The following is a class by class summary of the enacted curriculum of my UTeach Project Based Instruction class that was conducted during the Spring 2017 semester. I would like to thank my teaching assistant Sneha Tharayil for helping put this summary together and to the course Master Teachers Denise Ekberg and Daniel Fitzpatrick for their time and effort throughout the semester. -Dr. Petrosino
Spring 2017- Petrosino EDC 365E Class Summaries
Class
#3-01/24/2017
·
Class began with Mr. Fitzpatrick and Ms. Ekberg
providing students with their field placements. Email Mr. Fitzpatrick and Ms.
Ekberg with any issues regarding class conflicts or parking.
·
Sneha then reviewed how to navigate the Canvas
website for the course and where to find materials
·
We then rearranged ourselves into a discussion
circle to discuss the Petrosino (2004) article which discusses a case study of
an experienced teacher implementing a project-based instruction and assessment
in astronomy with a university-affiliated high school classroom. The students
in this classroom, who were amateur astronomers, were actually contributing to
scientific research
o
Some important questions/points from the
discussion:
§
How do we design curriculum to help facilitate
experiences in which students actually participate as scientists (i.e. “being
scientists)?
·
Perhaps some fields, like astronomy, may have
some spaces which lend itself more easily to amateur contributions than others
§
How do instruments/tools/resources influence the
feasibility of implementing and facilitating authentic scientific experiences?
§
Grades does not equal assessment à while the teacher in
this case study didn’t necessarily seem to “care” about grades or a grading
scheme, it did not necessarily mean he didn’t care about assessments.
Assessment transcends grades
·
Should “effort” be counted toward grades?
o
Science doesn’t always “work”
o
Depends on the type of effort?
o
Skills vs. results?
§
Working towards getting results vs. practicing
skills
o
In class vs. out of class?
o
Sort of a grey/nebulous area
o
Effort can be embedded within some of the
requisite activities in themselves
o
How does one quantify effort? Is it binary?
§
Takeaway: This was an expert teacher who had a
status in his school. It was a nice snapshot of the time (late 1990s) which
demonstrate the elements of PBI in a practical setting. It was a real school,
with real students (from multiple grade levels), that were working on projects
that were authentic and relevant to students. The setting resembled lab groups
(not lab “class”) that featured formal and informal relationships, which
facilitated the interpersonal characteristics (relationship building, etc.) that
are important to an optimal learning environment.
·
Class
#3-01/26/2017
o
We began with a debriefing of the first planning
meeting at the school site yesterday.
§
School seems to have a large population of high
SES
§
Spectrum of mentor teacher familiarity with PBI,
some newer to it, and others more familiar with it
§
Next steps
·
Observations of class
·
Unpack TEKS
·
When teaching the PBI unit, the unit will unfold
over at least 2-3 days
§
Some students are feeling unsure as to what
exactly they need to do?
§
Students then debriefed within their own
“teaching/field experience” teams.
·
Group 1: Andrew, John
·
Group 2: Clara, Steve, Kyle
·
Group 3: Emily, Yubin
·
Group 4: Abdul, Mica, Amy
·
Group 5: Mirna
·
Group 6: Miranda
o
We then watched an Edutopia video about an
alternative high school here in Austin, Texas, Manor New Tech High School, an
entirely project-based instruction school.
o
And another video: An Introduction to
Project-Based Learning
o
Thoughts on the videos
§
How are curriculum and projects different, or
the same?
§
The traditional idea of lesson planning stems
from a modernist perspective (notably championed by Ralph Tyler in the 1930s)
·
It’s somewhat reductionist in that views
instruction as a composite of its components
§
Postmodern perspective: the classroom is more
organic, more spontaneous, where it’s collective dynamic that is ever evolving
·
When a project begins, the project will evolve
from its originally planned components—it is dynamic, and reactionary
·
It is not necessarily controllable, but is
preparable
·
Every successful project requires cycles of
iterations; it is retrospective and reflectives
Class #4-01/31/2017
·
We began class with small group 3-2-1 discussions
of the Marshall, Petrosino & Martin (2010) article, “Preservice Teachers’ Conceptions
and Enactments of Project-Based Instruction.” Small groups discussed their
thoughts on the following questions:
o
What 3 things did you learn from the article?
o
What 2 things would you like to know more about?
o
What 1 thing do you wish the article discusses
that it didn’t?
·
Students wrote the main points of their
discussion on large post-it papers to share with the class.
o
Some lingering questions from the small group
discussions (The 1 thing):
§
What is the distinction about the difference
between PBI and Inquiry-based lessons?
