FINISHING UP

This is the final week of class, so a couple of notes and reminders:

Due Date.

     The date set for our final is April 28, next Tuesday but I will be accepting materials until the end of the day May 1, that Friday.  

Turning assignments in.

     Your unit folder should be stored in your Google Drive.  To turn the folder in, just share the link with me in an e-mail.  I'll e-mail you as soon as I get it to let you know I was able to download the folder.  The other assignments can be e-mailed as attachments or as photos, or shared through Google Drive as well.

Practicum.

     Remember to turn in your practicum hours log.  If you did one of the practicum projects, the expectation is that you spend as many hours developing the project as needed for practicum hours.  For example, if you needed 10 practicum hours, you spent 10 hours working on the project.

If you have any questions or concerns, please e-mail me as soon as possible.  

PERFORMANCE TASKS AND A SAMPLE UNIT

Performance Tasks
     In the past, I've always asked students to include a few SOL-type test items in their unit as a final assessment.  Now, for final assessments, Virginia is moving away from the multiple choice format to the use of performance tasks.  A simple definition for a performance task would be a "...learning activity or assessment that asks students to perform to demonstrate their knowledge, understanding and proficiency. Performance tasks yield a tangible product and/or performance that serve as evidence of learning."  Taken from https://www.definedstem.com/blog/what-is-a-performance-task/
     I've had a number of discussions with Stafford Schools folks about performance tasks and it seems that they are almost identical to Design Briefs.  The emphasis is on demonstrating knowledge by producing a product (physical or virtual) or performance.  If you look at some of the design briefs available online - specifically Children's Engineering site http://childrensengineering.org/design-briefs/ you'll see that these are performance tasks.
     If you look at the Unit Guidelines on this site, you'll see that your unit needs to include a Design Brief and a Performance Task.  That means you can meet both these requirements with just one Design Brief.

Sample Unit
     This is a link to a sample unit.  It's not complete (since requirements do change from year to year) but it will give you an idea of how units are organized and formatted.  Note: the links on the block plan don't work since I've moved the files around.

GOOGLE DRIVE

     I think the best way for you to turn in documents (Units, projects) at the end of the semester will be through Google Drive.  It's free and very easy to use.  To start, you'll need a Gmail account.  If you have Gmail, you have Google Drive.  If you don't have Gmail, just go to gmail.com and sign up for a free account.  

     Once you have your Gmail account, just go to drive.google.com, log in using your Gmail password, and you'll see a screen that looks something like this.   If you have never used Google Drive, you won't see any files.

     You can create new files there using Google Docs or Google Slides, or just upload an existing file or folder.  To do this, just click the big New icon and you'll see options for File Upload or Folder Upload.  Once you've selected your files or folder and uploaded them, they will appear in the big window - you can see I have several in my drive.  To share a file or folder - which is the way you'll turn them in to me - just right click on the file and choose Share.  A window will open asking for the e-mail address of the person you want to share the file with, and you will  enter grmeadows@gmail.com   Notice - that's not my UMW address, it's easier for me if you share using my gmail address.

     

INSTRUCTIONS FOR CREATING HYPERLINKS IN YOUR UNIT BLOCK PLAN

     Since you'll be using hyperlinks in your Unit Block Plan, I've linked to a document that walks you through the process.  We talked about this in class, but it has been a while and some of you may be working on your units now.  Click here for the document.

IDEAS FOR SCIENCE DEMONSTRATIONS AND SMALL GROUP TEACHING

Science Demonstrations

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MHn9Q5NtdY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBV0wehj9YE

Small Group Teaching

https://www.pinterest.com/mstraciburns/science-foldable-ideas/

https://teachscience4all.org/2010/01/09/foldables-in-science/