Heather Booher: Science Educator

Assessment of Unit Plan

My unit plan on DNA and Genetic Engineering ended up taking six weeks, which was longer than I had initially planned for. I had originally designed ten lesson plans, which I thought would take about four weeks at the most, but I quickly discovered that the lesson plans I wrote in the beginning needed to be modified on an almost daily basis. Having 50 minute class periods was a challenge for many of the lessons because they couldn’t be fit into one day, and needed to be spread out over two or more days. Also, with so many snow days at the beginning of my unit, I had to backtrack quite a bit and review a few topics over again. I also wasn’t expecting my students to ask for so many quizzes, but they constantly asked to be quizzed on a topic a few days after covering it, because they wanted to help their grades. Making and administering the quizzes was very time-consuming, but I wanted to help their grades as well, so I didn’t mind meeting their requests.

Overall, I am extremely happy with how my unit turned out. Besides the small modifications that needed to be made, I followed my plan pretty closely, and the pacing and flow of lesson to lesson seemed to work out well for the students. I ended the unit on DNA with a traditional test, which the students did well on, and I am about to end the unit on Genetic Engineering with a student-conducted research paper, which the students seem to be looking forward to.

Assessment of Teaching

I think I have made great strides in my teaching since starting out in January. One comment that I have heard more than once from observers and my cooperating teacher is that I am too soft-spoken, and I don’t project my voice enough for students in the back of the room to hear. Although I’ve never been asked by a student to repeat anything, or to speak louder, I do believe that I am too soft-spoken and that is something I have tried to work on. Initially, it was very hard for me to be “loud” when necessary, but I quickly figured out when it was appropriate to raise my voice, and when it was better to not raise it. I think a lot of times when teachers raise their voices, it just encourages the students to talk even louder, but it is necessary to get their attention, and I think my students have figured out that when I raise my voice, I really want their attention immediately.

One thing I am proud of is how I have managed to avoid a lot of note-taking with my students. I was afraid that I would have to rely on a lot of notes to get the point across and have students be prepared for quizzes and tests. As it turned out though, I used a lot of computer lab activities and worksheets, which took the place of a lot of notes. Whenever I introduced a new topic, I would try to give the most important notes on the board, which the students would copy, then supplement them with a computer activity, and a worksheet to reinforce what I had just gone over. After all the activities were completed, I would simply stand in the front of the room and talk with the students to see what they had gotten out of the lesson. I would try to ask a few straight-forward questions that could be easily answered if they had taken notes, and then a few more abstract questions that required some deeper thinking. I was always amazed and pleasantly surprised with some of the answers I would get when asking questions such as those.

I am extremely lucky to be in a classroom with six computers available for student use. The are extremely slow, and frustrating at times, but I have found that it is much easier to get students to take notes from something they have read online, than from what they have read in their textbooks. In fact, their textbook is so complicated that I pretty much abandoned using it after only a few attempts of getting them to read from it. It reads as if it were written for an advanced college class, and so most of the students can glean very little useful information from it. There are so many wonderful online resources for high school students though, so I tried to use as many interactive computer labs, and virtual simulations as possible, and the students always responded very positively to them. Just last week they were able to solve a hypothetical crime, by using DNA fingerprinting technology online, and comparing suspects DNA to that of a criminal. When asked what they thought of the activity and DNA fingerprinting in general, I heard “it was AWESOME” from many students, and got so many questions about other uses for the technology that we ran out of time before we could discuss them all. After we finished the small section on DNA fingerprinting and gel electrophoresis, I gave the students a quiz, as usual, but this time I incorporated much more writing, and asked the students to describe the steps to the technology in their own words. For the first time since I started teaching these kids, I got answers that weren’t just repeats of the notes they had copied from me from the board. I know this is due to the interactive labs, because the students really got into them, and I think learning occurs effortlessly when students are engaged. Having the computers in the classroom has allowed me to do so many activities that I would otherwise have a hard time fitting in, because trying to schedule computer lab time in the high school’s two computer lab is hard sometimes, especially when I am still getting used to “lesson planning” in advance, and I oftentimes don’t know enough in advance when I will be doing a particular activity.

As far as classroom management goes, I’ve learned a great deal about dealing with problems before they get out of control, which mainly involves student talking, and students getting off-task when left alone to do their work. Overall, I am extremely lucky in that I get to work with a very disciplined group of students, who for the most part genuinely care about what they are learning and are eager to work for me, but they did challenge my authority when I first took over the class, and I didn’t deal with it the right way at first. I thought that most problems would just take care of themselves, because the students all wanted to be friends with me. I thought they would automatically show me respect in class, but that was definitely not the case. I have found that one of the best things to do with a student who is off-task, or disrespectful, is to talk with them one-on-one, so that the other students don’t even know about it at all. The few times I have had to do this, it seemed to show immediate results and the students behavior improved the very next day.

Assessment of Student Learning

My unit plan was divided into two section; DNA and DNA technology. The DNA section covered structure, replication, protein synthesis, and historical aspects. After these topics, I had the students design me a brochure with a page dedicated to each of the main subjects. The brochures turned out beautifully, and the class average was 91%. It was a good opportunity for students to use as much or as little creativity as they wanted. I had some turn out amazing, and others that weren’t as fancy, but still met all requirements. I also gave my students a traditional test that included multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blank, an essay question, and several diagrams. The students did rather well on the test, and the class average was 84%. Most of the missed questions involved replication, which was a subject covered early on in the unit. I also think a big problem was with students not reading the questions carefully enough, and making mistakes that could have been easily avoided. I was most pleased with the essay question in which I asked students to discuss the controversy surrounding the discovery of DNA’s double helical structure. Every one of my students wrote a thoughtful response and a lot of them were quite opinionated on the subject.

One of my favorite days of class this semester was when the 10 th graders did their DNA extraction labs, where we isolated DNA from a banana. We had been discussing DNA for two weeks at that point, and the students were very excited when I promised them they would see DNA with their own eyes. The reactions from the students after seeing the white, sticky goop that is DNA were priceless. Students were amazed and surprised at what real DNA looked like. I received comments on their lab write-ups like, “I expected it to be colorful, not just white,” and even “I thought we would see the ladder structure.” The class average on the lab write-ups was 92%.

After DNA, we moved on to DNA technology and genetic engineering. To mix things up a little, I assigned a poster project with very open-ended guidelines to see what kind of results I would get. In the end, I got seven very different posters on genetic engineering, all of which were informative, attractive, and met all requirements. I could tell the students enjoyed the opportunity to show off their creativity as well, and I heard many comments expressing the desire to have more projects such as that. The class average was 92% on the posters. After discussing DNA fingerprinting and gel electrophoresis next, I gave the students a quiz that involved describing the steps and applications of the technology in their own words. The class average was 102% (almost everyone answered the bonus question correctly), and for once I didn’t hear any complaints about having to write so much.

I wrapped up my unit by discussing the Human Genome Project and genetic disorders. I assessed this section with a paper, where students picked a genetic disorder, took two class periods to research it in the library and computer lab, and then had a weekend to finish writing it. My hope was that since I had gradually been increasing the amount of writing done in class, the papers wouldn’t be a problem for the students. I still had a lot of students complain about the amount of writing involved though, and when I had my student's assess my teaching at the end of the unit, the disorder research paper was consistently listed as the least favorite activity of the unit.