Gordon J. Aubrecht, II,
Physics Education Research Group
OSU Marion Campus
AAPT Winter Meeting, Sunday, 15 February 2009
Supported in part by grants from the Ohio Department of Education
(IMPACT2, Ohio Dept. of Education Grant #60018325)

Abstract:
In 2004-2005, I was part of a team that won a Department of
Education grant, known as IMPACT. We worked with K-12 teachers in Marion and Newark, helping them rethink how they were teaching, helping them ask more (and better) questions. Some of the teachers were from the middle school in Marion, Ohio. They contacted the administration of the City Schools and suggested that
I be involved in improving science scores at the middle school level.
We submitted a seed grant proposal to the Ohio Department of
Education that was funded. We had teacher buy-in; the union agreed and each teacher agreed to be part of the program. We submitted a full proposal, with the title “ Systemic Change Through Embedded
Professional Development at a STEM+C Middle School (IMPACT
II), ” which was funded. We envision our program to involve teachers in hands-on activities and questioning. This talk will present more details of the program currently being implemented at
Grant Middle School in Marion, Ohio.

The Marion City Schools (MCS) have a difficult task. About threequarters of the students get free or reduced-cost lunches.
The student “churn” is about 25% per year.

Students in the Marion City
Schools do not score well on
Ohio’s proficiency tests.

Several years ago, I got a grant with Christopher Andersen of the
OSU Newark Campus.

We called the program IMPACT.
In the usual way, we made up a fancy wording to fit:
I nquiry M odel for P rofessional A ction and C ontentrich T eaching

In IMPACT, we did inquiry-type activities with the teacher-students and had them feel as students in their classes might—but they were talking in their classes, and they were DOING as students.
It did have some effect.

Most teachers told us at the start that they believed that teaching is telling.
Obviously, it’s not for me: for me teaching is more like coaching.

The outcome was that some of the K-12 teachers changed.
Several went on to become math coaches through another OSU program.

The coaches later told the MCS administration that they had learned more about being math coaches in IMPACT than in the official OSU math coaching course.

Remember that IMPACT was a science program, not a math program.

Several science teachers mentioned to the administration how they’d changed their teaching.
The upshot was that the MCS administration came to us to enlist us in a grant proposal (then it was two grant proposals).

MCS even came to me suggesting building on IMPACT
II for a new Regents proposal to make one “house” in the middle school a STEM house. This effort has been dropped because of too many commitments.

So, I have reason to believe that the MCS trusts me and my coworkers, particularly Bill
Schmitt from The Science Center for Inquiry in Arizona, who worked with me on both
IMPACT and IMPACT II.

Bill works hard to be an inquiry enabler, and we have learned a great deal from each other as we’ve worked together.

Our goals are ambitious. We want to enable inquiry from middle school science teachers, which is scary for them because of the emphasis on control in the schools.

In a related but partly deplorable move, the MCS bought FOSS for the teachers.
It is an inquiry-based program to some extent, but with a lot of teacher telling and many science bloopers.

Despite our reservations, our program is going to be featured in a FOSS
Newsletter.
QuickTime™ and a
decompressor are needed to see this picture.

We had the teachers in a course last summer for two weeks.
We are currently working with the teachers several days a week in their school (we meet during a planning period).

The program is really just beginning. Nevertheless, teachers have told us some things that were unexpected for them.
On the next pages, we show some of them.

Rick and I were in class today and Rick came up with an extension to our lesson. He asked the students to think about the North Canyon and Nankoweap Canyon as a triangle. If the height of the triangle is 125 feet and it is 32 miles long, what is the distance of the hypotenuse and what are the angle measurements of the triangle? As soon as we got to Math class, all the students wanted to ask questions about how to figure this problem out. I thought this was cool that the students wanted to know what the answer was and were willing to ask questions to find out.

