When curiosity is sparked...

I tend to miss class from time to time. I hate missing class.  I love nothing more than being with my 9th grade Biology students and 10th grade Honors Chemistry students helping them to negotiate the complexities, and beautiful intricacies of science. Teaching is my hobby. 

Unfortunately, missing class is a reality when trying to juggle being a parent of four young children (two being 3 year-old twin boys), managing a career as an educational consultant, and working online an adjunct profession of education, all while trying to maintain my role as a full-time high school teacher.

I am committed to this. I am sure many of you reading this can empathize. It's just what I'm dong. I'm blessed. 

However, missing class means creating sub lesson plans.

I HATE creating sub plans. 

I have experimented with many different models: guided reading notes, instructional videos, etc. etc., etc. I want the sub lesson to be meaningful, and not just a lesson that all to often becomes a "study hall". 

Unfortunately, none of the above methods seemed to lead to anything other than the typical responses. : "Can we have a study hall?", or "Can we watch a movie?", or "I didn't know we were supposed to do it?".

Totally normal, and totally age appropriate. No matter how much I LOVED my teachers in high school, there was always something novel, something surprising, and something fun about having a sub. I get it. 

That being said: How can I improve the process? Provide meaning while not being there? 

These are simple questions that I'm sure many of you have answers to already, however for me, it has been a significant part of my journey as an educator.

A tangible, grass roots problem that full-time teachers often overlook. How can I be better? 

Out of frustration, I sat down a few years ago and wrote down exactly what I wanted a sub lesson to accomplish: 

• The lesson must be engaging.
• The lesson must be highly structured.
• The lesson must be efficient.
• The lesson must be simple to complete. 
• The lesson must be done individually. 
• The lesson must included an accountability structure.

Given that we are a one-to-one school, over the past year there is a method I KEEP COMING BACK to. 

 A method that ALWAYS seems to work, and checks off each of the boxes above:
 
Embedding short videos IN a google form with associated summary prompts. ​ 

Here's my workflow: 

1. ​Identify where we are in the content we are learning that week. 
2. Choose 3 videos from YouTube (< 10 minutes) that relate the content we are learning to a meaningful application, and we would have NOT talked about if I was not absent. 
3. Insert each video into a google form, followed by a paragraph text box that includes the following summary prompt: This video was about....Specifically...I really understood....I struggled to understand...I still have questions about....
4. Award "points" for completion individually during class. 

Here's my logic:

• The video is IN the google form along with the summary box and google forms can be access well on any device, PD,C Mac, or mobile. Thus, the extraneous cognitive load of the task is very low. Thus, students can focus 
• The videos relate to applications of content we would not normally talk about. Thus, the sub lesson serves to reinforce, and amplify the content we are learning in a novel way. 
• The structured summary box prompts students to reflect on the entire video in a systematic way, but also a meta way, while creating a framework that continues to serve to simplify the task. 
• By collecting the response in a spreadsheet i am able to quickly review student completion time stamps, as well as survey their responses for questions. 

Click here for an example of my most recent Google Form sub lesson. 

See screenshots of my most recent Google Form sub lesson below:

Yes. I am obsessed with the craft of teaching. I think about it constantly. Thus, in addition to the incredible time with family ands friends that the Thanksgiving holiday offers (mixed in with writing college letters of recommendation), I found myself using the time to revisit list of "potential ideas"  I gather throughout the semester. 

Things I see online, in conversation, at conferences, spying on other teachers, etc., etc., etc. Things that I want to integrate into my practice, daydream about leveraging, or need to improve upon. In an L-tryptophan haze, I  spent the Friday after Thanksgiving digging through my lists, and curating 10 new ideas I want to integrate into my practice:
​

1. Use Editey as student portfolio creator to encourage simultaneous web editing skills and content curation. 
2. Create a google sheet with formulas and share using "/copy" trick for students to track their own grades. 
3. Encourage students to use Trello to manage PBL tasks in robotics class and on the robotics team. 
4. Make puzzles out of complex diagrams (e.g., Mitosis)  to encourage concept connection and reinforcement. 
5. Revisit  my old standards based grading system to avoid current micromanaging of grades. 
6. Calendly. I'm sure there is a use for this with student project organization and management. 
7. Share Twist Bioscience with Biology students as entry point for ethical debate. 
8. Translate a writing feedback protocol such as this into a project feedback protocol in science class. 
9. Challenge students to hack their own Hyperduino project without explicit instructions in robotic class. 
10. Use the OPI process in science, rather than language class, as an alternative assessment method. 

If you are like me as a science teacher, you simultaneously live the acronym "STEM" and are exhausted by its overuse in nearly every blog, set of state standards, or professional development seminar that comes to town (Full disclosure: I often facilitate those seminars). 
​
That being said, the more I dive into the world of Robotics (second year as an FRC Mentor and long time Summer Science Camp facilitator), the more potential I see in leveraging that which we often write off as "trendy,  and that which we hold dear. 

Tools common to enrichment programs (MakeyMakey, Arduino, MicroBit etc.) can potentially be powerful tools in my/our Biology and Chemistry classes during the school year, while also engaging students in a disciplines they would not normally see embedded in traditional physical and life science courses. 
​
Below are links 5 activities I have done, or plan to do,  that merge coding/electronics and biology/chemistry. Enjoy! 

#1: MakeyMakey Interactive Eukaryotic Cell 
#2: Lego Mindstorm Natural Selection Simulation
​#3: Modeling States of Matter with the MicroBit
#4: Drop Counter Hack with MakeyMakey
#5: Arduino Conductivity Probe 

Inserting a picture directly from the webcam of your computer into a Google Document is a, IMO, freaking powerfully simple strategy in the classroom. It was gone, but NOW IT'S BACK! YES! This feature embodies the kind of classroom technology I love: simple, efficient, and purposeful. Below are just a few of the many ways I have used this technique in my classroom: 

• Insert images of question artifacts or answer choices into a Google Form. 
• Insert images of questions or diagrams on a whiteboard or piece of paper in a Google Slide. 
• Insert images of prototypes during a design cycle into a Google Doc. 
• insert images from a lab a Google Sheet that is collecting quantitive data about the lab.  
• Insert images of evidence of learning during a project. 
• Insert images of problems solved in a shared Google Doc with the teacher as exist ticket. 
• Insert image of you or your group during an activity. 
• Insert a picture of scavenger hunt artifacts into a shared Google Dci with your the teacher. 

Below is a video that quickly shows how to insert an image as as snapshot in four different mediums: Google Docs, Google Slides, Google Sheets and Google Forms. 

Yes. I know what you are thinking. This entire post is mute given the functionality of Google Classroom or the myriad of other scripts. However when I want to quickly share a Google Doc template with students or teachers whom I am working with for a short period of time (workshop, science camp, etc.), this process works great. Below is the logic and video tutorial. 

Logic
Creating a template from a Google Doc is extremely useful when you want to streamline the way students gather data, or engage in a unified activity. When the ridiculously long Google Doc URL template is created (see below video for method), writing a short version, customized URL on the board is very efficient. By customizing the link students do not confused  "1" for an "l" an "O" for an "0", etc. 

Tutorial