§
What varying degrees of PBI implementation do
you get from varying degrees of results/understanding?
§
What counts as “authentic” implementation of
PBI?
·
How does one reconcile the time investment
designing a PBI unit with the real time demands as a teacher?
o
Petrosino: A teacher is not necessarily
committed to only one type of a pedagogy in their practice. A teacher should
have and employ a “back of tricks,” wherein they use several modes of pedagogy
Class #5-02/02/2017
·
Sneha led class today
·
We began class by first jigsawing into mixed
groups of Science/Math readings to share with each other the salient points
from the specific readings
·
Working in the same small groups, we then
explored the following question:
o
What does good teaching and bad teaching look
like according to each of these authors?
§
Groups identified the authors’:
·
implicit or explicit assumptions that positioned
their paper
·
the main assertions
·
Summary of notions of what good and bad teaching
looks like according to each author.
·
We had a large group discussion on these
authors’ perspectives of what good and bad teaching looks like and the
importance of looking at our own values and presumptions which drive our own
notions of this question.
·
For the rest of class, students worked in their
field experience teaching teams to work on brainstorming and planning for their
PBI units.
·
We ended with students reflecting on the
following two exit-ticket questions:
o
What was something that stuck out to you from
the readings or something you contended with from it? Why?
o
Based on the readings, can PBI be a pedagogy for
equity? Why or why not?
Class #6 – 02/07/2017
·
Reading Set 2
o
Whole group discussion on Wiggins and McTighe on
backwards design and Baron article.
·
(Sneha out to collect data for research project)
Class #7 – 02/09/2017
·
Denise and Daniel (Master Teachers) led class
today
·
We worked on unpacking the TEKS standards.
o
Students worked in their teaching teams to
develop comprehensive concept maps (using the whiteboards and post-its) to
unpack the content standards they were to address in their PBI lessons/units.
o
These concept maps could help identify a driving
question.
Class #8 – 02/14/2017
·
We began class by discussing in small groups the
readings from Reading Set 2, listed below. Small groups discussed two major
take-aways from each reading. Under each reading are some common themes
emergent in the class’ discussion:
o
Luft
§
Rubrics for assignments are helpful for
teachers, students, and administrators; they force prioritization
§
Holistic vs. analytical rubrics pros/cons:
·
Holistic rubrics are good for open-ended
projects while analytical allows for specific assessments on
strengths/weaknesses
§
Four steps to creating a rubric: 1. Know
learning goals. 2. Determine Structure 3. Levels of Performance 4. Sharing with
students
o
Kitchen
§
Performance tasks allow for higher-order
thinking
§
Facilitating a level of cohesion between
teammates and with the teacher are essential.
o
Walker
§
Skill vs. creativity
§
It is important to create real-life problems
with opportunities for self-correcting
o
IDEA Bank
§
Open ended vs. structured performance-based
assessments: both have purposes and uses
·
Structured assessments are good for techniques
·
Open-ended assessments allow for
synthesis/application
o
Doane
§
Students should be working on problem areas
rather than making good grades
§
Learning goals should be oriented toward student
improvement, higher order thinking, and problem-solving
o
Miscellaneous thoughts/questions:
§
As an instructor how do you encourage students
to not just check checkboxes on a rubric and promote creativity? (i.e. help
students avoid falling into formulaic use of the rubric)
·
Students signed-up to leading future reading
discussions.
Class #9: 02/16/2017
·
Today, Daniel Fitzpatrick and Denise Ekberg led
class today. They addressed the following aspects of the field component of the
class:
o
What to look for during classroom observations
o
How to plan a good formative assessment
§
Two-tiered items
§
Concept maps/graphic organizers
§
Surveys
o
Fitz and Denise showed some examples of
interesting and detailed Concept Maps to unpack the TEKS
o
Multi-day Sketch
·
Students worked in their teaching teams to
discuss and brainstorm for their multi-day sketch, consulting with the Master
Teachers
Class #10: 02/21/2017
·
We started class with an activity:
o
Erathosthenes circumference of the earth problem
o
Groups of 3: One member serves as an observer,
while the other two group members attempted to solve the problem
o
Discussion on activity:
§
What the observers observed; how participants
felt
§
Reflection question: how would you grade the
participants’ performance on this task?
·
Effort? Content knowledge?
