amines are carboxylic acid derivatives.

Also went to a NZC support day today and we were lucky enough to get some one who is in charge of realigning the NCEA acheivement standards and unit standards to come and show us through them. Now I actually inderstand what it is all about. I have included a link to the document on the new matrix.

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If you look at the last page there is a good overview on the proposed Acheivement Standards to be implimented in 2012 and 2013. It sounds like they have included some really neat changes. My favourite (because I have just been teaching it). Is the changes in the organic chemistry standards. They are taking out esters at year 12 and replacing it with amines, then doing all the carboxylic acid derivatives in year 13. It makes so much sense I can't beleive they have never done it before!!!

Another thong I picked up at this curriculum day is that schools are quite open to revising their junior curriculum to fit the new curriculum but as far as the senior subjects are involved they are just going to label their old schemes with terms from the new curriculum which I thought was a bit of a shame. Is anyone else seeing a similar attitude in the schools they are at???

Hope this is useful.

Lara

This is my presentation. To kinda explain my thinking I focussed more on the intent of the new curriculum as opped to the planning and content of the topic. To do this I wanted to put the topic into a context that would enhance the relevance of the students learning. Luckily for me I had had a summer job working for a company that needed to reduce the phosphate levels in their waste water so my little project was to figure out the most effective way of doing this, which we ultimately found out was using precipitation and filtering the solid out. I also included an idea for lab experiment which I saw in practise at my TE1 school in the year 11 Science class. This was the idea of a lab book that they students can work through at their own pace during lab time. I thought this idea was very "new curriculum" as it allows students to work at their own pace and ability level, manage themselves etc. I did notice that some students need gentle pushing along, though this could have been because it was the end of term.

- This is an article of interest that I will refer to in my presentation at the block course. - This is an electronic copy of the handout I gave out

Lara 29/4 Well done Lara and Congrats on being the first to take up my challenge-I can seethe video but connection is slow at home so taking awhile to stream Kathriona

1/5 You have been busy Lara-will read pheromones too! Got to watch the clip-working on a faster speed today so it downloaded easily-this is a good little prac to capture interest-now what is the chemistry behind it? Kathriona

1/5 Hi Kathriona

Me and my associate thought it must be redox reaction. When you do the prac the foam is a definate yellow so iodide is being oxidised to iodine. Peroxide is the oxidising agent. The soap is just to make foam.

Lara