Share+a+Gem

My gem is a game called "circle of fury". I've seen this under several different names but I like this one the best. One of the other student teachers was doing this with his 11SCI and as I had an 11SCI as well I decided to do the game as well so that I could get my class to beat his class. I also used it for my 10AGR class as well. The game is a question and answer type card game. Each student is given a card with a answer and then a question following it. They must call out their answer when they hear the question that proceeds it and then call out the question on their card. There is a start card and a finish card so it goes around in a circle until they reach the end. You time the game so that they strive to beat the previous time.

This game is best done with key terms and facts that you want the students to remember. Because you are timing it and may do it 4-5 times the students start remembering the answers to speed up the time, which is what you want with those key terms and facts. It's a fun way of rote learning those few things that actually need to be rote learned.

Both my year 11's and 10's loved it and it was great in my mixed ability class as the top band students would help the support and homeroom kids without making them feel pushed or left out.

attached in the year 11 electricity. and the year 10 agriculture.

Cheers Tasha

Hey Tasha, sounds like you had fun with your classes. I think games are a great way to teach any subject, it seems in the student’s minds playing a game is not learning and they can’t get enough of it. I found in my classes these types of games are great to use when students’ get unfocused, breaks up the lesson and then they are more likely after to settle down and do some more learning! Karyn

Having had to teach working out the formulas of ionic compounds in TE1, when it came up again in TE2 I was keen to find an approach which would be more engaging for the students. I used a form of the “Bond with a classmate” activity from the sciencespot website, but having done so I think the variation below would work better. You need a worksheet for each student and some cards with various ions on them  (these could be laminated and re-used).

·  Students are each allocated a different ion and are given three cards each with the formula of that ion on it. ·  They then have to find a classmate of the opposite charge and together work out the ionic formula of the compound they would form using their respective ions. · The challenge is to see how many compounds they can “form” in the time available.

The advantage of this activity is that students have to work co-operatively in different pairs to complete each formula. The original instructions on the website gave the students only one card with their ion on it, however I found that having more that one of the ion cards helped some students better grasp the concept of having to balance the positive and negative charges in the compounds. The activity worked really well and the students seemed to enjoy it. More importantly, by the end they all felt comfortable in working out the formulas.

One other small gem was in terms of classroom management during lab activities. I had found that it could be difficult to quickly get the attention of the whole class during a practical activity (although I tried whenever possible to avoid having to interrupt them). The usual kind of “stop what you’re doing, eyes to me” stuff just wasn’t effective since some students could not resist carrying on with the activity. A technique suggested to me by one of my associates worked well with groups of Year 10 girls. “Hands up when you are listening” not only worked as a visual way of signaling to students that they should stop and listen but having a hand in the air also physically prevented them from carrying on with the practical activity. It will be interesting to see how well this method works with other classes e.g. other year groups and with boys.”

Peter

Wow that is a great suggestion – one I will have to try as I also found it to be quite stressful running practical’s, especially with the junior levels, and trying to get their attention. Thanks very much for sharing that Karyn 21/7/09

I got to teach a few one off chemistry lessons at years 12 and 13 during my last placement. My associate teacher tended to dictate notes to the students, which I found an interesting strategy and not one I have come across very often. The students would respond pretty much immediately and start writing down the notes. My teacher would also write the chemical terms and difficult words on the board for the students so that they would get the spelling correct. Also, she would sometimes write notes on the board instead so it kept students on task as they didn't know if they would have to copy down what she was saying or what she was writing on the board. This is really just a point of interest as a teaching strategy in the classroom and it was a good classroom management technique as the students would go silent and get on with the writing of the notes as they did not want to miss anything. Probably my 'gem' from teaching that I saw at this school which was different to my initial placement was making sure that the students got time to conduct practical work. While on my first placement experiments always tended to feel rushed and crammed into a lesson, this school would give the notes and worksheets on a subtopic such as alkenes and complete the practical work in another class. I preferred this approach as the students had a bit more time to take in the practical and could establish a link between their notes and the practical work. Then when it came to the end of the organic chemistry unit when questions came up on topics they had completed practical work such as bromine water and an alkene the students could recall the work they had done to help them answer the question.