·
Rubrics allow to capture multiple aspects of a
learning task
§
Students then worked in groups to develop a
rubric for the Erathosthenes circumference of the earth problem
·
Due next week
Class #11- 02/23/2017
·
Today, Daniel Fitzpatrick led class to help
coach students in developing their multi-day PBI units.
o
Students began by sharing some of their
observations from their field Observation A
o
Multi-day sketch:
§
Daniel explained how to understand and complete
the AHS lesson template
§
Most important part: be specific; list the tasks
and have the corresponding resources or documents created for it, ready to be
shared.
Class #12- 02/28/2017
·
Today Steve and Adul led class discussion on
Reading Set #4
o
They began by asking some questions regarding
the class’ own notions of formative assessments:
§
What does formative assessment mean to you?
·
Class ideas:
o
Quick
o
Informative
o
Low-stress
o
Continuous
o
Flexible
o
Pre/post assessment
o
Checkpoints
§
How have you implemented formative assessment in
the past?
·
Some example: interviews; concept maps; 2-tiered
systems
§
What are some difficulties you have with
implementing formative assessments?
·
If data from the formative assessment isn’t used
to inform instruction, then it’s useless
o
How does one know how to quickly interpret the
results from a formative assessment?
o
How do you fix in real-time?
§
How would you incorporate the ability for
students to assess themselves?
o
Abdul and Steve then gave us a quick summary of
the readings
§
Wiggins: “assessments are a moral matter…”
·
Why is it a moral matter?
·
How do you stay true to the moral compulsion of
assessing and using assessment constructively while still trying to negotiate
the demands of being a classroom teacher? For example, how do you allow room
and time for revisiting and revising when the curriculum is so fast-paced.
o
They then led the class in a group activity:
working in pairs/group of three, each group were asked to participate in a
different type of formative assessment on the water cycle. While one group took
a justified multiple-choice question, another completed a T-chart, while
another did an exit slip; while another group engaged in dialogue
§
Following this activity, we had a whole-group
discussion about what the benefits and disadvantages of using each of these strategies as well as when to
use them.
o
Closing activity: Recall the formative
assessment strategies students used during their field experience and how they
might revise it based on the principles from the readings and the discussions
in class. Was it a useful and what would you improve upon?
Class #13: 03/01/2017
·
Students worked on reviewing each other’s units
and giving feedback on them
Class #14: 03/07/2017
·
Today Mica and Yubin led class discussion on
Reading Set 5 which explored what inquiry means
o
They began by having small groups define in
their own words what they understood of the four levels of inquiry
§
Summary of discussions on this:
·
Level 1: Confirmation (question, procedure, and
answers provided)
·
Level 2: Procedural/Structured (Q & P)
·
Level 3: Guided (Q)
·
Level 4: Open (Q, P, A not provided)
·
Levels 1 & 2: Teacher driven; Levels 3 &
4: Student driven
o
Then students worked in their groups to analyze whether
their own field-experience PBI lessons are inquiry-based units.
§
Discussion points:
·
What happens/how should a teacher intervene if
students keep attempting but not making much progress toward the learning goal
or acquiring the content concept?
o
Scaffolding should be used to build up to more
independent levels of inquiry
·
Is level 4 of inquiry always the best?
o
The levels of inquiry do not equal the level of
quality of teaching/instruction
o
Level 4 is not always the best and there is a
factor of evaluating “when” a certain level of inquiry would be most
appropriate.
Class 3/9/2017
- Today, the student-teacher teams practiced a portion of their lessons in front of each other and their instructors to get some feedback to tweak their lessons before implementing their units in the classroom the week after spring break
SPRING BREAK (3/13/2017 – 3/17/2017)
Field Experience-PBI Unit Teaching
(3/20/2017-3/24/2017; 3/27/2017-3/29/2017)
- Monday March 20, 2017
- Chemistry- Clara Dawson; Kyle Albernaz, Steven Tijerna (9:00am-10:30am)
- Students use the concept of balancing equations to create Rube-Goldberg machines
- Biology- Yubin Goh, Emily Smith (11:05am – 12:40pm)
- Students used various water quality testing kits to determine the health of an ecosystem and its affects on the biodiversity of an ecosystem
- Unit had a field-trip component that occurred on Wednesday March 22nd, 2017
- Algebra 1- John Langdon, Andrew Stepek (11:05am – 12: 40pm)
- Students learn how to derive a quadratic formula and use it to determine the flow rates of various water bodies.