I have to share this story because it is from my inclusion class, who on a daily basis amazes me ...
A student brings in a rock from home because it looks like a rock in the kit ... I looked at it and told him we would discover what it is by the end of the week.
This is a student who for the first four weeks wouldn ’ t answer a question and
DEFINITELY avoided any sort of eye contact with me when I was asking questions...
Yesterday he comes up to me with the rock ...
Me: “ Well, what do you think it is?
”
Zach: “ I think it ’ s shale.
”
Me: “ Why?
”
Z: “ It doesn ’ t look like it will absorb the HCl, it ’ s smooth and it looks like #7 from the kit...
”
Me: “ Well, you are right ... that ’ s awsome ...
”
Another student walks up ...
S: “ What ’ s that rock?
”
Z: “ My rock from my backyard.
”
S: “ What is it?
” and with a glance to me and a sideways smile Zach turns to the student and says
... “ What do YOU think it is?
”

It looks like we ’ ll have a great week next week to continue our weather investigations. On Wednesday, I tried something I had never tried before, I set up stations throughout my room. One of them was using the syringes, plungers, tubes, clips, foam, plastic, etc., another to work in their lab notebook, another to play with the FOSSweb syringe model and answer some questions I typed out and yet another to read from the resource book and answer some more questions. They only had 10 mins. at each station but it went wonderfully! All of the students were ENGAGED and an administrator did a walkthrough (however, I didn ’ t get much feedback...). It was good for me too in that I had plenty of time to go from group to group and help them discuss (or at least say “ what do you think ” ?). And KUDOS to Heather and Beth, they are working their tails off! Love the department meetings to get more ideas

My word of the month to describe my students is
“ ENGAGED ” !!! The biggest difference I see using the FOSS
Kits is that my students are not always waiting for me to give them more direction with the daily lesson. Now, we discuss what we will be doing as class first begins, then as we get into the meat of the subject matter ... the students are keeping busy on their own. For instance, I had a discipline situation the other day, which took my focus and physical presence away from the class. When I returned to the other students, they were busy comparing their predictions with the actual data and the students had no clue I was even away from them. Awesome!!!

Our first big debate was whether or not crayfish molt, or shed their skin--shells? I had no clue but it was the only explanation as to why I came in Monday morning last week to find 3 crayfish and an empty crayfish body in the tank. I dried the body out and saved it in a bug-viewer for students to look at. It turned coral pink and now the link has been made between crayfish and shrimp--go figure!! Theories were flying about the pink shell!! It was a great opportunity to discuss fact vs. opinion and why conducting experiments several times is valuable. It was also a great time to emphasize what we each bring, by way of personal experience, to an investigation. Not only are the kids learning but I am learning new information too. The questions being asked are categorized as
“ future investigation questions ” or “ easier to find an answer question.
”
…
I was amazed at how little the students knew about what it means to be living. The top response was
“ moving ” . . . if it moves it ’ s alive! This prompted me to put a lava lamp ( a generous gift right before Christmas from a student) and a plant (a generous secret pal gift also right before Christmas) next to each other on my counter. The lava lamp stuff moves but the plant doesn ’ t-- according to the criteria the lava lamp is alive and the plant is dead! This opened the door to a whole new line of thought on how to develop the criteria for living and non-living.
…
I ’ m pleased with the level of interaction and interest the Diversity of Life unit has already generated among the students. It has also been an eye opening way to distinguish between the active students and the “ along for the ride ” students. I still have many students who struggle with the independent work, the thinking of their own ideas, and the active reasoning using past experience or information read parts of inquiry learning. I am still looking for ways to get these students to willingly engage in investigations.

Well ... Gordon is up to it again ... I have a high school student interning with me this nine weeks ... she is so sweet and innocent ... and she thinks
I am crazy (go figure).
She is here in the am from 8-10 and on Wednesdays is lucky enough to sit in on our FOSS meetings with Gordon and Bill. I told her on the way down not to be too intimidated and that if her brain hurt afterward that it is a totally normal response ... It happened to all of us. She just giggled
... I don ’ t think she believed me ...
The real since part of the meeting consisted of Aaron giving his presentation of Investigation 8 about momentum and Gordon giving us the science behind it ... The look on her face was priceless ... When we walked out she told me that her head did, in fact, hurt and that she was amazed at how much Gordon knows ...

What do you get when you cross 25 6th graders, 7 microscopes, and bunches of tiny swimming brine shrimp? Complete and wonderful chaos! Today was one of my best ever science days!
We kind of cheated tho’ - I didn’t do FOSS’ investigation of the Brine Shrimp - I let the students create their own - we asked LOTS of questions that we wanted to answer about the mysterious little swimmers in our classroom and then I asked the students to draw a picture of them as they investigated.
We have been working with microscopes all week - learning how they work, about the different magnifications, etc., and today was their first real try with something moving. And what a great time they had!!
At first - when they looked - all they saw was white light of course and I would hear - “Mrs. ZZZZZ, I don’t see anything” and then all of a sudden I would hear a scream, shreik, gasp, “Wow”, “OMG” “Look at that” or some other exclamation and I knew they found them!