Erin

I didn't get to teach any chemistry on my last placement, but I did spend a lot of time sharing information with the first year chemistry teacher (who did not study chemistry). He was teaching titration to year 13 titrations which were pretty unmotivated - he asked me to help out and turned the lesson into a completion us against them. This really got the students going, he told me later that his students produced the best set of titration results they had ever done, as they were so determined to bet us. I saw by changing the dynamics of how something was taught improved student motivation and their attention to technique. Karyn

20/7/09 Each of you needs to share a "gem" that you saw on your last teaching section. While I would prefer it to be Chemistry based I know some of you didn't have Chemistry as a teaching option last section but a Science gem will do. A "Gem" by my definition is something special that stands above the norm-perhaps it has a sparkle, an interest or engagement factor that makes it memorable This gem might be an activity you did with students yourself, it might be something you saw an associate teacher do that you liked and might adapt to do your self in the future. It could be a gem of classroom management, especially if it relates to being in a lab. It could be a particular learning strategy you used/trialled or saw someone else use and that you particularly liked and woul use yourself in the future. It coul be something to do with the way the Chemistry or Science department operated that you thought was particulalrly good. So what you need to do is as follows: 1. You need to share this gem on the "Share a Gem" page on the Chem students wiki. You can just write on this page-remebmer to use the "Edit this page" bitton. You could upload a word dcoument, a file, videolink or whatever. You need to tell the reader (your fellow students and tuor) why you think this is a gem. Does it have effective pedagogy behind it? If so what is it? 2. You need to do this- 1 above-by Wednesday 22 July. 3. By Friday 24 July you will have made comment about at least 3 other people's gems on WebCT in the "Student Initiated Discussion" forum Kathriona 20/7 The year 11 class that I was taking was doing the AS 90189 (describe aspect of chemistry). On this day I was getting the students to balance chemical equations (metals with acids, metal carbonates with acids, etc.) I divided the class into groups of 3s and gave each group a set of coloured cards, to try and form a balanced equation. For example Al2(CO3)3, + 6HCl = 2AlCl3 + 3H2O + 3CO2. Al2(CO3)3 and 2AlCl3 were orange cards and the acid was red and water and carbon dioxide was blue. Each group was given a set of corresponding orange cards and were to find (by asking the other groups) the red and blue cards that would give them a balanced equation. Once done, one member of the group was to write the equation on the board. There was a group of 3 students that sat at the back of the class and who were not usually active in any class participation. For this activity, one of these students actually attempted to solve the equation (I gave him encouragement along the way). And the joy on his face when he managed to do it, made my day, In fact he said " I can do this!", and he was so proud to go up and write his balanced equation on the board. I was of course quick to praise him for his effort and was very pleased to have made an impact on the pupil's learning for the day anyway). Rahini

20/7 I taught metals to my year 11 chemistry class. As my final lesson I wanted to revise what we had learnt, but I also wanted it to be fun as I'd enjoyed teaching this class and wanted to reward them for their effort and behavoiur. I came up with a variation on a quiz to do with them. I divided the class into 2 teams, by drawing the names out of a hat, the order the names were drawn out is the playing order. I did a coin toss to determine which team went first, and then in their playing order they had to come up one at a time to answer a question. They had to sit in the 'hot seat', and once they did both teams had to be quiet or I deducted a point (I only had to deduct 2 points before they quickly caught on).. The person in the hot seat got to choose easy, medium or hard questions, which were worth 1,2 and 3 points respectively. I roughly based it on easy = achieved, medium = merit and hard = excellence type questions. Once I asked the questions, they had 5 seconds to begin answering the queston. If they were unable to answer the question then it was offered to the other team, first person with their hand up got to answer. They also had 5 seconds to answer. The winning team got chocolate.It worked really well, especially as I was at an all boys school so they were very competative. When I said we were going to do a quiz I got a few complaints, but once we started they loved it. It was also a great way to see areas they had not picked up so well and those they had. Just as a wee extra, I got the boys to do me a research report during the topic, which involved 2 lessons in the computer labs. I was talking to a couple of students about being carefull with wikipedia as you can't automatically trust the information you get on there. One of the boys got onto a site that was like a predicter type thing. You asked it a question and it would pop up a randomly generated answer. He cheekily asked me if we could trust the information from that, and I said of course not. So he typed in 'Is the teacher standing behind me the best teacher ever?' and the bloody thing said 'yes definitely'. How do you argue with that? :-) Emma