- Unit had a field-trip component that occurred on Wednesday March 22nd, 2017
- Tuesday March 21, 2017
- Algebra 2- Amy Gross, Abdul Bora, Mica Kohl (9:00am -10:30am)
- Students learn about log functions and apply them to buying a car and calculating the monthly payments of various financing plans for purchasing a car
- Biology- Miranda Grabowski (11:05am – 12:40pm)
- Students used various water quality testing kits to determine the health of an ecosystem and its affects on the biodiversity of an ecosystem
- Unit had a field-trip component that occurred on Wednesday March 22nd, 2017
- Biology- Mirna Gonazalez (3:00pm – 4:30pm)
- Students used various water quality testing kits to determine the health of an ecosystem and its affects on the biodiversity of an ecosystem
- Wednesday March 22, 2017
- Chemistry- Clara Dawson; Kyle Albernaz, Steven Tijerna (9:00am-10:30am)
- Students use the concept of balancing equations to create Rube-Goldberg machines
- Many of the teaching teams had a field trip experience incorporated into their units, and around which their units were centered. The field trip was interdisciplinary in nature and took students to the following sites to conduct various tests as relevant to the PBI units that incorporated it. The field trip took students to the following sites: Pace Bend, Mansfield Dam, Inks Lake. The following teaching teams had incorporated into their units this field trip component:
· Biology-
Yubin Goh, Emily Smith (11:05am – 12:40pm)
· Students
used various water quality testing kits to determine the health of an ecosystem
and its affects on the biodiversity of an ecosystem
· Unit
had a field-trip component that occurred on Wednesday March 22nd, 2017
· Algebra
1- John Langdon, Andrew Stepek (11:05am – 12: 40pm)
· Students
learn how to derive a quadratic formula and use it to determine the flow rates
of various water bodies.
· Unit
had a field-trip component that occurred on Wednesday March 22nd, 2017
· Biology-
Miranda Grabowski (11:05am – 12:40pm)
· Students
used various water quality testing kits to determine the health of an ecosystem
and its affects on the biodiversity of an ecosystem
· Unit
had a field-trip component that occurred on Wednesday March 22nd, 2017
· Biology-
Mirna Gonazalez (3:00pm – 4:30pm)
· Students
used various water quality testing kits to determine the health of an ecosystem
and its affects on the biodiversity of an ecosystem
·
Thursday March 23, 2017
· Algebra
2- Amy Gross, Abdul Bora, Mica Kohl (9:00am -10:30am)
· Students
learn about log functions and apply them to buying a car and calculating the
monthly payments of various financing plans for purchasing a car
· Biology-
Miranda Grabowski (11:05am – 12:40pm)
· Students
used various water quality testing kits to determine the health of an ecosystem
and its affects on the biodiversity of an ecosystem
· Friday
March 24, 2017
· Algebra
2- Amy Gross, Abdul Bora, Mica Kohl (9:00am -10:30am)
· Students
learn about log functions and apply them to buying a car and calculating the
monthly payments of various financing plans for purchasing a car
· Biology-
Miranda Grabowski (11:05am – 12:40pm)
· Students
used various water quality testing kits to determine the health of an ecosystem
and its affects on the biodiversity of an ecosystem
· Biology-
Mirna Gonazalez (3:00pm – 4:30pm)
· Students
used various water quality testing kits to determine the health of an ecosystem
and its affects on the biodiversity of an ecosystem
· Monday
March 27, 2017
· Chemistry-
Clara Dawson; Kyle Albernaz, Steven Tijerna (9:00am-10:30am)
· Students
use the concept of balancing equations to create Rube-Goldberg machines
· Biology-
Yubin Goh, Emily Smith (11:05am – 12:40pm)
· Students
used various water quality testing kits to determine the health of an ecosystem
and its affects on the biodiversity of an ecosystem
· Unit
had a field-trip component that occurred on Wednesday March 22nd, 2017
· Algebra
1- John Langdon, Andrew Stepek (11:05am – 12: 40pm)
· Students
learn how to derive a quadratic formula and use it to determine the flow rates
of various water bodies.
· Unit
had a field-trip component that occurred on Wednesday March 22nd, 2017
·
Tuesday March 28, 2017
·
*Field Experience partner high school
(Austin High School) had their English End of Course Examinations occurring
this day so no PBI teaching teams were teaching on this day*
·
Wednesday March 29, 2017
· Biology-
Yubin Goh, Emily Smith (11:05am – 12:40pm)
· Students
used various water quality testing kits to determine the health of an ecosystem
and its affects on the biodiversity of an ecosystem
· Unit
had a field-trip component that occurred on Wednesday March 22nd, 2017
· Algebra
1- John Langdon, Andrew Stepek (11:05am – 12: 40pm)
· Students
learn how to derive a quadratic formula and use it to determine the flow rates
of various water bodies.
·
Unit had a field-trip component that
occurred on Wednesday March 22nd, 2017
Class 3/30/2017
- Today, Sneha led class discussion as Dr. Petrosino was out.
- We began class by debriefing the field experience from an overall perspective. Our conversation focused a lot on the struggle to negotiate the realities of the classroom and teaching with what is hoped for and expected. We also discussed some tips and strategies as to how to better deal with such struggles.
- We then discussed Reading Set 6 which examined how activity can be turned into inquiry. The following questions guided our discussion:
- Why inquiry (i.e. why is teaching through inquiry important or a best practice?)
- How do the inquiry frameworks proposed by Bell et al. (2005) who proposed four levels of inquiry, and Volkmann et al. (2003), who proposed an inquiry analysis tool, compare with each other? What are the benefits and omissions of both?
- Students then took some time to evaluate either their own PBI units that they just taught or the other examples from their readings, using the “Inquiry Analysis Tool” proposed by Voklmann et al. (2003).
Class 4/4/2017
·
Today, we began class
with Dr. Petrosino going over the feedback from the midterm evaluation. The
midterm evaluation asked the following questions:
o What are some things you like about the class?
o What are some things you find least helpful about
the class?
o What are some things you’d like to see on Canvas?
o What are some suggestions you’d have to improve the
class?
·
Students presented on
their reflections of the field experience.
o Students presented on the following themes of their
field experience:
1.
Overview of the lesson
2.
Lessons learned about
student thinking
3.
Lessons learned about implementing
elements of PBI
o The teaching teams presented in this order:
1. Biology-Mirna, Miranda, Yubin, and Emily
2. Chemistry- Clara, Kyle, Steven
3. Algebra I- John and Andrew
4. Algebra II- Abdul, Mica, and Amy
Class 4/6/2017
·
We began class with a discussion of some overall
reflections/debriefing of the presentation reflections from Tuesday:
o
PBI is really hard especially when negotiating
the demands and expectations from multiple stakeholders
o
PBI takes more time to implement, and more time
to plan for as well
§
Iterations of planning and implementation allow
for refinement
o
Collaboration is difficult
o
PBI takes planning but cannot be scripted.
o
Need back-up plans
o
Negotiating the need to teach content richly and
accurately while still making learning engaging for students
o
Important question to be posed:
§
What is the point or goal of PBI? Is it the
driving question or the content?
·
John and Andrew then led today’s discussion on
the readings (Reading Set 7) that were due for today
o
They divided students into 3 groups
o
Each group was posed a case scenario related to
the readings
§
Teaching
a class with a large population of students living at the poverty line
§
Teaching evolution to a class with students of
diverse faiths
·
Our class discussion in answering this seemed to
center around the idea that it is important to emphasize the epistemology of
science and approach this topic with the perspective of presenting evolution as
a scientific theory (and less as a belief system), and the evidence scientists
have found that form its base.
§
Making science (ecology and statistics) relevant
to class with high-achieving, college-bound students
o
After some time to discuss in small groups, we
came back together and shared out some of the salient points from the small
group discussions.
§
Some big idea takeaway points from this discussion:
·
How do you reconcile the ethics of teaching,
practicalities/logistics, and the best practices/theories of teaching PBI and
do it well?
·
An underlying philosophy of PBI is exploring
questions.
Class 4/11/2017
·
Class started with a visit from Fitz and Denise
o
They brought blank Thank-You cards to have PBI
teaching teams write for their mentor teachers
o
They also went over preliminary portfolio
sessions
·
We then worked on estimating and tabulating the
number of hours spent on the field experience.
·
Students then shared their ideas about what
driving questions and the final artifacts they’re thinking about for the PBI
units they are developing for their final projects.
o
Clara and Steven: Biology unit that centers
around applications on forensic science (students will engage in a mock trial
of sorts and will use DNA analysis to defend or prosecute a hypothetical
suspect)
o
Mirna and Kyle: Chemistry unit in which students
will design their own battery
o
Miranda and Emily: Biology unit in which
students will explore biodiversity by developing an environmental campaign
o
Amy, Micah, Abdul: Extending their field
experience unit in which students will develop a financial portfolio that
critically analyzes the finances involved in buying a car
o
John: ?
o
Andrew: ?
o
Yubin:?
Class 4/13/2017
·
We began with looking at some of the student
data about the hours spent on field-experience.