20/7 I didn't get to teach chemistry at my last placement but something really fun from year10 science was a project I used to finish off their forces unit. Based on something I found here: [] I made two sheets (FlingIt and Trebuchet Facts). It was a great group project that they enjoyed a lot. I bunched the straws by colours so each group chose their colour and away they went with straws and paperclips, by halfway through the third period they were ready to take aim at a "castle" I made out of polystyrine cups. I would definetly do this again! Paul

21 July 2009 I taught very little chemistry (some Year 11), but did see a great physics teacher in action. The Year 13 class were doing capacitors, and the teacher did not seem to be teaching, but at the end of each lesson you were amazed with what had been covered. One memorable lesson was to teach the concept of time constant, which is related to how fast a capacitor discharges. He started by giving a challenge to the class of using a capacitor to keep a light bulb going for more than 2 minutes. The practical guys quickly set up an experiment and failed. So then he asked questions to find out what could impact the current flow, and gradually got around to doing the maths for the time constant. Once the maths had been done, then everyone had to set up a system and keep their bulbs going. Some groups got over 10 minutes!

What impressed me was the lack of text book work the whole lesson. It was all done by drawing the information from the students themselves. The extbook was refered to at the end of the lesson where exercises about time constants was suggested for homework. It was also a great way to put capacitors into a context.

This teachers physics classes were always fun. There was always gear lying around for people to try something out. When I was teaching inductors, students were making up transformers and trying them out on each other. It was a shocking time for some, but no harm occured. Very hands on teaching.

Graham

Sounds like this teacher left quite an impression on you. I had an associate sort like that, you never knew where the lesson was going and what the learning objective was but by the end of the lesson you had learnt a lot and had fun doing it! How long do you think it takes before this kind of teaching becomes a natural instinct to us? Karyn 21/7/09

Again I taught year 13 Organic Chemistry. I hope they're not doing it at my next school as I would love a bit more variety (or maybe I can perfect my techneique). My "Gem" is a quiz type game I played to help the kids practise their naming of organic compounds. I also set it up to practise drawing organic compounds from a name and to practise recognising organic reactions but I didn't get to trial these two. Rules: The students are placed in groups of 3 or 4. There is a range of molecules on quiz sheets (example provided here ) this gets a bit tricky because you need a set of quiz sheets for each team. The team works together and writes down the systematic name and then send a runner up for the teacher to check. If they get it right first try they get 3 points, 2nd try = 2 points, 3 or more trys = 1 point. Once they have it correct (or potentialy they can pass on that question at any time) they get the next question. This is a very messy activity as you have student jostling (to fix this I ended up saying that it is not a race just a competition), you have little piles of paper coming out your ears (I ended up putting the piles of questions on a spare desk and the students were good about only picking up the question that they needed). The other thing to watch out for would be to make sure all the students participate. On the plus side I know that it is helpful. After getting a name wrong students would come back and say things like "Oh that was such an ameteur mistake Miss, I won't get that wrong again!" A bit more fun that worksheets anyway.

Lara

24/07/09 Sorry for my late participation. I have been tied up with the family as Janet's (mywife) mum died last Sunday and everything has been centred at our house. Anyway below is a start. My Gem. I took a year 10 class for an entire unit on Genetics. The class was all girls, 16 in number and a good spread of abilities. Until I took this unit my knowledge of genetics was almost zero so about halfway through the unit (4 weeks) I decided that I would split the class into 4 groups with each group given a lesson to prepare their own 15min lesson on using Punnett squares. I was amazed at the gusto in which they through themselves into the task. Even better was the engagement by several of the students who are not noted for their attention spans. The presentations where all great, but what took me by surprise was the diverse approaches taken by the different groups. The gem of this story is that the entire class passed the Punnett square question in the unit assessment at the end of the unit even if some did not get an Achieved for the assessment. To me this was clear evidence that the constructivist approach to teaching really works.

David