·
Clara and Amy then led class
o
They began with a little activity that
demonstrated the importance of different perspectives
o
We then discussed addressing misconceptions
§
Students did an activity to illustrate naïve
notions about graphing and representation
§
We then had a whole class discussion about the
different graphing representations and what naïve notions are present in the
representations and some of the struggles with representing cognition
o
Students then worked in groups to discuss how
they might develop a lesson to address some common misconceptions/naïve notions
o
Question posed: Is it beneficial or adverse to
student learning if as a teacher to get something deliberately wrong?
§
Depends on what kind of classroom environment
you are building up.
o
Small group and whole group discussion on
interactive learning and lecturing.
·
Dr. Petrosino then did a debrief of some of the
ideas and discussions that came up in the student-led discussion component.
·
Dr. Petrosino has provided on Canvas a
supplemental reading on benchmark lessons.
Class 04/18/2017
·
Dr. Petrosino began class with an interesting
current event discussion about Public University General Fund Revenue Source
History
·
Students took a survey for a study on
pre-service teacher content knowledge.
·
Dr. Petrosino then gave a presentation on
Benchmark lessons
Class 04/20/2017
·
Dr. Petrosino began with a brief introduction to
his new NSF Grant-funded research on Group-Based Cloud Computing
o
PBI students are welcome to work with his
graduate students to consider incorporating this technology into their final
PBI units
·
Kyle and Mirna then led the reading discussion
on “PBI and Equity”
o
They began with the following discussion
questions:
§
What elements of PBI lend themselves towards
helping equity issues?
·
PBI contextualizes the information
·
Hands-on helps ELL students
·
Learn concepts, then the formal/disciplinary
language
·
§
How does PBI have an advantage over the
traditional classroom by way of equity?
·
Engage through culture
§
What are the downfalls of PBI in regards to
equity issues?
·
Difficult to connect to all
·
Collaboration difficulty
§
How can PBI help ELL learners?
·
Working in groups with native speakers and
non-native speakers
·
Peer review
·
Team-work
·
Sharing diverse experiences and bringing in
diverse perspectives
·
Closer access to what people are saying
·
Different modalities of sharing information
·
Practice and rehearse speech and ability to
articulate a thought and help students build confidence
§
Equity in math
·
Math requires vocabulary
·
Differences in how we read/write
·
Translation exercises
·
Context of word problems may not be relatable
·
Allow students to write their own word problems
§
Finally students discussed how their PBI unit
lessons address equity
§
Main takeaways:
·
Equity is a design decision
Class 04/25/2017
·
We had a visitor from UTeach Outreach come in to
class today to advertise a job opportunity with UTeach Outreach
·
Miranda and Emily led the class in the reading
discussion on reading set 10 on Reading in Science and Math
o
Opening questions: what is science? What is
math? What is language arts? Why are they separated?
o
Students then discussed the overlaps of learning
cycles in reading and science
o
Textbook reading activity: pre-reading and
post-reading an excerpt from scientific textbooks.
·
Dr. Petrosino then did a wrap-up of the notion
of reading
Class 04/27/2017
·
Dr. Petrosino began class with a discussion on
the revisionist nature of science and how should teachers approach this in the
classroom
o
He contextualized this discussion in recent
debate on recent emerging evidence on the first humans in North America
o
Some important questions that surfaced in the conversation:
§
What is science?
·
Knowledge?
·
Process?
·
Community?
§
What is evidence/data?
§
Where
does peer review fall under this knowledge-process-community paradigm of
science?
Class 05/02/2017
·
Dr. Petrosino began class by debriefing with the
class about yesterday’s on-campus stabbing incident. He reassured students that
the instructional team is here for them and are ready to accommodate their
needs as they cope with this difficult event.
·
Dr. Petrosino then led a presentation and discussion
on anchor videos and what the features of a good anchor video are.
·
We then watched a Jasper Video Episode and
students engaged in the problem-solving spurred by this anchor video.
Class 05/04/2017
·
Today, being the last class day, the
instructional team wanted to give students an opportunity in-class to work on
and collaborate with each other on building their final PBI Unit websites and
presentations. Students worked together on their projects and conferenced with
Sneha, the TA, and with each other, as they tweaked and digitally curated their
units.
·
Students will be presenting their final PBI
units and websites during their final exam session on Monday May 15th,
2017 from 2pm-5pm.
o
We expect to have other members of the STEM
Education and the UTeach community also come, listen to, and evaluate students’
final units and presentations.
